Learning language in Korea

Our week at Chuncheon National University of Education included three Korean language lessons. Our instructor, Jina, a student from CNUE was extremely professional and an absolute delight. Her encouragement and sense of humor put everyone at east and made learning fun. These lessons, combined with my attempts to apply what I learned as we toured Korea, gave me a deeper understanding of what English language learner students experience everyday.

 

The objectives of our language course were to: 

• Understand Korea through Korean language

• Feel good about learning a foreign language

• Pick up useful expressions

The first useful expression Jina taught us was a basic greeting: “Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Terri.”  Jina modeled the conversation a few times – being very deliberate about pronunciation and intonation.  Then, as a class, we said the conversation along with her. She’d periodically stop and repeat words we were mispronouncing. Jina introduced two more basic conversations in that first session using the same process.  After repeated practice, we rehearsed with a conversation partner. Finally, Jina invited each pair present their dialogue to the class. I’ll be honest…my heart skipped a beat when I heard we were going to do this. As I waited for my turn, I kept practicing the dialogue in my head, hoping I wouldn’t embarrass myself too much and let my partner down.  I made it through just fine and Jina’s positive feedback (unwarranted I’m sure) made me feel good about my accomplishment.

Jina continued with this style of instruction for two more sessions. As we progressed, the sample conversations grew a little longer and more complex. By the final day, I struggled to keep up. However, when Jina checked for understanding before moving on, I just nodded my head and pretended I was on track. Something I’m sure our ELL students do on a daily basis. By the end of the hour, I’d hit the wall.  I couldn’t process any more information.

After three days of lessons I could say hello and thank you, but only if I really concentrated, visualized the phonetic spelling of the word in my head, and mentally rehearsed the word before attempting to say it.

An article we read prior to coming to Korea – Second Language Learning in the Classroom by Lightbrown and Spada outlines five instructional theories for second language classroom instruction. Here’s how our classroom instruction aligned with some of those theories:

Get it right in the beginning:  Jina taught simple, structured conversations to introduce us to the language and help us listen to and speak in grammatically correct phrases and sentences. We repeated the phrases, at first, without really focusing on meaning. As we practiced, Jina corrected our errors by repeating the phrase and encouraging us to mimic her pronunciation and intonation.

Say what you mean, mean what you say:  This theory stresses the importance of providing comprehensible input - making sure the learners understand what the teacher is teaching. Teachers create comprehensible input in a variety of ways including: activating background knowledge; using visuals; using graphic organizers; and providing instruction that draws on students’ experiences.  As we progressed, Jina worked to help us understand the meanings of words and phrases. She used visuals and knew enough about our culture to draw on our experiences to help us makes sense of some Korean cultural norms. Since Jina delivered her instruction in English, we did not have to struggle to understand her instructions and clarifications.  This is a luxury many ELL students do not have.  I found myself continually thinking about how hard my ELL students have to work. They are learning a foreign language in a foreign language.

Teach what is teachable:  This theory proposes some aspects of learning a language, like word order in a sentence, have to be taught in sequence because they are acquired in stages. The learner must master one stage before they will be capable of learning the next.  Jina’s lessons started as one or two-word phrases and progressed to more complex phrases and sentence structures. Since I hadn’t mastered the basic conversations we'd been taught, I struggled to keep pace as the conversations grew longer and built upon prior rules and words we’d been taught. How many times a day do my students feel this way?

Get it right in the end:  Proponents of this theory believe it’s important for learners to attempt to use language for meaningful conversations - even if the grammar is not perfect. Through continued practice learners will acquire some, but not all, grammar and syntax without explicit instruction.  Jina provided corrective feedback on some grammatical errors, but did not go too deeply.  She appeared to be able to sense how much we were ready to process. She didn’t insist upon, nor expect, perfection.

Even after three well-designed language lessons and a week in Korea, I can only say hello and thank you. My progress was much slower than I expected and nowhere near the progress ELL students make in classrooms that only use English instruction. This has given me a renewed sense of admiration for my students’ progress and reminded me of my responsibility to ensure they receive the best instruction possible.

As I reflect on my experiences this week and consider ways to improve my practice, three questions come to mind:  Do my students always understand the essence of what I am trying to teach? How will I know? How can I effectively share my experience with classroom teachers to ensure all students receive the best possible instruction?