Article that influenced me
The article that influenced me a lot is a summary essay of Stephen Krashen's book.
This is the link to the article:
http://www(dot)languageimpact.com/articles/rw/krashenbk.htm
I really believe this is true what he says about learning a language. The only area that I differ from him is that he doesn't make it clear that he is talking about speaking fluency mainly.
One can be fluent in speaking but be illiterate in that language. That's why grammar study is important for those who want to be fluent in writing.
However, it's best to be fluent in speaking first. This helps one to be fluent in writing. Without speaking fluency it's very difficult to be fluent in writing I think.
I must have spoken Korean when I was young! I don't remember. But there is a recording of me as a young child singing in Korean. Obviously, I picked up Korean because I was immersed in it.
I have to accelerate that process because I want to have speaking fluency in a year. I don't want to be hesitant when I speak and always be translating in my head ... because that's the way I am communicating now.
I don't want to waste my time too when I am learning Korean. I want to learn the most effective method FOR ME. Everyone is different as I have said and has different interests. Therefore something that is interesting for another person might be boring for me.
I also worry about speaking too early. Krashen said one shouldn't speak until one is fluent and comfortable in speaking -- that is, not thinking too much about how one is going to say something but just saying it spontaneously.
I also worry about people correcting me. At the moment when people hear me speaking Korean they tend to correct me especially about pronunciation which is kind of annoying. I guess it's annoying for THEM to hear Korean incorrectly pronounced but it is demotivating for me and their corrections don't help me.
I will be speaking pidgen Korean in the early stages so will sound strange to Koreans but this is all part of the learning process. That's another reason why I don't want to speak too early -- people want to correct me and it discourages me and stresses me out.
I will have to remind people not to correct me. I don't want to speak too much but sometimes speaking in Korean is the only way I can get people to speak to me in Korean.
Taxi drivers are pretty good. They don't try and correct me too much. They just try and understand what I am trying to say.
I might have to pay someone to give me Korean "lessons". However, I don't know whether it's going to work out. I would like to pay someone like Biryong because I think he's a good teacher. He knows what I need and he is fun to talk to. Some Koreans might become officious in the teaching role and just try and talk at too high a level for me. They might bore me to tears and try and correct me ....
The main thing is to keep up my level of interest. I have noticed I HAVE improved. I understand incrementally more of what I am listening to. For example, TV is not as unintelligible as it was to me. I am picking up little "snippets" here and there.
I think I should keep up the cycle of studying vocabulary and doing some structured listening and then watching TV and watching dramas and movies. Even I am understanding signs more. I think widening my vocabulary is useful. Of course I am going to forget some of it if I don't come across it often or soon after learning the vocabulary I've learned, but I do retain some of it and when I come across the word in a TV show etc it sticks in my head. I am picking up nuances in grammar too. I was pleased to notice I was doing this. For example, I picked up when someone was using the past tense and it was with a colloquial ending too -- "gunyo" I think it was.
Listening to dramas is helpful for picking up colloquial speech. There are a lot of colloquialisms in Korean that show up in the ending of the verbs.
It's a bit of a mind wrap because in subtitles the verb appears in the middle but in Korean you have to wait for the end of the sentence to hear the verb. It makes matching words in English with Korean a bit difficult.
It's funny but when I speak in English I sometimes find myself stating the subject word first even when it's not really normal to do so eg. asking a question. I did this even before I was interested in learning Korean.
The thing I don't like about Korean is the Confucianism. I don't like the fact that you have to speak a different way to elders than you do to younger people. It's not just the Westerner in me that is reacting in this way -- I just feel fundamentally it's wrong. On the other hand, it is what makes Korean society "charming". But I find it restrictive in other ways. If you are dating a man younger than you, you can't call him 'oppa' for example. So it sets up awkwardness in these situations. Also, I find that some older people tend to use status on you. For example, my cousin who is much older than me by about twenty years at least asked me to call him "oppa" and then "cousin oppa". It kind of demoted me when I called him oppa and this was especially irritating to me as we disagree politically and calling me oppa made me feel like I was younger and more immature and had to defer to him in his opinions.
