My English learning is still on going project even though Im working as an English teacher. Learning English means more than just learning a language to me.

It offers tremendous opportunities that I wouldnt have if I didnt learn English. The community and the surrounding I belong to are related to English.

Not only as a teacher but also as a learner, I feel myself more improved everyday as learning English.

I feel excited when I can laugh at same things with the things that English people laugh at.

I think that knowing how to learn English applies to learning something.

When I started to learn jazz piano, all I had to remember is to practice, enjoy, and get involved in it.

It is quite similar to learning English. I will keep practicing, enjoying and participating in learning English.

Ive never been forced to study English as I grow up, which is pretty rare situation in Korea.

English movies and soap operas are my English teacher at that time, and my dream was to go to New York which is often seen in the movies and soap operas. I loved to sing and listen to the song New York New York.

I just thought that English is cool because actors and actress in the movies were very handsome and pretty.

I got to study English literature at the university. Now I got to teach English.

I hope my students perception toward English becomes more positive.

They are studying English for specific purpose like school exam.

I am very sorry for that.

My aim is to make student enjoy, practice and get involved in English.

English as a lingua franca (ELF) - Australian English

This was when I was in my university year. I was invovled in one of the international student-run business club, and during that time I had to attend an international leadership conference because I was selected as the next VP for the organization.

During the conference, we had to stay at a hotel for 3 nights together with people all around the world; and I had to share my room with a girl from Australia. We got closer in no time and I still keep in contact with her :)

So, in one of the morning, my australian friend woke up earlier than me, and she took a shower and woke me up to do so. I got up and as I was heading to the bathroom, I felt like my friend was looking for something in the room. She was looking under the table, opening the closet, and flipping over the bed sheets.. So I asked her what she was trying to do.

She said that she lost something in the room, and she is trying to find it. she didn't say what she was looking for until I came out of the shower. When I came out of the shower, and we got all ready to go out for breakfast. she said she found the thing she lost.

Friend: Hey, I found it. It's under your bed. Could you pass my thongs? Just want to change it.

ME: HUH? pass you WHAT??

(As she was near by the door trying to open the door to leave the room, and I was putting my shoes on sitting on my bed, she asked me for a favor)

Although we got closer in short time, but I was quite offended that she asked ME to hand over her thongs... well, We were close but NOT TO THAT LEVEL  I thought that was rude of her...but as I didn't want to have a fight with that so i looked under my bed to pick her thongs... and realized she meant "flip flops"  

Later, we ended up finding out that we had different interpretation of the word "Thongs."

We both bursted out into laughters after realizing how "thongs" were interpreted differently in Australia and America/Canada.

This is my experience when I was in the United States for study. 

It was only the first year of my life in the States and I just started to meet new people and I did not want to hang out many Korean friends because I wanted to have as much exposure to English speaking context, not using Korean language. There was only one Korean friend and she had a lot of friends from other countries and she invited me to the international students' party which was held at someone's house. I was quite excited to go to the party which was my first time going to the house party in my life and I was also nervous at the same time to meet all those new people. 

When I arrived there, there are many people from around the world including Germany, Thailand, Vietnam, France, and so on. The Korean girl who invited me to come knew people from there, so she introduced me to some of them and I found myself that talking to people first and introduced myself. We were having a good time and we were enjoying very good food everyone brought. When we started getting tired and ready to leave at night. There was a boy who entered and he was a friend of the house owner. The house owner was a French guy who was in the exchange program at my school and his best friend from France came to visit him for vacation. I was first, surprised by his appearance because he was a very cute French guy and instantly I was also disappointed because he was with his girlfriend. It was a late night, so we could not say hi or anything and said goodbye and went home.

Next day, we went to this pizza place near our house and we bumped into the French friends in the restaurant. I was thrilled to see him  (not the girlfriend, though). We joined them and we started officially introduced ourselves and he introduced his name Conrad in French pronunciation which would be /Konghahd/ and I responded and asked it back as a confirmation check /Konard/?  As soon as I said it, they started laughing really hard and almost cried. I asked "Why? What's wrong?" I repeated his name a few times more because I could not pronounce as they do and they could not eat food anymore because they were laughing so hard. The friend of his could not tell me why at first, but then later they told me how I pronounced it makes his name totally different. He explained that the /Konard/ in French is almost the same as "******* "  or more serious cursing word in French. I was so embarrassed and my face turned red as soon as I heard it and I was so not confident his name again after because I called very cute French guy I liked an ******* or worse in our first meeting. I think I was obsessed with the pronunciation since then when I learn or speak a language although I realize that pronunciation is not the most important part of learning a language. It was just one name of mispronunciation in a casual setting, but it can be a crucial part of speaking a language when speech act comes to business in a formal context. 

