The Unexpected Perpetuation of Stereotypes

A funny work story I wrote a few months back.

It was Monday, and I had 3 hours without a scheduled class. I wasn’t allowed to leave, and I knew I couldn’t sit and write email, because apparently if a teacher clearly doesn’t have anything to do, they find something for you. I was fully prepared to sit in my classroom and pretend to do unnessesary lesson plans, but it wasn’t long before one of the admin came to get me - “Nicole? You need to do SLEP tests.” Shit. I had heard about these. Mainly, that they were tremedously boring.

SLEP (I have no idea what it stands for, maybe Students Lacking in English Proficiency) is a computer-based listening and reading comprehension test that is used to evaluate a student’s language level. Apparently my school got them from some other school, so I don’t know who wrote them. Before using them on the students, my school was having several of the English teachers proofread them for grammar issues. Which is good, right? Right. Nothing worse than having an English school give a test with grammar mistakes. So as boring as it was, I found plenty of things that needed fixing, and not all of it was grammar related.

You know how there are certain types of humor that DO NOT translate between cultures? Well, it was clear that who ever wrote this particular test knew that well. In fact, while it was a totally valid test with almost perfect grammar, I am totally convinced that it was written by two 20-something American or Canadian stoners who were disgruntled about the fact that they had to write the test, (most likely because it wasn’t in their contract). And since they had to do it, they decided to have some fun with it. But the beauty was that everything funny in it would most likely be totally over the heads of any Korean. Almost everything (more on that later).

One section was a map section that tested listening skills related to directions and place names. There was a simple neighborhood map with four cars. The students listen to short dialogues, and have to figure out which of the cars the people are in, based on what they are saying. The neighborhood on this particular map had a bank, an airport, a convenience store, a police station, a doughnut shop, a pawn shop across the street from a gun shop, a courthouse, a jail and a liscense plate factory. Um, a ghetto, perhaps? (Which, by they way, was a vocabulary word I had to explain last week. Seoul does not have anything close to ghettos, so it was tough.) Here are some samples of what the dialogues contained: “How much money do you think the pawn shop will give me for my wedding ring?” “Let’s stop at the doughnut shop after taking this prisoner to the jail.” “How can you be craving chocolate after eating all those microwave burritos at the convenience store?”

Will Korean students find that as funny as I did? I doubt it. But it is true that many Koreans think America is a very dangerous place to live, because our crime rate is astromonical compared to theirs. I have heard of students who honestly think that everyone in America carries a gun. (Was Bowling for Colombine released in Korea?) In fact, it is totally illegal for citizens here to have guns and knives. Even the cops don’t have guns, and Seoul is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Pretty amazing actually. I have never felt this safe in a foreign country before. This is the kind of city where if you drop money accidentally, someone will pick it up and give it back to you. (find crime rate stats) No wonder they think America is such a scary place. And it doesn’t help that most Koreans who move to the states go to DC, New Jersey or L.A. But I guess we can also thank the people who write these tests for perpetuating the stereotype. Who knew?

Ok, so speaking of stereotypes of Americans, here’s another one that found its way into the same test. There was a long dialogue listening comprehension section. It involved listening to a story/dialogue in small parts and answering questions about it. The particular story I heard was about two men named Toby and Bubba who are sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chips. They want to watch Geraldo Springer at 4, but decide to watch Lifeguards and Strongman Competition in the meantime. Then an informercial for a company called Trimco comes on. Trimco is selling a low calorie “food substitute” and a home-liposuction kit. This prompts Bubba and Toby to debate whether or not they are overweight. Of course, they both decide they are, although Toby prefers to think of himself as bigger boned than most people. And bear in mind that this dialogue is being read by native speakers in semi-monotone, over-enounciated, too-perfect English. Hysterical. Anyways, Bubba wants to order the kit, but Toby tries to talk him out of it. Bubba gets angry, accusing Toby of trying to prevent him from being happy. Then he accuses Toby of wanting to go home and secretly order the kit himself so he can lose weight first. Toby gets angry at Bubba and storms out.

And sure enough, both men call and separately order the food substitute and home-liposuction kit. During the course of the phone calls, we learn that the food substitute comes in various flavors: Chocolate, ham, and salt. It used to come in Mango, but customers were developing a rash so they discontinued that flavor. Bubba asks about the new “South of Border” flavors, and the rep tells him that they do have a new line of flavors for their Latin customers: Salsa Verde, Mestizo, and Chindala. During the dialogue, we also get to learn about what liposuction is (“a big needle that sucks fat out of your body”) and that some of the side effects are vomitting, fever and death. So not only do Americans pawn their wedding rings for guns, we’d also rather spend our money of fat sucking needles than excersice.

By this point, I am debating whether or not I want to enlighten my Korean boss to the crude humor that has been snuck into his tests. But how do you explain that to someone who struggles to speak English themselves? In the end I decide just to leave it alone, because my twisted sense of humor overrules the responsible teacher who hates the negative stereotypes we are stuck with. Plus, it may result in them requesting that I rewrite the test, which I’d honestly rather not do at this point.

But there was one section at the end that I could not let slip through. It was a reading comprehesion section where students read a short passage and answered questions. The particular story was about settlers traveling by wagon across the plains. Even though the Indians warned them not to keep going, they were convinced that they could make it before winter came. But they were wrong. The first paragraph of the selection describes how the family ran out of food and had to eat their pack animals. Then they boiled and ate everything made of leather. And then, one day, Pa went to the cemetary, and came back with....an arm. And there is an entire paragraph describing how the hungry settlers cooked and devoured the arm, ripping the meat from the bones, crying because it tasted so good. One of the comprehesion questions was “What do you think the settlers will most likely do the next day?” And the correct answer was “Go back to the cemetary to get more food.”

I am totally serious about this. My school is one of the most respected and expensive Hogwans in Seoul. We have children of some very high profile people, including judges, doctors and lawyers. The Korean staff speaks very good English, but whoever was setting these tests up neglected to catch the passage about graphic cannabalism. Well, I guess that’s why they have us proofread them, right? Or perhaps they didn't there was anything wrong with it. But I can’t help but wonder about the school where the tests were borrowed from. Is there a Hogwan out there where students are reading this, and wondering what the hell is wrong with Americans? And whoever wrote the test is probably still laughing about it.

So nevertheless, I pointed this passage out to my boss, and it is being removed from the test immediately. So while I did not work to end the stereotypes of Americans as gun-totting lard asses, at least you can thank me for every Korean that does not think that we Americans are savage cannables.