Is it true that Koreans are bad at english?

Question

ate them from 1-100

Answer 1

My husband learned English at 22 (on his own) and is now completely fluent. It's better than mine.

Answer 2

Just as bad as Japanese are.

Answer 3

I taught ESL for 13 years. Of the Asian countries, Korea has some of the poorest speakers of English. They and many Thais tend to get together after school so they can relax and use their home languages. It is just the culture. (Partly because they tend to hold non-Korean cultures in low regard.) Some are excellent speakers nevertheless, of course. The very best English speaker I know of that came to America in college was a  Korean. Her English was so good people asked her if she was 2nd generation or not. But as a teacher, I had to make decisions on what to teach based on the students in my class. Among the generalizations I could make were, for instance, that Spanish speakers would need help with -y-. If the class was mostly Korean, there were many areas I would have to cover. Just the facts.

Answer 4

no. Koreans have better English than most other non-English speaking countries (excluding European countries that speak languages similar to English and share same Latin roots). Better than English speaking people speaking other languages definitely.  

Answer 5

no, that isn't true.

English speaking people can be bad at english.

just practice and you will get better.  

Answer 6

Why should anyone be obliged to speak perfect English in their own country?

I haven't had any problems in Korea even though I don't understand Korean.

BTW, come to Japan and speak about poor English. They *refuse* to talk in English.

Answer 7

Not all of them have bad English. It's just like everywhere. It depends on how long they've studied it and such.

Someone I kind of know in Korea said English is the easiest language to learn.

Answer 8

Well how am I supposed to rate them? They rate from Korean. I mean, it all depends on their level of knowledge. You can't just bunch them together like that. But for the most part, the average Korean is not all that good at English. They are obsessed with all this English learning, but they really fail at it in the end. Unless you are Korea-American, Australian, etc. Then it depends on how long they've worked at English.  

Answer 9

yes it true, 9 out of 10 korean don't speak english. Once i was in korea, shopping mall,trying to buy a cup of ice-cream for myself , i end up getting a family size. no one speak english in the flea mart ,end up i did not buy and things from korea.

Answer 10

most of them i know do speak rather bad english. but then, i shouldn't generalise because the ones i know are just a small part of the korean population. i don't know...i guess looking at the english standard of seoul national university( south korea's top university) may be more accurate. they're supposed to be the elite.  

Answer 11

Dont listen to Ankit Agarwal , I never heard of his type of business doing anything in korea. Just some troll to report.

As for the question, there are some who can speak good english and while others dont.

My co worker still speaks english as if shes at a 2nd grade level. She took a esl course for 2 months and paying $2000 a month while my cousin who went somewhere else is speaking english fluent right now and its only been a month. It depends on how hard you study.

Answer 12

because for them, its hard to pronouce it

im 100% korean (born in korea; came to us when i was 3) and lived in us for almost 13 years now and i speak english fluently

let me ask you this question then, is it true that americans are bad at pronoucing korean?

Answer 13

Gene H fails to mention that Spanish speakers actually use alphabet letters in their language while Koreans use Hangeul. Perhaps that may be an important factor in the level of learning English. Generalize that!

Plus, some Japanese people are worse in English.

I also think shaggy should re-read Princess Kushinada's response as well as other reasonable/good answers here. Stop whining and learn some Korean while you're in Korea!