*Klear Integrated Korean Textbook – Beginner 1, Lessons 1-8.
This piece was written with the following journal article in mind: Language & Culture in Secondary Level Spanish Textbooks by Ramirez and Hall (1990) – also available at the Wiley Online Library.
Culture and language are inextricably linked and cannot ever be truly separate to each other. In a sense, a base level of cultural information is contained within any segment of language being investigated (all if the case) i.e., consider that in the context of Korean culture, having two systems of numbers infers cultural information about how Korean people might think and how they perceive the world around them from the perspective that numbers and counting are cross-cultural phenomenon common to all cultures (in varying degrees of importance) and are certainly common “everyday” phenomenon. Cultures that did not develop living in large social hierarchies/populations would likely have less need for complex counting/numbering systems (hunter-gatherers VS agri-grazing farmers) and would likely get by functionally with simple counting and number systems that perhaps lean more to less and more rather than precise numbers or calculations. With this in mind, to list all of the cultural information included in Lessons 1-8, it might seem reasonable to list all of the content contained in the first eight lessons, however this is too broad a scope to adopt if being serious about the topic. As such, please refer to the list as follows:
Introduction
• Regional dialectical information.
• Brief discussion of the historico-cultural underpinnings of modern Korea (mostly South Korea but there are limited details about North Korea).
• Brief breakdown of Korean vocabulary (percentage comparisons of components of language (e.g., native words, Sino-Korean words, loanwords).
• “Macro-to-micro” language e.g.; order of names (for people) when addressing others, order of details in location addresses and dates/times.
• Honorific system in Korean; terms of address and politeness in speech, grammatical constructions specific for honorific system, non-verbal behaviour.
• Cultural prosodic phenomena e.g., “aegyo” – culturally defined speech behaviour.
• Hangeul (the writing system) and how it was devised – refined from a combination of ancient Chinese script (which is a completely different writing system from Hangeul) and linguistic studies of the human speech biology.
Lesson 1
• Greetings (includes non-verbal cultural behaviours).
• Names (people).
• Introductions (what personal details are given when meeting/introducing) which indicate importance of points to know about people when first meeting (e.g., name, nationality, school year/level of education (school and university).
Lesson 2
• The academic calendar in South Korea (includes schools and universities).
• Blind dates – how this fits in with the academic focus of Korean students i.e., there is no time or opportunities for the students to pursue relationships.
Lesson 3
• Korean national symbols; the national flag, the national flower, the national anthem.
Lesson 4
• Korean collectivism – group possessive pronouns “we” and “our” are used similarly to English but are also used very differently because of cultural norms which manifest and are observed in the language structure.
• Traditional Korean dwelling architecture.
Lesson 5
• Traditional Korean birthday food – seaweed soup.
Lesson 6
• Traditional Korean solar and lunar calendars.
• Written date formatting explanation.
Lesson 7
• Korean national holidays and general social conventions on those days; New Year’s Day (both solar and lunar), Independence Movement Day, Buddha’s Birthday, Children’s Day, Memorial Day, Liberation Day, Harvest Festival (lunar calendar), Foundation Day, Christmas Day.
Lesson 8
• Seoul – the social norms involved with; catching taxi’s in Seoul, using the subway system.
In my opinion, Ramirez and Hall’s conclusions are partially supported by the data I have collected, the comparison between analysis on Spanish and Korean differs in that Korean is only spoken on the Korean peninsula and Spanish is spoken in many countries around the globe as a result of the Age of Discovery.
Given the unique history of North and South Korea, the textbook certainly makes mention of North Korea but only as far as to gloss over the conflict to avoid references to poverty, malnourishment, political tyranny, and systematic civil oppression. The information presented about North Korea is not only minimal but is purposefully crafted to avoid references to aforementioned topics – this could be partially due to the lack of confirmed information available about the current cultural norms and practices of North Koreans and how they might have changed since the Marxist collective doctrine took control of cultural practices under the tyrannical and dynastical rule of the Kims (Il Sung, Jong Il and Jong Un) until the current day.
Modalities for presenting cultural information include written Hangeul, black and white photos (albeit not very many and mostly for historical or contemporary technological systems/innovations, or food or flora). Most visual non-linguistic stimuli are low-resolution and have the appearance of being hand-drawn but are computer rendered. The characters portraited in the text are either teachers or family members and the central characters are all students from different parts of the world but predominantly students from developed countries.