I don't know. When I hear myself say oppa it reminds me of those girls who use the oppa term frequently on fan sites of their favorite Korean idol. I don't see myself as this giggling helpless girl who calls most men in her life "oppa" and enjoys doing so.
I might just have to quietly dissociate myself from doing this if I can get away with it. With my cousin it's hard as he asked me specifically to do this. I think it's rude to call a much older person by their first name though that would be my preference. How about just "cousin"? That would be OK.
So yes, it is charming in a way that there are these special terms that one uses depending on relative ages of speaker and listener but it is also restrictive, and in the end, I don't really like the system.
There is too much emphasis on age in Korean society. In one way it keeps society cohesive and retains order in society but in other ways it's restrictive and backwards. It introduces all forms of 'ageism' -- not just against young people but against older people as well. It separates people on age and categorizes them into groups based on age, and I don't like this.
Of course I don't want Korea to be westernized (too much) otherwise I would be living in the west if I preferred the western way of things but I don't like restrictions like this.
On the one hand it's good that I read the article about Stephen Krashen's theories, but on the other hand, it has introduced anxieties about learning Korean. I am worried that I am not getting enough comprehensible spoken input. As I have said, it's hard to get comprehensible input for native speakers of English. If I wasn't a native speaker of English and wasn't good at English, it would be a different story.
If I was a 3D worker, I think I would pick up the language VERY quickly. Most of the 3D workers who have been in Korea for a long time are fluent in Korean. They astonish me with their fluency. So it's not about academic skills -- it's about exposure to the right environment. Not saying 3D workers lack academic skills by the way, but many English teachers who come to Korea have academic skills and have a motivation to learn Korean but after some years are nowhere near as good as the 3D workers.
The problem with dramas is that the situation is not immediately applicable to ME. The characters in these dramas are not speaking to me. So they aren't really communicating with me. I also do not have to try and understand either as I am not the person who is receiving the communication. I am an eavesdropper and not an active participant in the communication. Of course I can use the dialogs I hear as a model for communication when I later speak Korean a lot more.
I realize there were many opportunities to learn Korean in the past. I remember a man who wanted to meet me and walk with me to the station when I lived in Hongdae. He didn't speak much English and he was interested in befriending him. He seemed lonely. I was lonely too but felt awkward because I felt socially we weren't in the same world. But I should have overcome that thought and made a friend of him. Perhaps if I had I would be able to speak Korean by now. Not that I want to use people that way. But he was sweet. I was just reluctant about engaging him because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But he was REALLY interested in me. I need to keep an eye out for those people as they are nice and genuine and like me.
I am LONELY. But bored with a lot of people I meet. I especially don't like people who find out I am from Australia and have a lot of interest in me for that reason. I can't blame them ... who's to say I wouldn't be the same if I had grown up in Korea and had not traveled much or spent much time overseas? But personally I find the responses that people make are cliched. They are predictable. They always say the same thing. They always wonder why I am in Korea. They always say Australia must be an enjoyable place to live. They are enthusiastic about that nation. They think it's a kind of paradise. They really have no idea. I don't like Australia for many reasons. I don't like the hot weather. I don't like the dry climate. I don't like the bush -- it's dry and brown and sparse. I also do not like the lifestyle. I don't like the culture much. I don't like much about Australia. I have had a lot of bad experiences there from almost Day One that I went there. I have been trying to escape from there for a long time.
So it's hard to hear people say these things to me all the time. My cousin is an example. He is always waxing lyrical about how great Australia is and what wonderful experiences he had in Australia. He practically forced me to eat Australian beef for lunch the last time we met even though I am semi-vegetarian and I think I told him this last time. He is a Buddhist and doesn't eat a lot of meat for this reason so I think it was too much his doing this. His infatuation with Australia seems to have made him forget his values. I don't agree with him a lot on other things as well. I have mentioned the political differences we have. We just have completely different ideas about everything.
That's what's annoying about these people. They gush about Australia and have many misconceptions about it. They seem naive. They are like this about foreign countries in general but particularly about Australia.
If Australia is so great why am I here in Korea? They have to think about that.
Anyway I am sick and tired of hearing the same comments about Australia with almost everyone I meet.
Korea has many problems and aspects about it that I don't like but on balance I prefer the culture.
