How to Learn Korean

How to learn Korean? I wish I knew. I teach students how to learn English as a second language, but I am not at all sure I can apply what I teach to learning Korean myself. So for now I turn to a different expert .

Kato Lomb supposedly was proficient in 17 different languages. She began learning languages as an adult and took up her last language, Hebrew, at age 86. Wow - she even impressed Stephen Krashen, who was inspired by her to take up a new language at age 54. How did SHE do it? The main thing - she taught herself! The drive, the methodology, the persistence, came from her own invention. So that's the main thing I picked up:

• It's not really HOW, it's the inner drive to learn, to question, to figure out, to try, to communicate that makes language learning successful.

I also picked up this:

• Lomb is supremely confident. She KNOWS she can learn. She isn't daunted by the difficulties. So CONFIDENCE really helps.
• Lomb suggests jumping into hard stuff right off the bat. Start reading a book even if you can't understand much of it. If you take a class, try to get into a class more advanced than the one you placed into. Start with a full, thick (even monolingual!) dictionary. Then actively try to figure out what is going on; make your own discoveries about how the language works.

For most of us, this goes against the grain. We want to start at the beginning, go step by step. We want "comprehensible input." We are overwhelmed and frustrated when the material is too hard. But perhaps for the student with enough MOTIVATION and CONFIDENCE, this is a shortcut to faster learning. It worked for Lomb. (Should we give our ESL students who want to take a higher class than they placed into a chance to do this too?)

For me, I do not yet seem to have sufficient motivation and confidence to make this work in learning Korean. But perhaps when I get there...

Colleague Scott Alkire is the one who managed to get this book translated and published in the US, and he wrote a wonderful preface to the book comparing Lomb's experiences to modern Second Language Acquisition theory. The book is available online at TESL-EJ.

What a Sendoff!!!

July 25 - Friends from San Jose City College provided an amazing send-off with banners, balloons, BBQ ribs, chicken, wine, beer, cakes, pies, brownies, candles, flowers, Paul Anka, Stardust, Irish jigs, Korean books, presents, hugs, laughs, talk, comraderie, good will, deep friendship...and more and more! My heart is full and I can only feel deep gratitude and love for such a level of generosity. I loved the party!! I can't wait for Korea - and I can't wait to come back! Thank you!!

A link to pictures will hopefully be added soon.

Takeoff

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Asiana Airlines   12hr 10min |  5639 miles

So there it is - scheduled takeoff and arrival in Korea.  

The Korean Consulate

Well, I managed to get... a 3-month student visa.    So I will have to get it renewed in Korea.  But that's fine - it will give me an activity to do!  Here's the Korean Consulate in San Francisco - a lovely spot atop a hill on Clay Street overlooking the bay.  They were not encouraging, though, about my plan to study AND teach.  If I study - no, no, I cannot teach.  If I get a teaching contract, I can get a teaching visa - but then, no, no, I cannot study.   So, I will begin by being a temporary student, and see what happens after that.

Korean Language Institute at Yonsei University

My Korean course will be at Yonsei University.  Here are some pictures of the university campus  - pretty, huh?  

This building, I believe, houses the Korean Language Institute where I will be studying:

Here's a winter view!

 

 

The Korean Language Institute is located right next to the one circled on the campus map, at the far back end of the large Yonsei campus.   

Hard to imagine this is located in downtown Seoul - but so it would seem to be.  Click here, then click on Yonsei University and zoom in to see where in Seoul this place is.   The satellite view is particularly fun.

This last picture, called "Yonsei University Street,"  apparently depicts the area around the campus.  There are actually 4 or 5 universities all in this general area, so there are supposed to be lots of restaurants and bars and dance clubs and norebangs (Korean karaoke) etc. - should be interesting!

So that's the place.

 

Learning with Korean Dramas

When I lived in Guatemala, I used to watch the Spanish -language soap operas.  They were great and really helped my Spanish.  So now I watch Korean "dramas" as they are called.  This was my first drama - The Emperor of the Sea - a 51-episode drama about a famous merchant whose influence supposedly brought prosperity and justice to the Shilla Kingdom in Southern Korea around 800 AD.  Only about 6 things ever happen in this drama (characters peer out to sea on a boat, or they sneak around with swords and slaughter all their enemies in a sword fight, or they sit around a table and talk, or they hide and then peer around to look at the person they love with longing eyes, or they hide and eavesdrop on their enemies, or they ride around on horses.)   Still, the scenes and costumes and manners and sound of the language seemed beautiful to me, and the cultural messages gave me pause.  Here for example are two:

• In these dramas, when characters (at least the "good" ones) review their life, they tend to ask, "Did I serve enough?  Did I help my friend (family, country etc.) enough?  Was my life used well enough to protect what I value?"   Americans, it seems to me, tend rather to look back and ask,"Did I live life fully enough?  Did I dance, love, risk, etc. enough?"  Our focus tends to be more self-centered, more on whether we grabbed enough for ourselves.  (Am I right on that?)

• When things go wrong, the "good" characters generally accept the blame.  If a friend betrays them, it is because they did not care enough, did not inspire enough, , did not help enough.  If a battle is lost, it is because they did not lead enough or plan well enough.  It is never someone else's fault.  They do not resort to lawyers to investigate all the defensive people who claim it was someone else's fault.  The "good" characters look to see how they (not someone else) could and should have done better to avert a bad outcome.

I like my own culture, and I like the emphasis on individual opportunity, but these dramas prod me a little.  Of course, there are all kinds of other things such as the emphasis on the role of fate and on hierarchy and on obedience and on national pride and..  lots of food for thought.  

And - what a great way to hear spoken Korean.  My teachers say my pronunciation isn't that bad; it that's true, I owe it to the hours I have spent watching dramas and getting a feel for the sound of the language (even if I can't catch much of the meaning of the words.)

For anyone interested in a taste of Korean (or Japanese, or Taiwanese, or Chinese dramas) these websites can entertain you for  hours:  Mysoju and Dramacrazy  All are with English subtitles.

Studying Korean

I am nervous about whether or not, at this later stage of life, I can actually learn a language like Korean. I started out just listening to subtitled dramas on TV and studying what I could on the Internet; then I found Adroit College. This is a private language school in Milpitas; classes are small (about 5-8 students per class) and run for 3 hours one night each week for each 10-week quarter. So far I've taken these classes:

• Beginning Korean 1: I didn't actually take this class, but got private tutoring at the school to learn this material so I could join the next class the following term.
• Beginning Korean 2: I took this class once. (If you look real close at the Winter 2008 graduation picture pictured above you can see me sitting in the front row, third from right, with my Beginning Korean 2 graduation certificate in hand.)
• Beginning Korean 3: I took this class 3 times! This was the first class where the teacher spoke primarily Korean in the class. Wow.
• Advanced Beginning Korean 1: I've taken this class 2 times - just finished my second try at it.

As you can see, it's not going really fast. In addition to these classes, I took two quarters of Korean at De Anza College: Beginning Korean 1 and 2. Korean is hard!

This week I will start the Advanced Beginning 2 class. While taking this summer session I hope to get more serious about analyzing learning methods and strategies and making progress and what works best and so on.