The 10 Worst Dialogues of the Public Elementary School English Curriculum

If you have ever taught the elementary level in a public school in South Korea, then you are probably familiar with the textbook characters Jinho, Nami, Mrs. Smith, Peter, Joon, and Ann.  Millions of South Korean children over the last decade have been learning English from this text book series and it is finally being changed this year to an updated version designed for three hours of English instruction a week instead of two hours a week.

The expressions, vocab, and 98% of all the grammar is acceptable.  The problem with these books was the production value and quality of the videos.  There were also some awkward cultural moments and just bizarre choices made for settings and situations.  The accompanying CD-ROM for the books looked like it was best designed to run on Windows 98, and here it is still being used in 2011.  It is not even worth mentioning the role plays, chants, or suggested games and activities, which were all mostly unusable.  The main dialogues were pretty good and had nice animation (see here and here), but all the live action scenes were worthless.

South Korea prides itself on how much of a priority they have on investment in education.  The teachers here are excellent, classrooms have no shortages of supplies, lots of useful technology available, new English classrooms and language learning facilities, etc.  The problem was that everything revolved around these horrible textbooks.  These books really should have been scrapped for something better the second after they were printed.

The videos below are the worst 10 dialogues (Look and Listen 2) of the 5th and 6th grade curriculums.  If you want to see the worst 10 songs/chants/role plays/ and story time activities then (click here).

#10 - Grade 6, Lesson 7, Movie 1 - "Your mom is a cook at Popeyes Fried Chicken?"

#9 Grade 5, Lesson 7, Movie 2 - "He has a long hair... and is an animated character."

#8 - Grade 6, Lesson 12, Movie 1 - "Uh-oh, dad just got possessed again."

#7 - Grade 6, Lesson 9, Movie 2 - "Whut dead cho doo dhear?"

#6 - Grade 5, Lesson 9, Movie 2 - "Joon, quit stuffing my socks in your trunks to make it look bigger."

#5 - Grade 6, Lesson 3, Movie 2 - "Peter likes Spring because helium canisters are 20% off at Home Plus."

#4 - Grade 6, Lesson 16, Movie 2 - "I can totally tell that you love me so much."

#3 - Grade 6, Lesson 4, Movie 2 - "YOU can't play the violin, and YOU just can't act."

#2 - Grade 6, Lesson 14, Movie 2 - "Don't take off your shoes, we wear our shoes in the shower and in bed."

#1 - Grade 5, Lesson 11, Movie 1 - "Oh yeah, gurl... that's right, keep polishing dady's shoes."