I have been learning English since I was 12 as Korean age. Although I kept learning foreign language only in Korea until I become 22 to go to New Zealand as an exchange student for one semester, I tried to have an opportunity to practice English as much as possible. Thanks to my mother who knew my characteristic which have difficulty enduring boring things, I didnt have to go to the academy where pours grammar knowledge, vocabulary, and many questions. I believe that fact is one of the reasons that I could enjoy learning second language, not be annoyed or stressed from that. I am basically very outgoing compared to other usual Asians, so I wasnt worried about the situation when I have to talk in English in front of others despite mistakes or errors that I make. I could enjoy myself learning something new language and cultural things through it because I was a girl who fell in love with Hollywood movies, dramas or Pop-singers. I tried to talk like the characters in the scene, memorizing the lines and using the tone of them. However, entering SMU and taking the courses with Natives in the same class was almost shock to me at first. Although I took a course in English before, it was only for language and it was targeted to all Koreans who wanted to learn only language. When I started taking TESOL, my group could be called special, compared to other groups. There were only two course takers including me, who were not natives or didnt have childhood and school life in English spoken country. The professors who were all Natives thought that the level of language that my group had was so advanced, and they targeted the lecture to that level. I was so stressed out to catch up the lecture at the beginning of the class. It wasnt only speed of the lecture or jokes which were difficult to understand without cultural background that made me be stressed out. My group consisted of people who were so familiar to Western culture, even the attitude during the class. Although I was an outgoing Asian student, I was still the one who waited my professor to call my name and ask something. It wasnt easy to see my classmates interrupt professor or teacher during the class as I spent my school life here in Korea. Maybe the most impressive moment was when most of classmates raised their hands to speak something even before the professor finished explanation. Its said that Asian ask something when they finish clearing up the idea and questions, but it seemed that my classmates, even Koreans who spent their school lives in foreign country, started think something as they started asking questions. There were so many students who wanted to talk about their ideas about theories, methodologies, very few students who didnt speak before they were asked to, didnt have a lot of chance to speak up their opinions. It wasnt easy to raise hands before I asked to say something, not because I was naïve or shy student, but because that culture to speak up their idea whenever they wanted to do during the class was not familiar to me. As I started talking during the class, I didnt have to feel some kinds of pressure and awkward feeling during the discussion in the class. What I found out through this experience is that its important to let students have the attitude and cultural thing in every aspect of foreign language to accept the language and internalize it as their own. To know the language itself like pronunciation, words, sentences and relationship between them is never enough the language and culture that it entails. It doesnt mean that students who want to learn foreign language change their idea and basic attitude to gear them to target culture, but it would be much better if they can switch the mode for their native culture and foreign culture according to the setting.

I've been an English learner for quite a time, so there should be some good stories about my own experiences as a language learner. However, I found it difficult to pull out even a single story out of my head when I tried to do so. That is probably because I remember my overall emotion associated with English learning, but not specific events. I used to be a struggling learner when it comes to English, speaking in particular. When I was studying abroad in the U.S., I was a shy, timid student who usually resorted to silence rather than took a risk to lose face. For this reason, if I tell you my own stories about language learning, they'd sound quite sad as a whole. However, there is one particular story which I think is cute and funny. Well, here it goes.

I had a college friend named Kristan. She and I used to play the piano together in our music ensemble class. One day, we went out to a birthday party of a friend who both of us knew. Her house was located in a remoted area (in the countryside) of the western part of Illinois. We enjoyed the party, and it was time to leave for home. Since Kristan and I lived in the dorms on the same campus, we decided to pool a car together. I was driving, and boy it was really dark out in the countryside. Literally there was no sound, no light. I was driving, but I wasn't sure if I was going in the right direction. I felt the vibe that Kristan got really scared- she is four years younger than me). I wanted to do something to calm her down. I told her, "Kristan, look at the sky!" I was looking at the sky where so many stars were twinkling in the complete darkness. However, Kristan startled and whisper to me, "Jieun, where is this guy? I wanna get the hell outta here!" She thought I said, "Look at this guy" not "Look at the sky."   

