More on classes at Yonsei - the bad!

So what's negative?

• The classes are stressful!! I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. There is no relaxing. The teachers speak very fast and the brain spends 4 hours desperately trying to understand everything and keep up. Am I learning more than if they slowed down a bit and made it easier? Does the tension get in the way of learning or stimulate it?

• The high-stakes exams! The teachers are with us 4 hours a day 5 days a week and know our level very well- but they are not allowed to evaluate us. No. The TEST will decide that. Next week we have our midterm - 2 days of separate tests for listening, speaking, reading comprehension, reading aloud, and writing. At the end of the course we go through the same thing with the finals. Those scores determine 80% of our grade and whether or not we pass. What if I get a mental block from nervousness, or there's some freaky vocabulary that makes me misunderstand a whole reading or listening passage, or ... I feel the same way our writing students at SJCC feel when facing board-graded exams - IT'S NOT FAIR!

• For a teacher, this has got to be deadly boring. (On the other hand, teachers are relieved of the stress of having to grade the students, and they have almost no preparation to do other than correct the daily homework.)

Of course, there are other little negatives. We had to memorize long lists of Korean food dishes - more than we really needed to learn how to order food in a restaurant. We never have group work or much chance to practice together in class (though we do try to practice when we're together after class). But these things are minor. The material seems to be well-sequenced, and there's no doubt we are learning a lot. Actually, all the negatives have a plus side. The relentlessness of the class sessions and the midterm exams make us study even more. We are forced to do the work of learning. Our brains feel like they will explode. At the end of every class is the same refrain - my head hurts! Yesterday one student asked: "Can we review this material next week?" The teacher just said, "Sorry, no time!" The schedule is set; we have to finish a chapter a day. We even have a new lesson to learn the day before the midterms start.

But - I guess this is how they get students ready for Korean university in a year and a half - for those students who can survive!

I do wonder - as I wondered and hoped when I started this - if there isn't a less painful way to acquire a second language at an older age. Is all this needed to force the older brain to accept new sounds and structures and learn new words?

It does help tremendously that I am in Korea and can practice on real people! More on that later.

Thank goodness I didn't stay in Level 2.