Group Projects

Group projects are very popular forms of assessment at Korea University, well at least for the media
courses. All 3 of my media classes involved group projects which accounted for around a third of my overal grade.
It is a given since Korea, and Asia in general, has a very strong 'we' (Confucian) mentality where community, socialising and dependency on others are encouraged.

Initially I had very optimistic expectations of it since the students here didn't appear to be slackers, just purely last minute workers. But there were in fact some things that kind of irked me that I didn't take into account.

Language Barriers

Group Presentations. From top to bottom: CB&SC,
NM, M&SC

Being in a group of mostly Korean speakers encourages domestic students to use their mother tongue as opposed to English, thus making it difficult for the foreign student to take part.

This I can understand on personal levels since Korean students feel that their English aren't quite adequate, and frequently find it difficult to express themselves efficiently. I too prefer using English than Cantonese because my knowledge of the latter is lacking, furthermore I was taught Cantonese by my parents as opposed to in school, and I too find it difficult to express myself with the language.
You could argue that these Koreans were taught English at some point in school, thus making their knowledge in English exceed my knowledge on Cantonese, is enough reason for them to use English. Not quite so. The problem is that the way English is taught in Korea is quite limiting from what I've heard. Everything is textbook based, and they do not have the wonderful experience in conversing with a real English speaking person to further their confidence. The ability to practice and converse in English with a native speaker makes language learning more fruitful as one of the KUBA buddies explained to me. Even now at the age of 19+ they can still make logical mistakes.
This is why I let my Korean groupmates converse to each other in Korean, provided that they summarise what they discussed to each other back to me in English. Unfortunately most of the time these summarisations are quite vague, and obviously being able to understand the full conversation is a lot better, but we foreign students will have to make do.

A few of my friends who have learnt Korean before coming, therefore knowing a decent amount of Korean to actually discuss in Korean, have also expressed frustration when it came to group projects.
Despite knowing how to Korean,  unfortunately domestic students speak at speeds at which can be too fast for them to comprehend. Therefore, they spend most of their time at these group meetings trying to comprehend the conversation with very little time and chance to contribute. These friends too were in my Consumer Behaviour and Strategic Communication (CB&SC) class doing the Hite beer project.

Foreign Students Finish Up

Me at 10Page (cafe) with CB&SC group a few days
before our group presentation. Trying to get our presentation
done. Was here from 6.15pm till midnight.

Additionally, because domestic students know my friends are foreigners, who are likely to have better knowledge of the English language, they will push the final quality check workload onto them as well as doing the presentations.
This happened to me too, in which I was to check the group's English mistakes as well as be one of the presenters since the presentations were done in English. Me and my friends in the CB&SC class felt that this was unfair to the domestic students, it was as if we were there to just do the 'easy' finishing up stuff. Though arguably, we could not participate much in the main body of the work anyway since we had to carry out research on a Korean beer company (Hite), as well as conduct primary research with domestic students who could not English. It was difficult for us students since the research content was in Korean, and some of the research required knowledge that we foreign students had no idea about. However, for the final paper I was given the task to write 2 pages in total: the executive summary and conclusion.
Correcting English is in fact difficult. It may sound easy to correct the grammatical English mistakes of others seeing as English is your first language, but it is in fact like you're trying to decode nonsensical gibberish. The reason being is that the content that the domestic students have attempted to translate into English is like Engrish - just like the stuff you see on foreign Asian stationary, signs, and whatnot*. When I was handed the full copy of the project paper to check I spent hours trying to fix it. Numerous times I had to ask my teammates on Facebook to explain to me numerous passages in order to make it all coherent.
Luckily, I did not have this issue with my other group projects since the content we had to research was English based.

*All this time we may have been laughing at someone's attempt to translate to English when looking at Engrish text. Now I feel bad because I claimed that the passage on a Coffine Gurunaru cup holder was absolute gibberish, and proceeded to ask Busan guy if it actually made sense to him and he said "yes". Excuse me while I go burn myself.

