Published

How Can Students Improve Their English?
Yeon Hyeon Middle School Newspaper, June 2010
Rosalyn Laiken, 2nd and 3rd grade English Teacher


Hello!
Nice to meet you. How are you?
I’m fine thank you, and you?

This is how many Korean students say hello in English. It is the polite greeting that everyone learns in elementary school and it never changes. After more than 2 months of teaching them new ways to describe how they are feeling, my students are still saying they're fine thank you and you? How can students improve their English skills to feel comfortable saying much more than these three main lines?

The easiest and fastest way to do this is for students to read, listen and speak English! Joining English community groups or classes such as sports teams, dance, cooking, art, and book clubs is a fun way to meet and become friends with native English speakers. If this is not possible then the next best solution is to watch English television, movies, and even listen to English radio. Some of my advanced students have bashfully admitted they regularly watch CNN, Jeopardy, and other popular educational North American TV shows. This amazes me because these shows challenge the intelligence of many native English speakers! There are several radio stations in Korea that have mini English lessons and play English popular songs for students who enjoy listening to music.

Deciding on the method to improve English skills is the first step, and the methods should continuously change in a student’s learning routine. It is best to do different things each day to help keep the various relationships between each area active. In other words, don't just study grammar. Commitment is important as well, so students need to make learning English a habit. Try to learn something every day. It is much better to study (or read, or listen to English news, etc.) 10 minutes each day than to study for 2 hours once a week.

Once Korean students meet native speakers and begin practicing their English in a fun and open environment, they may find that one of the biggest problems is speed. Native speakers tend to speak very quickly; here are some practical tips to get native speakers of English to slow down!

1. Immediately ask the person to speak slowly.
2. When taking note of a name or important information, repeat each piece of information as the person speaks.
3. Do not say you have understood if you have not. Ask the person to repeat until you have understood.

There are thousands of online resources as well to help students practice reading, listening and speaking English. Our students are big fans of the PC Bong; why not make some of that time more educational? There are a multitude of games, worksheets, pronunciation guides, quizzes, picture dictionaries, and short stories available to everyone. Google is a marvelous online tool: I received over 23,800,000 results when researching for tips to include in this article!

The most important advice I have realized is this: Be patient - remember that learning a language is a gradual process - it does not happen overnight.

Good luck, have fun and enjoy learning English ^^

Video pen pals

I am so proud of this video I made for my school as a video pen pal project :) Enjoy! If you know of any schools who want to participate in this project with mine, let me know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0UhLBq81yg

Catching up

It's been many weeks since my last blog entry. I'm sorry to those who have been waiting on the edge of their seats for an update. I have been filling my days and nights with so many activities that by the time I get home I'm a zombie. Especially when I've fallen asleep on the metro and missed my stop, several times. Some nights I'm surprised I can even find my bed in my 1 bedroom apartment. I'm not complaining, this is the life I have chosen and it's exceeding all of my expectations :) I've made some notes in the past few weeks, so here I go trying to catch up... lol what else is new!?

After my last entry at the teacher orientation training, I went straight to Hongdae with my new crew made up of 3 Americans, 1 Kiwi, 1 chick from South Africa and me, the Cannuck. we got along so well, we never needed to try with each other, kindred sprits :) These are the traditional Korean war masks we made at orientation.



Hongdae is a popular artsy, musically-infused, late night clubbin, foreigner-friendly area in Seoul. We planned to stay for the weekend at a hostel close to all the action. I was so impressed with the live band in the park on our first night out. They caught our attention with their awesome drumming beats, the huge crowd and their covers of John Mayer, Rolling Stones and several other great American bands. The tap dancing battle invigorated my urge to take up tap dancing again. Park, the manager at our hostel took care of us that night by being our tour guide and getting us to try dried squid - with mixed reviews :P

We ate at a traditional Korean bbq restaurant for dinner at midnight, met up with more friends throughout the evening and the rest of that 1st night was a blur as we danced our way through 3 different clubs until the sun came up. Had breakfast at a great lil Korean place that made the best bibimbap I have tried yet.