Many people think Australia is a paradise because there is less competition especially less academic competition over there. But this indicates a fault in thinking of Korean people. Saying you want to go overseas and raise your children there because of the lack of academic pressure compared to Korea is kind of admitting that you want to settle for mediocrity. It also indicates that people aren't willing to think outside the box. Academic success is only one kind of success. If you are not cut out for academic success you should accept it and find out what avenue in life your future success will lie and go for it. But to think that Australia is a paradise because there is less academic pressure is ridiculous. These parents will apply the same academic pressure to their kids as they do in Korea, but they will just be more optimistic about the outcome because there is less competition. It's like saying you want to settle in a nation that encourages mediocrity. You want to be a mediocre person and you want to achieve success academically because there are loads of mediocre people you are competing with. You are the king of mediocre people in other words. And once again, they ignore the fact that there are all sorts of forms of success, not just academic success.
If they think like that in the first place and don't think their child is capable of succeeding academically, these parents should think of other ways of getting their child to succeed in their life and career.
What is the use of giving up culture, family ties, millennia of history and so on to settle in a nation of STRANGERS who do not share your history, culture or even the same race just because you do not think your child can succeed in the hothouse environment of hagwons and striving for the ultimate goal of SKY university entrance? In my opinion people give up too much when they emigrate to another country. There may be less academic competition but there is also non-acceptance (treatment of migrants as second-class citizens especially if they are of a race that is different to the race of the dominant ethnic group or come from a nation that is considered "inferior", discrimination and subtle racism which in my opinion is worse than overt racism), cultural dislocation (finding it hard to find people who share a similiar culture to yours and feeling isolated as a result or show a tendency to hang onto cultural 'ghettos'), difficulties in social life (finding a suitable marriage partner; feeling dissociated from people of the same race or ethnicity as yours often because you have internalized feelings of inferiority about your nation of origin and ethnicity that the dominant race/ethnicity show all the time -- often subconsciously and not overtly) including work difficulties and so on. If you are ashamed of what you are and where you come from, you are less likely to seek people of the same ethnicity as a marriage partner.
But people do think like that. And the parents are very ambitious for themselves and end up hurting their kids immensely.
So for these reasons I find the Korean tendency to look up to western countries silly and ignorant. And this is made worse by the fact that Koreans espouse a strong nationalistic spirit. There is nothing wrong with that but when you actually note how many Koreans are willing to abandon the "mother country" completely and settle down in a western country, the nationalism seems hollow. In the one breath they are shouting "Dae Han Min Guk" and in the other breath, they state they would love to migrate to a western nation. If one is so nationalistic and patriotic why would one want to move to another nation and become the citizen of that nation? It doesn't make sense. Note that Ahn Jung Geun's descendants migrated to America. It seems many Koreans can't wait to forsake their country and live and raise their children elsewhere mostly on misguided notions about what their future lives will be like. (My parents for example.)
Enough ranting.
Back to language learning.
I no longer find the Korean language ugly as I used to think it was. Sometimes I actually prefer the sound of Korean. And even a few times I have thought it sounded elegant and nice.
To be honest I thought it was an inferior-sounding language for a long time. I was even ASHAMED of it. I didn't want to be Korean. I didn't want to hear Korean spoken and I was embarrassed when my parents spoke Korean in public to each other. Partly it was because I didn't understand Korean I know. But I have changed a lot. I have come to RESPECT the language. I think it's nice and I am getting used to it. It sounds normal to hear and a decent language to pronounce. Especially the connecting words "Kunde" "Kuraeyo" etc sound natural to me and sound like those words with that meaning should.
Some words are incredibly ugly though. Some words when spoken together sound guttural and make the speaker sound unrefined. A lot of "ch's" "j's" "k's" "jang's" in speech make it sound like this. But it depends a lot on the speaker. When I like the actor speaking the lines, everything that comes out of his mouth sounds elegant, refined and nice (LOL).
In fact these days I prefer the sound of the Korean language to English or to any other language in the world. The only other languages that I like the sound of are German and Turkish. I try to avoid English when I can because I don't want to think about the west. I change the channel when English speakers come on.
