Konglish: How Bad Is It?

Institute of Education, University of London, 2006

2005

This study examined the attitudes of South Korean teachers of English in Jeollanamdo toward Konglish, particularly in relation to English education. The literature search shows that Konglish is a typical local variety, evolved from the borrowing and redefining of English words that became part of everyday South Korean speech. Konglish is not unique in this regard. Japlish in Japan and Chinglish in China developed for similar reasons and display the distinctive characteristics of those languages. However, Konglish is usually defined as poor and incorrect.

KOTESOL Daegu workshop, 2005

This study analyzed how Korean university students altered the editing of English text after being informed of their incorrect Korean -English usage, or "Konglish". Test subjects were approximately 220 freshmen at a private university in Seoul, who were enrolled in compulsory first-year English conversation courses in the fall term. Classes ranged from 25-30 students, assigned to one of four instructors. Research was conducted in three phases over a three-month term. Part I had students describing pictures, and instructors creating text from those descriptions, including in particular the most common student errors. Part II was a matching activity in which students had to match common "Konglish" terms with their English definition or counterpart. In Part Three, students were given the text including "Konglish", and worked in groups to modify it for a university magazine written in standard English. Findings showed that students edited differently depending upon their perception of the reading audience.

English Today, 2017

Konglish is a blend of Korean and English found throughout South Korea, and often suffers for lack of prestige amongst Koreans. The primary aim of this article is to determine the reasons behind Konglish's low social status in Korea. I begin my investigation by exploring Korean public space as linguistic space, and examining in what social and cultural capacities Koreans use English, Mandarin, Korean, and Konglish. I then shift in part II to discuss perceptions of Korean and English inside Korea. Having analysed Koreans’ attitudes towards Konglish's parent languages, I discuss in part III why Konglish struggles for social legitimacy, despite its ubiquity. In the course of this investigation it will become clear that Koreans often deride Konglish for its ease of use. Because one absorbs it organically through cultural exposure rather than hours of study and millions of won in tuition fees, Konglish accords none of the prestige that comes with Standard English; meanwhile, Konglish's mixed nature means not only that it cannot benefit from the national pride Koreans associate with ‘pure’ Korean, but also that this pride harms Konglish's reception throughout the country.

This BA thesis focuses on demonstrating the impact of the English language in Korea, both as regards its language and society, as well as to analyze the linguistic variety of Konglish. After making a briefly introduction of the history of Konglish and its nowadays common uses, my aim is to focus on analyzing the lexical loanwords and the new words of English origin that have become part of the Korean language. Based on the findings provided by the corpus retrieved from Korean sources, my thesis may help to contribute to the development of a lexical and semantic distribution of these terms, so as to provide new data to Konglish research and further information to the linguistic field of English varieties in East Asia.

Gwangju EPIK Presentation, pp. 46-49, Aug. 26, 2013

A comparison of the state of ELT in Korea 40 years ago with that of today via first-hand observances and experiences.

2008

2021

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the K to 12 Basic English Curriculum implemented by the Department of Education, Philippines. Utilizing descriptiveevaluative design with a validated researcher-made questionnaire administered among faculty members and Grade 11 students in the countryside university in the PhilippinesUniversity of Eastern Philippines-System, results revealed that the curriculum is moderately implemented. This means that the government lacks support to institutions in the countryside in order to effectively provide all resources needed by students to ensure that effective language learning takes place. The lack of instructional materials and other resources significantly hamper students’ language learning opportunities. Received: October 03, 2021 Revised: October 20, 2021 Accepted: October 27, 2021