 

 

In 2002, I spent some time in Germany (and a week in Austria) studying the language and trying to improve my German speaking ability.  To that end, I lived with host families during my time in Germany.  During my time with each host family, there were numerous occasions where I had unfortunate gaffs in terms of making mistakes in spoken German which led to a bit of embarrassment and shame on my part.  I will share two such experiences here.

Angry Host Mother In Bayreuth

I was in Bayreuth I had an old host mother who made it her mission to feed me 10,000 calories a day and most of them came from sweets and sausage.  I had to play football in four months time so I found myself having to turn down the food she was offering me quite often.  I would say Ich habe genug gehabt.  After a while, I found my host mother was annoyed at me.  I consulted my professor and he told me I was telling her that I was fed up with her and her offerings.  Had I learned speech acts which politely refuse offerings in my target language, I would not have offended die alte Frau.  

Confused Family in Salzburg

Salzburg is a famous city in Austria known for being the birth place of Mozart.  My host family took me to see the place where he was born.  My host mother asked me, "Hast du die Musik Mozarts gern?" which basically means "Do you like Mozart's music?"  I replied with, "Ja, ich gefalle Mozarts Musik."  I meant to say that "I like Mozart's music."  What I actually said was more along the lines of "I am pleasing and liked by Mozart's music."  It made no sense.  Had I said "Die Musik Mozarts gefaellt mir," I would have been fine.  The verb 'gefallen' requires the thing liked to be the subject while the agent doing the liking is in the predicate as a kind of indirect object taking the dative case.

I hope you enjoy these examples!!!

Seo Seonghee (1054049) My Experience as a Language Learner When I first began to learn English in middle school, I was fascinated by this new language: it felt like a piece of music with intonations and stresses. I like the language so much that I listened to the audio tape again and again. I liked to hear myself producing English utterances. I decided to memorize the whole contents in the textbook. I began by chunking sentences into smaller units and learned them by heart. Since I like the phonological aspects of the language, I always practiced the chunks loudly so I can hear my own pronunciations. My father was happy about my self-motivation and would listen to me memorizing pages of sentences every night, which motivated me further. Following my teachers teaching method, I usually studied grammar and vocabulary first. I made sure that I knew all the syntactic rules and patterns with necessary lexicons of a sentence before I memorized them. It was a quite successful and effective way and I could produce highly accurate sentences. Fluency in term of speed was good, too. I always got good grades. However, my sentences were far from being native-like and I did not feel it safe to produce an expression which was not in my textbook. I stuck to this method after I proceeded to high school. It was harder to memorize the textbook, since the amount of vocabulary and sentences were much larger. I spent more time on English, especially grammar and vocabulary. I studied very intensely compared to my friends: it did not feel right to read further when I did not understand every detail of a sentence. My grammar knowledge and reading comprehension improved significantly in high school, but I felt the need to improve my vocabulary and listening skills. I entered a university and I was shocked one day when I met my English conversation class professor in the street. He said Hi. but I could not respond to his greeting. I was frustrated, since I had always had confident in my English. As I study in TESOL, I now understand what I lacked at that time. I did not have chances to interact or produce language in English. I did not learn enough lexical items, or vocabulary for fluent, native-like, natural speeches. My learning strategies were not very effective in that I only focused on intensive reading but did not read extensively.

Anonymous wrote:

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My Experience as a English Learner

 

     While in college, I had a chance to go to Australia for language training for two weeks. I was not fully happy because of my poor English. I was nervous and afraid of every moment, and moreover, summer of Australia was so hot that it was hard to bear than I had thought.

     Then one day, I decided to buy a hat, barely able to stand the heat. I chose a 21 dollar hat at one store and paid 30 dollars. Although I definitely paid for the hat, the shopkeeper kept asking me the question, "Do you have a dollar?"