About seven years ago, I worked as an accounts clerk in Australia so as to support myself financially through college. I loved this job as they took my school schedule into consideration and paid me quite well. I mostly had to respond to a range of customer inquiries, maintain spreadsheets and databases and everything. I had been kind of a busy bee. I always double checked when it came to spelling and numbers especially, but I was too busy even to take toilet breaks at the time. So I still remember what an absurd mistake I made.  

On one SUPER busy day, I got to speak with the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) several times on the phone. Now I do not remember exactly what I spoke to her about (since it has been ages), but we were dealing with some numbers as usual. Anyhow, she rang me back again for an ABN or something in one of my BUSIEST moments. The number she gave me was something like eight-six-oh-one-two-three (860123)..blah blah for instance. After we hung up the phone, I made several attempts at finding the right customer with the matching number but could not find any in our system, so I had to work after hours rummaging through all the filing cabinets like mad. It absolutely drove me crazy. It took me hours and hours and I got the right matched one in our system in the end. I was mistaken. I jotted down 865123 instead of 860123. I took the number "zero/oh" in Korean numbering system for number 5 which we pronounce as "oh".   

I felt relief to resolve and that no one knew that I made such a stupid mistake. 

Hello? This is Milan Hong, studying at the TESOL graduate school.

Language came into my life continuously. First language that I started to learn is English. I was about 8 years old than. The reason why I learned English, at that time there was somekind of English boom and I went to English institution to learn. I started from A,B,C alphabet. They gave me an English name and was taught with interesting activities with my age students.  

And then, I went to America because of father's work. I was about 8 years old back then. With a new environment and new techer and friends, I had to adjust to it. However, the biggest problem that I had was, English. I didn't know so much of English at all. It was really stressful to learn English with almost by force of the environment. I learned English for the survival. As I was introverted it was really hard to make friends, too. So, I mostly learned English by cartoon throuh television and book with tape. Also, I made a best friend and learned English through playing. Then, I started to communicated with other people and started to adust to the new environment. However, even though it was a little difficult to get used to the whole changed envionment with new language, I have to acknowledge that it was really affective to adapt new langauge.

However, this kinds of way is not so easy to do in the place which is not in English speaking country. If people really do not make an effort to set whole environment with that language's culture and be exposed to that langauge continuously it is really difficult.

Besides Korean and English, Japanese was another language I have studied. I used Japanese animation, drama, and movie material to use.

Also, I tried to learn different langauges such as Swedish, Chinese. Of course I can not speak fluently. I just hoped to learn these langauges and opened langauge book, but of course I am just a starter. The reason why I spoke that I wanted to try to learn these language was because I had people who spoke these lnguages and want to talk to them. for example, the reason why I wanted to learn Swedish was because when I was volunteering at the group who were Swedish and wanted to be part of the group.  

Overall, I believe that to learn L2, the motivation to learn language and also being exposed continually.

Mixing Languages.

I started learning English when I was 16 years old and during this period I had a lot of interesting stories and situations related to second language learning process, however, now I cannot remember any of them as it was a long time ago. Therefore, I decided to write about one case which happened a couple weeks ago here, in Korea. As the English language is a foreign language for me I need to practice it often in order not to lose it, therefore, sometimes when I have a time I am working on my English and practicing it with my friends. The story which I am going to write happened when I met with my friends, and it is related to my Korean language learning experience. I came to Korea 8 months ago, and recently I started to learn the Korean language. I am taking intensive classes of Korean language at Lingua Express Korean language program. As I have Korean learning classes almost every day I am really getting tired, and two weeks ago we decided to meet with my friends on weekend. Friends with whom I met are from different countries and in order to understand each other well we use English. When we met with my friends we talked about different things our studies, life in Korea and etc. During the conversation, one of my friends asked a question from me. Now I cannot remember what was the question about, but I know that I wanted to reply to my friends question by saying yes.  When I replied to my friend she was looking at me very strange and I again repeated my answer. But, my friend could not understand me then I paid attention to my own speech again, and I realized that I am saying meaningless words and sentences. I realized that I am mixing my English and Korean language and producing totally another, non-existing words. For instance, instead of saying yes I was saying nes which is a combination of the Korean word Ne () and the English word yes.  In case if you do not know what does it mean Korean word Ne (), it means yes.