Dragged our feet in the glaring but beautiful sunshine all the way back to our hostel (8 min walk?) and crashed in a bunk bed more which was 1000% more comfortable than my rock at my apartment! We got up several hours later to explore Hongdae in the daylight hours, had breakfast/lunch at Quiznos around 4 pm, which tasted just like Quiznos back home. We had intended to get on a tour bus of Seoul but instead found our way walking through the quaint streets of Hongdae, happy with taking it easy and buying knicknacks along the way. Oh, and that weekend I started the best/worst habbit I've picked up so far: ICE CREAM!!! There was one day that I had 3 ice creams in a matter of 4 hours....I'm in shock and awe over my ability to ingest so much of it and always craving more. I loved bumping into the Toronto Bagel Company, but didn't try any bagels - didn't know the origin of those bagels...



That night followed our pattern we had been turning into a nightly ritual - late late dinner, meet up with friends at or after midnight, hit the club & party scene until the sun rose and eating the same bibimbap breakfast at 8 am. We were literally fried by Sunday morning. I don't know how I was able to keep that pace going for 5 days straight, but that must have been one of the #1 factors that set off my body into a bronchial infectitious state that I'm still waiting to get over, already 6 weeks later.

Since that 1st weekend in Hongdae I've experienced so many glorious activities. I introduced poutine (a Franco-Canadian delicious and extremely unhealthy french fry, gravy & cheese curd concoction) to the owner of an awesome local bar popular with foreigners called Happidus;



I learned how to use my rice cooker (which didn't come with any instructions, just Korean text on a seemingly easy-to-operate device with one main button but many other lil buttons that make no sense whatsoever) by trading cherry tomatoes for hard boiled eggs with a middle aged Korean neighbour who doesn't speak a lick of English;



Went to the Retro Milanga at the Seoul Tango Festival and met people named Fish (a girl), Johnny, Betty and Daisy (a guy). I stayed off to the side of the busy dance floor to avoid hurting anyone, and enjoyed the international dancers strut their stuff in the competition at the end of the night;



My fave international performers out of 9 who danced at the Seoul Tango Festival Retro Milonga, April 30, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sRKCR_TcGA&feature=PlayList&p=D2A1A5D369B57370&playnext_from=PL&index=3

I tried (and fell in love) with hot yoga; went to the World DJ Festival where we danced from 2 pm on Saturday until 6 am on Sunday only to break for a 45 min nap; hiked an "easy" mountain near my school with some other teachers and hiked Dobongsan (san = mountain) north of Seoul - I swear I saw the entire city of Seoul for so many miles and I could see where the earth curved; shopping in traditional & high fashion markets such as Nandemeun & Gangnam; went to an indoor and outdoor amusement park called Lotte World (Korea's version of Disneyland) at night; went to the lantern festival that took over the main streets in Insadong (a traditional Buddhist & historically preserved area in Seoul); won big at the racetrack (which were extremely quiet considering the building held thousands of people! The horse races are Korean's only form of legal gambling and they were SERIOUS); visited the Anyang Art Park with my school's photography club, and travelled to TAIPEI, TAIWAN for a weekend!!!



My friend Harlem and I went to Taipei over the May long weekend for Buddha's birthday. It was a short 3 hr flight, but a completely different world. She missed the flight on Thursday night so I had a day to roam on my own and met up with her on Friday night for a fun-filled action packed weekend. Here are my notes from that trip...

Last night I arrived into Taipei in 32 deg C heat and humidity, put down my bag, changed and met a cool young traveller from Singapore who was also staying at my hostel and also wanted to hit the town. Antonio and I got along right away and he could speak Chinese so we had a fun night going to a bar, playing pool and finding a great breakfast joint at 4:30 am!

Right now I'm sitting comfortably in an air conditioned train in Taipei. I woke up minutes before I had to run here with the owner of the hostel in her flip flops (shameless promotion for TaiwanMex hostel!!), she was so nice to check the train schedule before I woke up and made sure I knew where to go. I think I'm headed east to Hualien, where I plan to rent a scooter & ride up to the summit of Tarako Gorge, visit a natural hot spring and enjoy the sun setting over Taiwan. It makes sense for me to write all this down now as I realize I'm on this train with 3 hours to kill and no book to read. I've just been asked to move seats because apparently there is assigned seating so I've had to take my delicious veggetarian meal that I just bought on the train for about $1.50 Cdn and my 20 kg bag (I know, it's just a 3 day weekend - but I'm a Toronto girl at heart) over to another empty seat. I have landed next to a cute Taiwainese Buddhist temple-enthusiast who is wooing me to join her at the Ling Jiou Mountain Buddhist temple. I have 5 min to decide and she offered to buy my ticket to keep going to Hualien after the detour - she just said: "sometimes interference in life works out for the best". Ok, I'm sold....



