By I really like the writings of Cho Se-hyon and this article he wrote I thought provided some great perspective on the difficulty of learning a foreign language:
When they came to the foreign news department, I asked them what they had studied in the university. And to my surprise, quite a few of them replied that they had majored in English. I further learned that they had mainly read such works as Chaucer and Milton at school. “Wow,” I exclaimed in spite of myself, “that’s difficult stuff.”
Then, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who was impressed by their academic background; one of my colleagues, a British-born editor, overhearing our conversation, asked them some simple questions in English like what kind of journalists they eventually wanted to become.
However, none of them provide him with a reply longer than “yes” or “no.” Were they so shy or diffident by nature that they couldn’t respond to his questions in detail? Or were they actually unable to say anything in passable English?
“It’s amazing,” the British friend said afterwards. “They are supposed to be the smartest kids in this country, and they must have studied English at least ten years and yet none of them could converse with me in English.”
“Something is wrong with the foreign language education in this country,” he said, shaking his head.
I could readily see his point, but I must admit I couldn’t quite agree with him, because I was in their shoes myself when I was their age several decades earlier. [Seoul Searcher]
Make sure to read the whole article to find out how Cho was once in these students same shoes. It is a great story and more importantly great perspective about learning a foreign language.
1:01 pm on October 27th, 2008 1
Korean media discovers comedic power of the Chipmonk voice. Millions of Koreans are laughing. Korean male gag artists doing TV gigs wearing women's clothing demonstrate in the streets to protest massive job loss.
"It's not funny!" said Kang-goo goo, an aspiring Korean standup comedian wearing a mushroom hairdo. "The chipmonk voice-over may be cute, but it's a pernicious technological advance unwanted in this country" he opined as he dropped his pants to his ankles.
1:15 pm on October 27th, 2008 2
"…he opined as he dropped his pants to his ankles."
…and showed the audience his own little chipmunk.
3:49 am on October 29th, 2008 3
I'll never forget one college student who came to my early-morning hagwon classes. She was an English literature major studying Shakespeare and so on. Obviously very difficult material even for native speakers. And I don't know anything about her reading and writing abilities, but in her speech she carried over so much Korean grammar and transference errors that it was often completely unintelligible except to someone like me who knew her well.
And that's another good point about language learning — until you reach a pretty good level, you are pretty dependent on the abilities of the native speakers you encounter to adjust their listening ability and spoken language to your level. Some people are good at that and some people, unfortunately, really are not.
2:11 am on June 24th, 2009 4
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