I was really surprised when this situation happened to me, and I did not know that this would happen with my Korean and English language as they are totally different languages. I would not get surprised if I mix my Russian and English languages as they are somehow closer to each other than the Korean language. I do not know how this process is called in Linguistics maybe Code-switching or something else, but I should find a solution for this because, after that situation, which happened with me, I noticed that now I am facing this problem often.

I started to learn English since middle school age because it is a mandatory course in China. Besides that, I also want to be a good English learner, not just for the beautiful grades but more for myself, because I really enjoy listening to English songs and I want to figure out their meanings by myself instead of subtitles. However, brought up in a rural-like town, I hardly had chances to practice my spoken English and use English in real situations, let alone knowing how to find English resources from the Internet. My only English learning materials were textbooks and I didn't know the existence of Google at that time. Though, after a large quantity of reading exercise, I could perfectly choose the right answer "A", "B", "C" or "D" for my English reading comprehension exams from middle school to high school, I even didn't know more daily used words like "glue" and "scissor".

After the national college entrance exam, I came out of my hometown and went to university, located in Beijing, where I gained a chance to participate in an exchange student program at my third year. So I came to Seoul as an exchange student, where all my courses are taught in English. Here, in this kind of environment, I am exposed to and have to use English every day. Even though it is challenging to me, because sometimes I completely can't follow the professors in class, but compared with the difficulties I have to face, I look forward to improving my English more.

During a group activity in class, one of my group members said to me in hurry, " give me the glue and we need to finish the poster as soon as possible. We don't have much time left." I was totally at a loss but still grabbed whatever I thought might be the right thing on the desk and handed all the things to her. She took the glue, and the scissor was left in my hand. On my way to my dorm after that class, I guessed maybe she had not found that actually, I had no idea of what she was talking. Afterwards, she got the thing she needed. Upon arriving at my room, I immediately pulled my phone out of my pocket and searched some relevant vocabularies from an electronic dictionary app. It was at that time that I learned the words "glue" and "scissor". There were also some times that I learned new words, expressions, or phrases in this kind of embarrassing and interesting occasions. Even though I didn't know what they were talking, I could infer some information by their facial expressions, context and tunes. So interesting!

 Learning the English language is a happy thing for me, especially when it helps me embrace the world. In the past, I learned it in a boring and a little mechanical way; now I can learn it in a more natural and interesting way.

I am acknowledged that I shouldn't be writing this for a professor, but I thought that this was worth writing on this page. I am certainly not proud of this, but I started to swear after some weeks of playing Korean online games. Before that, I had considered swearing as something 'unnecessary' and 'consuming' that only 'causes harm'. However, after having some keyboard fights with anonymous people, I had learned how to defend myself. After some years passed and I was aware that I was expressing all of my positive and negative emotions by swearing. I figured out that this was a pretty serious matter and started to look for ways in which I can cut down on my Korean swearing. I don't know why, but the young version of me thought that swearing in English sounds less aggressive because most of the people are not aware of the actual meanings of the words... and they do not insult that person's parents! (Most of the insults that I used were things like damn, sh*t, or... something of the sort.) I started to swear in English instead of Korean until I accidentally slipped this 'weaker insult' in front of my high school teacher. He didn't say anything but made a short presentation on what the English swear words meant and why we should not use them in class. It was then when I became aware that I had underestimated the power of swearing in English. I think that I thought of English as something more 'intellect' and 'educational' as people around me were struggling to learn this language, making the swear words less offensive. Since then, I am fully aware that English is just a language, a tool that people use to communicate. It is powerful and special in some ways, but not in the way I believed it to be.

The other situation was also when I was in America. I had adapted to the school in six months so well that I was no longer ignored as a foreigner who is not able to speak English. I had been accepted to the advanced level classes and getting the top grades in class. Due to this, the school somehow thought that I could translate EVERYTHING for another boy from Korea. I even still remember his name: he was called Noah. He came to America to learn English, but he was not able to communicate in the language at all. Even though he came to school, he would be separated in a corner in class and I would have to be stuck with him, not being able to participate in the normal class. I would have to translate every sentence in our textbook for him, and I did not know why it was so stressful back then. I complained about this to my students, and they would say that the process was for my good. After a week of complaining, the teachers had to ask the music teacher to come and help him, who was also a Korean fluent in English. However, I am now aware that the teachers had required me something that I was not able to accomplish; understanding two languages is a very distant concept from translating between those two languages.