Any references to religion, politics and the environment are all deliberately sanitised to avoid any topics which might be negatively perceived and/or may cause students to lose focus on the language and become aware of negative aspects of Korean life.
The content included in the text certainly focuses on key cultural facets of South Korean society which are demonstrated in cross-culturally universal behaviours and settings (home, family, food, health and play – I consider learning as a subset of behaviours of play for this discussion). This universality makes it easily relatable to any language student although with a distinct South Korean “flavour”. These facets are all contained and presented within pragmatic situations where common communicative exchanges typically transpire and appear specifically designed to impart at least the relevant parts of the general Korean societal interactions which are pragmatic and provide the language learner with more than just practical knowledge of “how to get around” or “how to obtain information”.
The text provides only very rudimentary details on what reactions should be expected in the given common interactive situations (which is to be expected from a beginner level text), but this is usually offset by non-documented class discussions where the students can ask questions about the either not-so-common responses or any other situations where specific constructions (typically but not limited to constructions that are being studied) would be required/preferred/or useful in achieving specific outcomes.
Based on my observations and data, the text makes heavy usage of dialogs to place emphasis on differences between “on-the-fly” spoken conversational language as compared with rehearsed speech. A variety of dialogs are given (with accompanying low-resolution illustrations) in a variety of real life relevant situations which are generally cross-cultural to a large extent, this was likely done to address the almost unlimited variety of real life even for everyday common situations.
The other major mode for examples of language use are narratives. Narratives have been used to demonstrate and teach the written forms of Korean (includes pre-written speech, e.g., news presenting) which are generally more formal and adhere to stricter politeness (honorific) standards and grammatical rules than does everyday spoken/conversational Korean.
Exercises used for reading and comprehension include rote learning popular expressions and grammatical constructions typically by repetition. They also include direct text translation, creating short dialogs and responses to questions, formulating questions, suitable word insertion exercises, formulating and expressing opinions/feelings and word association games where associated words/utterances are arranged in two columns and then students draw the connecting lines between them to indicate correct associations.
The text book makes use of technology in only a very small way, the authors make spoken recordings of the vocabulary lists, major dialogs and narratives available on their website plus teachers gain access to other recorded materials and written exercises from a supplementary exercises text that they can supply to the students at their discretion.
Obvious Korean cultural distinctions are purposefully differentiated and presented clearly as cultural information throughout each chapter whereas as the subtler cultural themes are not highlighted separately as a cultural lesson.
Not all exercises are to be completed alone, there are a reasonable number of exercises that are to completed in pairs (either with the teacher [in a one-on-one setting) or with a peer), and although there is no direction for such action contained in the text (nor have any of my teachers done so) it is my opinion that students can be picked at random to read (roleplay) the dialogs aloud which comprise the main input stimulus for the students – in much the same way actors might rehearse lines without physically acting them out.
Having travelled to South Korea, being married to my wife (who is Korean) and stayed and visited with her family in several different parts of South Korea (including Incheon, Busan, Gumi, Daegu, and Jeju Island), I would say that the picture of Korean people, society and culture painted by this textbook as an introductory text is accurate at a low resolution. Although low resolution, it is still accurate to the point that Korean people are so polite that they are unlikely to discuss or even mention unpleasant topics (especially in a first [or introductory] interaction) because of the negative feelings and reminders of the nation’s bloody and subjugated past. Interestingly, this deep sense of loss, pain and regret for things already past, manifests in a Korean word with a non-translatable cultural meaning, 한, pronounced “hahn” or “harn”.
Culture and language are generally indivisible, so it is my opinion that in some sense it is impossible to teach language without imparting some facet of the culture, even if it is only taught from a textbook in a limited way – either by a non-native speaker or self-taught). If the teacher is a native speaker (or has native level fluency) and has lived in the target language’s culture for any reasonable duration it would seem rational to make a case that cultural content is mostly “presented as firsthand ‘lore’ by [those] instructors”.
The indivisible nature of the relationship between language and culture makes it almost impossible to not methodically organise and include cultural information, knowledge and perspectives in any textbook. There is also certainly a fiscal case to be made for the formulation of textbooks to widely appeal to students and teachers alike not only to sell more units and produce more profit for the creators but also to facilitate better language learning by utilising the “cultural scaffolding” present in all languages.