I read this article on a blog called "Ask a Korean":
http://askakorean(dot)blogspot.com/2010/01/koreans-english-acquisition-and-best.html
QUOTE
The Korean's English Acquisition, and the Best Method to Master a Foreign Language, Guaranteed
Dear Korean,
My name is The English Teacher. The English Teacher has a question for The Korean. The English Teacher read .....
ENDQUOTE
MY COMMENT: (I wanted to add the following comment to the comments in Ask a Korean's blog but my comment was too long and wasn't accepted so I am putting the comment here.)
I think rote memorization definitely has its place but I don't think it's possible to be fluent in speaking and writing without immersion (unless you are a genius). The Korean obviously had immersion but does not really see the value of the immersion that he had. He had immersion by attending classes in school for some 6 hours a day, then the immersion on the playground during lunchtime, immersion by visiting friends who spoke English, immersion by joining clubs, immersion by general interaction with native speakers outside the classroom, immersion by all the signs in English he passed by every day, immersion by watching television even if the watching was passive ...
You don't have to be gifted to be fluent in speaking in English after attending an English-speaking school in America or similar countries. There are many examples of people who became verbally fluent after one or two years of attending school after emigration.
It's the IMMERSION that got those kids to be fluent, not memorization. Some of those kids were not studious but they still became fluent in SPEAKING.
Now writing and reading comprehension are a different ballgame altogether. It's pretty impossible to become a great writer in a foreign language and have good reading comprehension without doing study that involves rote memorization.
But if a person already is fluent in SPEAKING, reading and writing in the second language become infinitely easier. Why? Because most of the grammar has been acquired and can be reproduced in writing so long as one is literate.
But if there is no studying (memorization of vocabulary and study of grammar including study of spelling), then the writing is not going to be very good -- like a first grader's. The person will be a poor speller, not use long and complex words to express themselves articulately in writing and so on.
But if speaking fluency is mastered then the rest of the stuff is much easier to pick up (increasing one's vocabulary to cover those in literature like Brothers Karamazov, learning SAT-level grammar, and being able to have good spelling will become easier).
The fact that immersion brought The Korean up to a much higher level in a very quick way is attested to by the fact that he only needed closed captioning (and not Korean subtitles) when watching the Simpsons. If he had not picked up English grammar and many vocab words through immersion, he would not have been able to understand The Simpsons half as well as he did.
So IMMERSION is really necessary for 95% of people to bring them up to a moderate level of fluency in speaking and writing. But writing requires extra -- it requires also memorization and "forced" study.
Without immersion, not many people become fluent -- as I've said those geniuses or polyglots (not the ones who study all day but the ones who pick up languages effortlessly without really trying) are the only ones who do not need immersion: they probably only need to hear the word once or read it once and it's locked in their brain forever.
For us ordinary mortals, it's impingent on us to immerse ourselves as much as we can and if we also want to read Korean books and media as well as write in Korean, we have to apply ourselves diligently to study.
Obviously The Korean had motivation to excel in reading and writing as getting into a good university was a priority for him. So that's where the memorization is very important. Especially in his case as he didn't have much time to cram all the English he needed to do well in the verbal SAT -- he had two years to do that while American-born students have 18 years.
But The Korean DID spend some time learning English when in Korea. Admittedly, not very much and not really the English skills he needed for speaking. However, this education DID ready him (prepare him) for the input he received when he immersed himself in English (when his parents took the family to the US). It made a large part of the input he received COMPREHENSIBLE and set him up to acquire English relatively quickly - more quickly than someone going into the environment cold.
However, it's still remarkable what people can achieve once they are exposed to an immersion environment. Adults who go to Korea to work as 3D workers, adults who marry a Korean and live with the Korean in-laws ... adults like these pick up Korean very quickly. In a couple of years they are fluent.
I don't think the majority of these people actively study as such. Of course, without study their reading comprehension and writing are probably very poor, but if at a later date they needed these skills the fact that they were verbally fluent would help them learn these skills faster than someone who did not have these skills.