     I couldn't understand the situation that he was asking me for a dollar. The shopkeeper noticed that I was embarrassed and asked me in Korean as she was frustrated, "Are you Korean?" In a fluster, I answered, "Yes, I am." She spoke in Korean again, "Please give me one dollar if you have. Isn't it better not to make change for both of us?" It was such an easy thing to understand listening in Korean.

     I still burned with shame recalling the situation I didn't immediately understand that the meaning of 'a' was 'one' and I was embarrassed with a puzzled look. After that, I try to listen relaxed and struggle to get rid of fear of English. And I am still working on it.

---

 

My pursuit for higher education is inspired foremost by the story of my two children. I have a bilingual daughter, Hailey, who is nine years old, and my son Payden is seven. They were both born in America, and we moved to Korea when Hailey was two and a half and Payden only four months old.

At present they go to a regular Korean elementary school. Their dominant language is Korean. I want to share the story of how they acquired two languages and have been able to maintain proficiency in both throughout their childhood to date.

When Hailey was in America for the first two and a half years of her life, she was a balanced bilingual. I usually spoke Korean to her at home and English in public. Her father also spoke English to her, though I was the parent she was around more often. Hailey was exposed to both languages on a regular basis from infancy. While one might think that a young bilingual childs speaking ability in either language would linger behind that of their monolingual peers this was not the case with my daughter. Her language aptitude was beyond her friends in both Korean and English, and that made me and my husband proud parents.

The story changed when we came back to Korea. Hailey entered a Korean preschool and we lived with my parents who could not speak English. Therefore our home language became Korean. Whenever my parents were around, we used Korean, even my American husband. As a result, my daughter gradually stopped using English altogether.

When Hailey was five and Payden two and a half, they went back to America for three months with their father. They attended an American preschool while there. When they returned to Korea, I was shocked. Their English proficiency was remarkable! Their dominant language had become English. Payden forgot how to speak Korean and had a difficult time in Korean preschool initially. It took him about a month to readjust and be able to use Korean regularly once more. My daughter, on the other hand, two and a half years older, was speaking Korean naturally again within a week!

I was surprised by how quickly my preschool-age son had absorbed English. Since Payden was only four months old when he first left America, this trip was his first full exposure to the language. After they returned from America, my husband and I tried to make English the primary language spoken in our home to maintain their bilinguality while in Korea. They visit America at least once a year, and thanks to our concerted effort and investment they are able to maintain their bilinguality.

Last winter we took our children to America and enrolled them in a public elementary school. They were in school there for three months. Hailey was in the third grade and my son was in the first grade. When they came back this time I was surprised particularly by the development of my daughters English writing skills. She was originally a good writer in Korean, and I think her aptitude for writing might have carried over into English as well. Her cognitive skills have developed sufficiently to allow her to write exceptionally well in both languages, and her case has made me reconsider age factors on learning a foreign language.

As for Payden, now eight, he is able to switch from Korean to English and back effortlessly in speech in accordance with which language other speaker(s) are using with him. He is also still comfortable using English in the presence of his Korean peers, unlike his sister who may now be at the age where social and cultural factors may have rendered her more reticent to do the same.

Back in grade 6 I learned that you can't just translate slang for it to make sense. It was a rainy day so recess at lunch. I was bored and started trying to translate some dirty words into French. Well, one of the girls in class wanted to tease me and stole the paper. A chase ensued and by chance the French teacher came by and caught us, confiscated the paper and then did an epic takedown on the pathetic translations. Getting humiliated like that was worse than being punished. Never did it again!

Two stories of L2 missteps.

In Japan...
I was chatting to a Japanese friend of mine when one of her female friends approached us. They were talking for a minute or so, the friend occasionally shooting me glances. In Japan, there is an assumption that no foreigners speak Japanese, so usually I had to make the first conversational move and offer something in Japanese.

The friend was probably in her 30s but was wearing very trendy clothes, so I thought I'd open with that. In Japanese, I said 'hello'. In my mind, I constructed "you look young" in the Japanese I had available and, feeling the silence after my greeting getting longer I blurted it out, unchecked. Both of them looked at me for a long moment, me just grinning, waiting for the usual 'ohhhh Japanese!' reaction. They went back to their conversation, freezing me out.