That was the best detour EVER! We bathed little statues of Buddha - steaming water is used to clean the bad karma from our lives, bowed down 3 times in front of the Burmese White Jade Buddha, a statue that was lost for more than 40 years and was recovered by the temple's master after WWII. It was raining lightly almost the entire 2 hours I was there, which I didn't mind at all because I was in Buddhist paradise. Rain helps raise the tide and grow the crops, it also cleans our souls. Bowing before the Buddhist statues from Thailand made from gold and respectfully walking around the right side of the Tibetian Buddha was supposed to enhance our ability to understand the origin of ourselves as one with Buddha. After that enlightening afternoon, I ended up getting off at the wrong station (I wanted Sinchang and jumped off at Sichang). I tried to reason with the ticket agent who didn't speak English that I needed to get back on the next train, but only after enlisting the help of a nice young man at the nearby post office and his English-speaking friend on his cell did I realize there wouldn't be another train for several hours and I wanted to make my way back to Taipei that night. I couldn't have asked for better luck when the young guy offered to drive me on his scooter to the nearest bus station so I still ended up on a scooter that day :)





We filled Saturday in Taipei with a trip to a Confucius and Buddhist temple, Taipei Palace Museum, hot springs, saw a Taiwanese percussion group who shared the stage with Peking opera actors and tap dancers in a reinterpretation of the traditional Chinese story “MuLan” at the National Theater Hall in Taipei.



We were still going strong by 11 pm when we ended up in Shilin Market - the biggest night market in Taiwan. We shopped until we dropped, enjoyed traditional Taiwanese eats (including amaaaaaazing creamy ice - not unlike my latest Korean addiction) and went back to our hostel to watch the sun rise on our rooftop with a laptop and snacks from the Family Mart downstairs.



I spent Sunday with a guy from Amsterdam who was also staying at our hostel, we went to a dormant volcano in the rain and I must have been in heaven because the place was so serene and delightfully peaceful that I didn't mind again how I got stuck in the rain. Taipei is so humid that the rain is welcoming and I understand now why they say it's cleansing :)





Since Taipei, I went to the stunning Steve McCurry "Unguarded Moments" photography exhibit in Seoul (he is the National Geographic photog most known for the Afghan Girl); saw a hilarious live performance called Nanta (cross between Stomp and Blue Man Group with a cooking theme), visited the Huaseong Fortress in Suwon, and took a trip down to Busan (the other major city in South Korea with all the awesome beaches). Busan was wonderful - we stayed in love motels, ate dinner in the Jagalchi Fish Market, hiked through two major Buddhist temples called Beomosa and Yong Gung which was breathtakingly situated right on the East Sea that lies between Korea and Japan, had my first experience at a hot spring spa where female nudity is as natural as breathing, visited all three major beaches (Haeundae Beach was hosting the annual sand festival with amazingly huge sand castles, went to Gwangalli Beach for beach volleyball and FREE seadoo rides & waterskiing, and I enjoyed Songjong Beach solo with my book and very little sunscreen so I ultimately got my unavoidable first burn of the summer right along my gluteous maximus). I truly enjoyed the more laid-back attitude of Busan, but I was happy to come home to bustling Seoul.



I want to buy a used bicycle and guitar and learn how to breakdance from one of my students (she's amazing at popping, performed in front of the whole school of 1700 students and 100 teachers for the Teacher's Day ceremony). I'm also starting to plan my summer vacation with two of my best friends from back home and my sister who are coming to visit in August! We have been brainstorming on which Asian countries we want to visit -perhaps Malaysia, Signapore, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan and/or Thailand and then around Korea.

Until then, I hope everyone who reads this is doing well and enjoying your summer so far!