But these examples show how IMPORTANT immersion is for speaking fluency (and for writing fluency with the caveat that the person do the necessary memorization of vocab and study of grammar to supplement the immersion).
If The American had been in Korea and was spending all that time studying English instead of going to school, I doubt he would have achieved the level of proficiency that he did in America after two years. Why? Because staying in Korea, he would not have been in an immersion environment. For one thing, he would not have had as many English language TV programs to watch and they would have mostly Korean subtitles (not English cc). And even if he had English closed captioning for this TV series, he would be struggling to understand it because his English listening skills would be less than optimal for understanding a show like that because he would not have the immersion environment to bring them up to scratch.
So immersion was probably the MAJOR factor as to why his English improved phenomenally once he was in the US but The Korean doesn't realize it and instead attributes it to studying those lists and flash cards.
I too studied English grammar and spelling and memorized vocabulary from 19th and 18th century literature, but that was more for scoring highly in university entrance exams. I didn't really need to do these things for just becoming fluent in English in speaking, writing and reading.
I don't think the intensive study the Korean did was responsible for his becoming fluent in English -- though it WAS responsible for him acing the SAT exam.
So he needs to consider the two things separately -- what it takes to acquire speaking fluency and some writing fluency (enough to write an email to a friend) and what it takes to score well in the verbal component of the SAT and write high-quality essays in English.
In Korea, it's VERY HARD to get comprehensible input for the nascent learner of Korean. VERY DIFFICULT. So comparing the exposure to the second language that a Korean gets when he/she goes to America and the exposure an average English speaker (ESL teacher typically) gets doesn't work. That's why many Korean language students are not fluent in Korean after many years of living in Korea and studying Korean. This shows how important IMMERSION is.
Of course there are those Koreans who go to America and come back to Korea without having much verbal fluency. I think these people are in the minority. If they were exposed to immersion but weren't able to pick up English speaking skills then there is something wrong with them -- they are just at the bottom of the curve when it comes to acquiring a new language. That is, IF they were truly exposed to an immersion environment. (Some people say they were but many really weren't -- they spent all their time speaking Korean and had very little interaction with others who didn't speak Korean and didn't even watch much English language TV.)
My experience is that IMMERSION is crucial for speaking fluency. The more immersion (and the input should be comprehensible so there is no point having the TV on 24/7 if you are a beginner and expecting to absorb the language that way), the faster you will become fluent (in your brain) in that language. Writing fluency flows on from speaking fluency. Without speaking fluency, it's very hard to have writing fluency (why many Korean students who have never been overseas are lousy essay writers though their grasp of English grammar might be OK).
And Korean English teachers are NOTORIOUS for having poor speaking fluency. Because of this lack of fluency, they are not good at grammar (they cannot write one page of prose without making atrocious mistakes in grammar and syntax), but still teach grammar to the Korean students. Because they pass Korean tests in English grammar they think they are capable of teaching grammar. Or they might have done a master's course in Education in an American university so think their grammar and writing skills are hot stuff ....
The reality is that they are passing on their poor English onto the students. Korean grammar books for English grammar are notoriously bad ....
And the vicious cycle goes on. Not to say that those who come back from doing Home stay in an English-speaking country are much better in writing -- often their essay writing is of low quality -- but at least they are much better at speaking than those Korean English teachers who have never experienced immersion.
What to do for those who cannot get an immersion environment even though they try? For example, they live in Korea but can't get Korean people to speak to them in Korean for at least a couple of solid hours a day?
Watching dramas, other TV shows, dvds from the dvd store, listening to mp3 files are all substitutes. But these are not as good as natural immersion in a school, work or living with in-laws environment. And English subtitles have a perverse effect on learning. 75% of the time, the translations are not direct and the order of the words are changed a lot to fit what English speakers are used to so even there learners are not learning direct translations and therefore miss out on a lot of vocabulary (and grammar).