Later, I reconstructed what I'd said and realised "you look young" had actually come out as "you look like an infant". First impressions...

In Korea...

I was out with a small group of foreign friends and my Korean wife. One of her friends joined us who didn't speak English. Wanting to be friendly and inclusive, I asked in Korean "what's your name?"and, being British, I was in super soft 'polite tone' mode. The friend looked a bit taken aback but answered.

I asked my wife later why the friend had reacted so strangely and was told "when you do that tone and ask that question you sound like a really camp serial killer".

Just shows, some things don't transfer well between languages.

My sister's sleep talking - Bom E Kim 

It happened when my family immigrated to the Philippines. My sister and I were spending whole day learning English to take the entrance exam in the elementary school in the Philippines. We were given three months to study English and prepare for us to enroll  the school. We studied really hard because the result of entrance exam affected the level of education we had to enroll. Since we spend almost whole day for 3 months speaking, reading, and listening in English, we were sick and tired of learning English. One day, my sister and I were studying as usual, and my sister fell a sleep. I kept reading the storybook and memorizing vocabulary words beside my sister who were sleeping. Suddenly, my sister spoke English to me saying something. (I don't exactly remember what she said) It was sleep talking in English. Nowadays, we still talk about that moment and make fun of my sister. I guess sometimes even if we are sick and tired of something, it keeps bothering us in reality and in dreams.

 

Post Info	TOPIC: Learning Korean The Early Days
William du Plessis

Learning Korean The Early Days - William du Plessis	Reply Quote  More
Lesson 1 I remember some of my first experiences of learning Korean.  Thinking back now, it kinda makes me want to start doing it more seriously again.  The first time I made some effort was before I left Cape Town for Incheon the first time.  I wanted to be able to say Hi, my name is William. Its nice to meet you, when I met the staff at my first school in rural Korea.  I remember looking it up online in South Africa and practicing it over and over again on the Korean Air flight.  I really thought I had nailed it, so I went on to play a Korean language learning game for the rest of the journey.  I completed all the stages, and felt pretty confident.  The morning after arriving in Hyeonri, Gapyeong-gun, I remember so clearly standing up in front of all the Jojong Middle School personnel and saying something that I thought was close enough to what I had intended.  There was an awkward silence that lasted about 30 seconds (it felt like an eternity) until the vice-principal stepped in and said: Ohwelcome to you too This is William, and he switched to Korean.  It was a very painful lesson in language learning, but after that I made sure I was able to get at least the pronunciation right before I said something in Korean. Lesson 2 The next very urgent need I had was to be able to keep 30-35 country-side middle school students quiet for long enough to get a sentence out.  I asked my friend to teach me how to say Be quiet, please. I tried to memorize the very simple phrase for this over and over again, but to no avail.  I guess memorizing more than three syllables at a time in the first month was too much of an ask for me.  In frustration, she eventually decided that she will help me fix this by teaching me a two-syllable equivalent for telling students to keep quiet.  The unfortunate phrase she chose to teach me was takcho (I dont want to use thewriting of this word at the risk of it being too offensive).  Anyway, I asked my then co-teacher (who was a Korea University graduate also in her first year of teaching) what this meant and how you say it.  After a split-second long pause, and with an absolute poker-face, she told me it meant Shut up.  For me this didnt sound quite as bad as all that and I thought that I could risk using it if one of my classes got really noisy.  Sadly, I used it once which had the result of immediate shock and silence.  In my naïve way at the time, I thought: Wow! That worked well.  Fortunately for me though, a senior member of the teaching staff had walked past the classroom at the time and heard what I said.  He was a kind gentleman who had spent some time in Texas as an engineer before returning to Korea to teach.  He told me that the word in fact meant, Shut the f*** up, and that it would probably be best if I didnt use it again.  Lesson two make sure you get the connotative meaning of any short phrase in Korean before using it. Lesson 3   The third lesson I had learned in the early days in Korea while learning the language was taught me by a Canadian friend who had been teaching here for about 10 years at the time.  He decided it was time for me to learn the Korean alphabet.  So, on a two-hour bus journey from Hyeonri to Seoul, I got the gist of the 24-character alphabet.  On the way back, I had it set.  I found myself constantly reading out the sounds wherever I saw it.  It felt like in no time at all I had gotten it.  This, of course filled me with a sense of over-confidence.  I thought would be just as easy to pick up.  Buy, was I in for a surprise!  Lesson 3 Spoken Korean is at least as difficult to learn as the learning the alphabet is easy.