I also do not like to watch westerners speak Korean. It gives me an inferiority complex somewhat.
I don't mind 3D workers on TV speaking Korean though. It's just mainly westerners I don't like listening to. I can't really explain this.
I also try and avoid westerners whenever I can when I am in Korea. I don't know why I do this. Before I was interested in learning Korean I tried to befriend them. But now I don't.
I have lost interest in all things western I guess. I am immersing myself in Korean culture. I feel annoyed that Koreans do not appreciate what they have. I think personally Koreans are happier than other people. They probably do not think they are and will rate themselves low in happiness. But they just do that because they have no basis for comparison. They do not appreciate what they have and hanker for something they don't have, for something that is foreign. It's a pity because some of them end up missing the forest for the trees.
I don't mean that people should be COMPLACENT, but sometimes Koreans don't understand what they are doing to themselves through mistaken notions. They tend to think in black and white. Korea is black and a place to escape from, and the west is white, a paradise to run to. And they often have no experience (except for a superficial kind of experience) of living in the west. I DO and so am in a better position to judge, IMO (I'm not saying this in an arrogant way but just stating a fact).
I think it's because of MATERIALISM. They forsake so-called spiritual values like sense of community, sense of belonging, sense of being part of one nation and one people, sense of IDENTITY for something transient (money). No money can buy those things (things of spiritual value) once they are completely lost. Even some parents want to rid their children completely of their former identity and encourage their kids to marry into another race and produce mixed-race children. After time and after many generations, their descendants are not recognizably KOREAN.
That is sad for me. Why are so many Koreans like this? Are they ashamed of being Korean? If they loved their parents and honored them, why do they try and eradicate any trace of Koreanness in future generations? Don't they feel they are losing something precious?
And at the same time, Koreans are fiercely proud of their nation. So it doesn't make sense. The really proud ones may not emigrate but they don't think less of other Koreans for abandoning their homes, lives, roots and going elsewhere. Some might wish they could do the same.
Unless you are in trouble, for example, you have committed a crime in your country or are escaping a really difficult situation, then you shouldn't really emigrate from your home country, I mean the one that you were born in and the one where the people share the same ethnic heritage as you have. So I don't understand the emigration mentality. Go for a holiday by all means but do not make the drastic move of tearing up your roots. I think western media has influenced many people. They have grown up with Hollywood and American TV shows and been saturated with American culture. Don't they see it as shallow?
Don't they see advantages and a sense of familiarity and safety and warmth in Korean culture?
And the importance of family, especially extended family .. is it worth giving this up and just being a nuclear family in a strange country where the people do not accept you and think of you as inferior? Obviously some people do. They think about money 24/7 and would sacrifice ANYTHING for money. I guess it comes from having twisted values. They do not change their thinking for anything. Even if they see their children suffering because they are having problems being accepted or are not adapting to the new culture. Witness the family of Choi Seung Hui. What a tragedy. If the family had not had such shallow values and not emigrated to the US, the tragedy could have been avoided. But because the parents were selfish, greedy and stupid, they destroyed the lives of their children (his sister is also destroyed because she is forever marked as the sister of a mass murderer), and they destroyed the lives of so many other people (the victims of the shooting who were mostly tragically young and their families). The two people ended up destroying hundreds of people.
I am surprised not more happenings like this occur. I am not at all surprised it was a Korean young man who did it. Even if I had not read about his family I could have guessed what they were like and my guesses would have been correct. I feel bad for Choi Seung Hui even though he killed so many people. In my eyes, the parents are responsible for the killings -- the son not so much. They came to the US to take from it and not to give to it, and as a consequence of their selfishness, many Americans were hurt and destroyed by their actions.
How could the parents not know their son was suffering? That he had "problems" (social autism, trouble fitting in etc)? That he was going through mental hell. The ironic thing is that before the shootings happened they probably thought they were good parents. (They seemed proud that their daughter got into Princeton.)
This kind of event should have brought many Koreans to their senses. It did some but there are many others who still see the west with rosy eyes. Their wish is for their kids to emigrate to the US.
I feel sorry for the kids of these people. I think their lives will be better in Korea. However, the parents don't understand this.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 7:37 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 15 September 2011 9:39 AM EDT