Speaking of this school experience, I remember having a hard time changing how I called the teachers. In Korea, it is rude to call teachers with either first names or last names. Therefore, most of the students call the teachers, 'teacher'. It was the opposite in America. The students were required to call teachers by Mr., Mrs., Ms., or even ma'am with their names. I thought that it was not of a big deal because the teachers kept laughing and tried to correct me into those address forms. However, my peers assured me later that this is something rude because it means that I had not put any effort to remember the instructors' names. I was shocked to hear this and started to address them as Ms. Alexandra and Mrs. Kristen. From the current perspective, it is a bit weird because they had required the students to call them with their first names; but this incident is still one of the shocking moments in my life due to the difference between the English that I learned in Korea and what I had experienced in the US.

Other than these experiences, I had a situation when I was embarrassed because I was not aware that what is called a 'Cola' in Korean in implied as a 'Coke' or 'Pepsi' in the western countries. The person who was taking orders at Wendy's froze for a moment, confused, to process what a 'Cola' would be. After some thinking, he then recognized that it would be the bubbling black liquid and took the order. It wasn't a long time before I learned that the Korean way of calling it is not the same in America.

I have some memorable stories related to Korean English and German, while living in Germany about a month.

The first episode was at a restaurant. I just arrived at Germany, so I was not ready to speak German yet. Thus, I ordered menu in English. In Europe, the student card discount system was so good that I showed my international student card, and I heard, "What kind of student cannot speak German?" From the very beginning, my fantasy of Europe was shattered.

Another episode I had at the restaurant was when I ordered at a restaurant with a friend. When my friends said that her menu was different in English, the owner just shouted in German, "You must have ordered it wrong." My friend speaks German better than me, so she spoke again in German.  At that time people around us helped change the menu.

Of course, I did not have only bad memories. As I passed by there was an old lady who had no prejudice asked me for directions. When I speak German on the bus with friends, the DB staff spoke slowly and ask us if we can do a survey. I remember ordering in German at an ice cream shop and getting another scoop.

It was time to see how big the connection between language and intimacy (or binding) was.

Before, I was afraid to take more than two English classes in one semester because I thought it takes more time for me to prepare for exams in English. However, this semester, I took three TESL major classes and it made me to be immersed in English mode more. Every monday and wednesday, I take applied linguistics classes and then take bilingualism classes. And every tuesday and thursday, I take American best sellers classes. So I came to use code switching more frequently and especially when I come back home after taking bilingualism class, using English expressions feels better for me. So I tend to speak in English to my mother during that night(after taking bilingualism class).

Sometimes, in other daily life,  I even forget some korean words. A few weeks ago, when I wanted to say 'spontanously' in Korean, I couldn't come up with the word. Also, in a Korean writing class, I couldn't come up with the word 'phrase' in Korean in a group discussion. So I just used the word 'phrase' instead of ''. Of course, other students who were majoring in other departments looked at me strangely. It was a pretty embarrasing experience for me although it was not my fault because Korean people usually don't say in that way.

But to be a balanced bilingual, code switching is unavoidable phenomenon and it can be a strength as a bilingual. Therefore, although I have to try to restrain myself from using code switching when I speak to Korean monolingual people, I will keep struggling to be a more balanced bilingual as a tesler by taking more than three English classes from next semester.

It was when I went to Australia and lived with Australians. For the first few days, when I showered for about 20 minutes, no one was said. But a landlord approach me and said that there are shower rules. He told me to keep the rule during showing within 5 minutes. He said it was because Australia was a water scarce country, so we needed to conserve water. This experience was revealed soon when washing dishes.

Here is the rule if you are in Australia Kitchen! When washing dishes, be sure to fill the sink with warm water and add detergent. Then, put all the plates you used for the meal at once and let them sit for about 5 minutes. After that, remove the plates one by one and wipe them with a dry cloth or take out the dishes soaked in detergent one by one and place them on the shelf and then wait until them dry.

Wow. It was such an amazing event.  So guess what? That was the reason why I would always wash the dishes again when no Australians were around house. It was a shocking experience. :0