Be a Future! - Minsu Cho

 

As other Korean 30s, I started to learn my first ABC when i was 13. When I recalled my English teachers, they were very terrible teachers who didn't encourage to study or have fun and  how it could change our life. I guess i took English as one of the subject at school, but it was the mean to contact with the world.

When I look at the young children in Korea, they are so lucky to start their learning English at their early age.

They can play and talk with their native teachers through learning lots of topics and subjects such as social study, science, and so on. In addition, they are singing world pop songs and watching the fun and educational video chlip thorough the media.

In other words, they are growing up with encounting the world. They dream very big and we can expect them to be a world leader as an adult.

I am so jealous for them^^and i can't wait to see them a world leader in the future~

At the souvenir store in Vancouver - Kang Yihwa	Reply Quote  More
It happened when I was taking a short course in Vancouver about five years ago. It happened the first week in Vancouver. I was in a happy mood because of exotice atmospheres, especially, I loved UBC. One day of the first week, after taking a class in one of builing in UBC, my friend and I dropped by one of souvenir store. We just looked around the stuffs. When we were looking around the stuffs, one guy came toward me and just said "Close!" I knew what he said but I could not understand what the 'close' mean so I just ignored and walk around the store again. In a few minutes, the guy came to me again and said "Close!" again. I was embarrassed but I still did not know what he meant so I just looked myself and found my opened bag. I thought maybe "Close!" maybe related to my bag so I zipped my bag. Finally, the guy walked to me and furiously said again "Close!" pointing the door. At that moment, I understood what the "Close" meant. It was time to close the store. I was really embarrased the fact that I could not understand the simple word "close". Actually, it was only around five p.m. so I could not think the store would be closed that time. It makes no sense closing a store at five p.m. in Korea. Anyway, I left the store in a hurry and went home. On the way back to my home stay house, I thought just saying with simple word could make people more confused.

YoungAh's two stories

#1. They were not candies!

 

When I attended an English language program in Vancouver, Canada, I watched Vancouver Pride Parade with some Korean female friends. We called it gay parade. We were excited about new experience. Even though some naked people made us surprised or shocked, we enjoyed the parade by talking and taking pictures with them. We liked Canadians positive views of homosexuality.

 

In the middle of the parade, we saw a man (or a woman because he/she was a full-breasted guy) handing out candies. The colors of candy wrappers were various, so we guessed some fruity flavors from the wrappers. Although many people refused to get the candies, we reached out our hands to get some. The guy (or the woman) came to us with a smile and gave us some candies.

 

However, we were surprised and ashamed after knowing what the candies were. They were not candies but condoms! Actually, some of the parades messages were a healthy sex life and AIDS prevention. We were so embarrassed that we left the spot.

 

#2. Language changes

 

Before going to Canada, I used to watch American dramas to study English. One of my favorite American dramas is <Boston Legal>. One of the English expressions that I learned from the drama was hunky dory. I thought it was a fun expression like okey dokey. However, my friends, English native speakers, told me that they didnt use it any more.

 

Since then, I had had some similar experiences. For example, when I was in high school, I learned the expression Its raining cats and dogs. However, when I used it in Canada, one of my native friends laughed and told me Ive heard that my grandma said it a long time ago. And Ive never heard the expression since then.

 

After coming back to Korea, I taught English to middle school students at a private institute, and I found the expression Its raining cats and dogs on the middle school English textbooks. In addition to the school textbooks, many English books in Korean book stores still teach the expression. How many English expressions that are not used any more do Korean students learn???