Sitting in Silence

Silence is a common occurence during group meetings. It tends to occur more within smaller groups and/or when there are more girls than boys. I experienced this with 2 of my groups at times.
During my first meeting with my New Media (NM) group project team, we spent half of it sitting in silence whilst we tapped away on our laptops - I didn't since I didn't bring one. We were slowly discussing about what topic to cover, and when we hit a brick wall we just sat there in silence for a while. One team member eventually volunteered to search for ideas online whilst the rest of us just sat in silence. Eventually the other 2 members started turning to their phones/laptops to do God knows what on them.
Meanwhile in my Media and Social Change (M&SC) group, which consisted of 9 people, barely anyone spoke or productively participated at meetings. I found myself, a friend, and the one Korean guy who actually turns up to the meeting - our unofficial group leader, to be the only ones who really conversed during the meetings. The others were mere spectators, giving the occasional short input or aid in translation. There were even missing team members who never turned up to these meetings, who only 'spoke' once in our Facebook group when they posted their part of the essay.
The same friend in my M&SC group said that she too sat in silence for a majority of her group meeting. One of the group members informed them on the day of their meeting that he was heading to Busan and couldn't make it. Thus prompting one of the other members to explain to her that this is typical group project ocurrences in Korea.

Why Some Slack

The unofficial leader of my M&SC group told me because a majority of English taught classes aren't relatively marked, but instead based on grade boundaries. Korean students believe these classes are an easy pass, hence why they put minimal effort into their work. This then explains why so many team members were silent in our Facebook group, they're just there to quickly submit their half-assed work as opposed to participating in in-depth discussions to improve our paper. The don't feel the need to do their best. As long as they write a decent paper and participate at the minimum amount, it's ok. They can then focus on their other Korean taught classes in which are relatively harder.
This is understandable since I am told Korean classes tend to be difficult, and English taught classes are like a walk-in-the-park. Even so, this is a group project, people should at least make time for it and turn up to the meetings for even the shortest amount of time and try to participate. Even my other 2 project groups were very punctual at meetings. My CB&SC group also had members who were being buried under the pressure of managing multiple group projects, yet still they made the effort to communicate online and offline, as well as attend meetings outside of class.

The day I had to present to Hite for my
CB&SC class! We did okay! Didn't win,
but at least we got everything done on time!

Overall, I disliked doing group projects here more than England. Already, I am planning on avoiding taking classes that involve group projects in the Spring 2014 semester. It's frustrating because I really wanted the domestic students to actively participate in English, but at the same time I could understand why they were like this. At one point I was on the verge of a breakdown because everyone in my M&SC group submitted papers that all said the same thing. Assuming that our paper was supposed to be colloborative, like they normally should be. I started panicking and stressing over it for a good week or so, and ended up feeling depressed and emotionless with all this workload. I sent an email of concern to the professor and did not get a reply. It was when I actually emailed my finals' take home assignment along with a query that I got a reply that the papers didn't have to be colloborative. What sucked was that this professor did not provide a very defined and detailed group project outline.
On a positive note, I did realise that these group projects were in fact opportunities to speak with domestic students who were not part of the overly-open-minded and friendly KUBA members. I felt the closest with my CB&SC group, mainly because most of us went to have drinks after a meeting with the professor, thus giving us time to chill and chat with each other without having to think about work. In fact, the professor was the one who made this possible. Noticing our distance and awkwardness with each other at the meeting with her, she suggested for us to go eat or grab a drink together to chat and get closer. Over a bottle of imported beer, we became closer as we asked about each other's cultures and life experiences. I even found out 2 of my group members too were ex-Kpop fans and are now listeners of K-hiphop as well! This significantly improved our future meetings since we were able to joke with each other and make our meetings a bit more fun. Additionally, if I hadn't volunteered to present for my M&SC class, I would have never understood as to why certain domestic students behave the way they to do English taught classes.
This is why I'm tempted to be open to taking 1 or 2 classes this Spring that involves group projects. I want to be able to understand and talk to the Korean students more since I'm unable to learn much about the Korean media industry anyway. But the fear of last minute work, stress, and unresponsive teammates is holding me back. I guess all things come with a risk...