 

Forgotten Language - Soo Kim

Just a quick background on myself. I am Korean. And that's how I identify myself. However, this was not the case back in America. I was born in a small city in GyeongsangBuk-Do called Andong. For those that know, this is considered a small city smack dab in the middle of a very rural area. A VERY rural area. The city of tradition and masks. I grew up there in a small one-room house with no bathroom. I think it's safe to say that my first language, my first culture, and my entire life at the time was purely and utterly Korean.

When I was four years old, my parents and I immigrated to America. We arrived in New York to start a new life and to me, it was amazing. We had a sink. A sink with a faucet. A bathtub with a faucet AND a showerhead. One of those baths that could turn into a swimming pool for all four-year old mini-humans!!! I lived this amazing life for several year, oblivious to the new culture and language around me. Even when I began preschool and eventually entered elementary school, I was around other immigrant children who were all in this non-English, gibberish, all languages-mashed-up, all-cultures-are-cool world. Oh, the teachers spoke English of course, but they were different from us and their English was cute. This was our world, full of gibberish imaginative play where we were mutant ninja turtles, Sonic the hedgehogs, and planeteers. Up until then, I learned English but my Korean was somewhat in tact.

Then came the bomb.

My parents transferred me to a small, suburban, Catholic school, where I was the only non-white student. To them, I was an alien and I didn't understand why until one day, I was asked if I was Catholic. YES, I AM! Of course I am? If everyone else in this school was Catholic, I must be too, right? I mean I spoke English. They spoke English. Sure, they didn't speak Korean but not everyone in this place does... They, at least, spoke other languages, right? There were kids whose families were Italian and Polish and Irish and my family was Korean. That day, I went home and asked my parents in stuttered Korean what religion we were. They said something in Korean and I was sure they must have meant Catholic. I brought them a Korean-English dictionary and demanded they confirm our Catholicism. Instead, the word I saw in this blasphemous dictionary was "Buddhism". BUDDHISM. Appalled, disappointed, terrified, betrayed. The truth had finally hit me. We were different. We were outsiders. Then a slew of truths hit me. No one else took their shoes off inside the house. No one else ate rice at every meal. No one used chopsticks. No one even liked curry with rice!! Curry with rice isn't even KOREAN!!!! Even worse, I realized they all were slowly shunning me because I looked different and I acted different and my English was slightly accented. Utter culture shock. And from then on, I went on a mission to be as non-Korean as I could and to assimilate. I made a clear and definite choice to be the same as those few thirteen students in my class.

I forgot Korean. 

For years and years, I only spoke and thought and wrote in English. To the point, where I claimed that I was a pure red-white-and-blue American. Being Korean became a thing of shame to me. My Korean language and culture was lost to me. I even spoke English to my parents and when they spoke Korean to me, it infuriated me. That's the ugly side to assimilation.

As I got older, and I met other people whose parents were immigrants, I started feeling a loss and longing for my own language and culture. To know who I was meant to know where I came from.

I left for Korea about four years ago. I quit my job, said goodbye to my friends and family, and made a decision to move to Korea on my own. Even if I hated it, it would be a learning process and I was open to all of the experiences and emotions it would bring me. Good or bad, it was all necessary. I was open.

Amazing thing is... I'm great at Korean. I'm more than just making-by. I'm conversing, joking, shopping, experiencing, and having a blast in Korean. This language and culture I shunned and forgot, came back and accepted me and loved me wholeheartedly.

Basically, this was my long-winded way of saying... I forgot how to speak Korean, I forgot how to be Korean, I betrayed my culture, heritage, and history... and coming to Korea, opened up some hidden vault in me that was absolutely and to the core full of Korean.

Language is about acceptance to the culture. It's all tied together. Allow your students to feel that English has a legitimate place in their identities. Allow them in and don't make them feel like outsiders, otherwise their relationship with English will be negative. Language should become a part of them, not apart from them (lol).

That's all :] the end!