Unknown Language Journal Journal Entry 1 Before the lesson From this, my first lesson of Korean, I expect to gain, most of all, first hand insight into the experience a second language learner has during the first lesson of a language he or her has never before encountered.
As I believe the class will be one of immersion, where the teacher will only speak Korean, I expect to be confused and to struggle to grasp the relation between sounds and their referents as well as understanding grammatical constructions. I do feel somewhat anxious, as one does when trying out new things.At the same time, I must admit I am a little scared of not being able to learn as fast as the rest of the class. I understand this is a possibility and I believe many of my classmates might share the same fear. I hope the teacher will be kind and patient, and create a non-threatening environment in which most of our learning styles and speeds are considered.
I hope the teacher will be non-judgmental, since I believe that if one feels judged when starting something new one would be more likely to feel self-conscious, which will in turn make one nervous and worried about one’s performance instead of focusing on learning the language.I think that in this type of context the students should forget about previous learning experiences –specially those in which he or she was punished for his or her mistakes– and try to move closer to understanding and producing the language without feeling threatened. In this respect, I believe that second language learning must resemble first language acquisition. In regard to the teaching method, I expect the teacher will follow a communicative approach to langauge teaching.
Therefore, I believe we will first learn functional language chunks such as “Good morning”, “What is your name? ”, “My name is…”. From these phrases I hope to be able do derive some syntactic structure, although I know the patterns will be limited. I also hope to be able to have some basic understanding of the phonemic inventory, although I have learned from previous experience that the in order to become familiar enough to identify significantly contrasting sounds from sounds in free-variation much exposure to the language is needed.As an adult language learner I have become aware that being able to recognize lexemes does not entail knowledge of the phonemic inventory. We identify meaning much faster than we come to identify –and much less produce– the sounds through which such meanings are materialised. At the same time, I find the task of recognizing meaningful units of sound of a given language a ludic challenge.
I am also very excited about learning a new script, different from the roman alphabet. I know the Korean writing system was developed towards a more alphabetic system from its logographic origins.I would like to see how the teacher presents the alphabet and guides us in our first steps towards literacy. Furthermore, I am very keen to learn about the orthographic representation of phonemes; this is how close does the Korean alphabet match onto Korean phonemes. After the lesson After having had my first lesson of Korean, I can say I felt overwhelmed by the re-realisation of how different careful speech can be from natural speech. Distinguishing the sounds was difficult for me as well as for my classmates, from what I noticed.
My peers’ comments after class were along the lines of “Every time she said something it sounded different” or “She said something like ‘chairum’” to which another student would reply “It sounded more like ‘chauum’ –the teacher wrote this on the board as “Jae irym un” which is “My name [is]”. Again, the significant phonemes were not clear to us beginner Korean learners. It did, however surprise me, how the teacher managed to carry out the class exclusively using the target language.Some of the students did not take the lesson seriously –they spoke in Spanish or English and did not pay attention to what the teacher was saying or asked us to do–, so the teacher called upon these students to answer to specific questions, drawing them into the lesson gently but firmly. What I valued the most from the teacher was that at all times she was patient and smiling, creating a non-threatening environment very enjoyable for learning not just language but anything.
As mentioned before the teacher only used Korean in class, however, the students tended to ask questions such as “How do you say…? or “Is this right? ” using English. I believe that at this point we still did not have enough knowledge of Korean to communicate even these simple questions which are learnt early on in many second language classes. The teacher answered the questions in Korean and made mimics or pointed at objects to clarify meaning. I liked it that she did not force students to perform when it was clear that they were having a hard time dealing with their confidence or ability to carry out the speaking task. When it came to the written tasks she walked around the classroom and helped students out individually.
Overall, I enjoyed the class very much. I felt the teacher was approachable and I enjoyed the activities she had prepared for the session. I also enjoyed feeling bewildered at times, looking around and trying to figure out what was going on and then, not always but in several occasions, feeling satisfied when finding an answer. I believe that the non-threatening environment allowed us to make mistakes and that, in my opinion, is a key element of a second language class. I believe this lesson had two basic aims: to work on the dialogue of question and answers which was introduced in the first lesson and introduce the script.The importance of review was obvious at this point; many students might not remember everything that they had done in the previous class.
It surprised me that most students did remember something, some more than others, even when the previous lesson had taken place a week ago. This made me think of how effective the previous lesson had been. I believe the difference between how much some students remembered could be related to their personal motivation to learn the language and, in some cases, the individuals’ abilities to learn languages.In order to explain why some seemed to not be motivated to learn, one could argue that they had never had the intention to learn Korean and therefore had not intrinsic motivation towards it.
Furthermore, many students considered the “Unknown Language” module to be just a model class for trainees to see how a language to which students have never been exposes to is taught; hence, many did not take the actual role of a second language learner during class, spending more time evaluating the teaching than engaging in the learning experience.Even so, both highly motivated and not-so-highly motivated students did show during eliciting of questions that they had acquired language during the first lesson and that they remembered it. Students where able to greet in Korean, maybe not understanding the literary meaning of each word they were saying, but they had learned which expression was to be used in the specific communicative setting of a greeting. Thus, language was being learned communicatively. The context is clearly meaningful since we all want to be able to greet politely, say our names and learn the names of others.Also, students were able to ask and answer questions such as “Where are you from? ” and “Where do you live? ” which are meaningful.
The teacher also marked the customary greeting gesture which is markedly different from ours. This fact showed us that not only sounds, morphology and syntax can be different but that there is a interrelated cultural setting in which language occurs and which needs to be learned with language. In order to be able to communicate in this greeting/getting-to-know-others setting, students repeated the sounds they heard.As it was mentioned before, different students heard different sounds and thus produced differently from each other. The teacher only corrected sometimes; therefore, carefully looking at the sounds that she corrected and those that she did not, one could find which variations were relevant to meaning and which were not. Of course, as second language learners this is not learned in the systematic way linguists have to find phonological rule based patterns, but they are learnt but repetition, constant error and correction and, further on, by overt explanations given by the teacher.
At this point the teacher only did corrections, no explanation of sound distribution was provided. Students learned to produce the different patterns of intonation for questions and answers which did not seem to be to dissimilar to Spanish; more information would be needed to find out about more possible forms of intonation such as “Yes/No” questions, expressions of surprise, imperatives, impersonals, embedded phrases, etc. We also learned some pronouns –1person. sg and 2person. sg– with which the questions were formed.
The third person seems to be a null-pronoun, which is different from Spanish and English, both of which have a feminine and masculine form for the 3person. singular pronoun. From looking at questions and answers we could see that the order of words changed depending whether it is a question or a statement; this feature is shared by Spanish and English. We were not completely certain of the meaning of each word or how grammar functioned but we were able to communicate being aware of intonation and a few key words that helped us identify the meaning of the entire utterance.
In writing we learned how syllables are formed by combining a consonantal symbol with a vocalic one. We did not memorize each symbol, but we learned how to search for them and how to build units from them. Basically, we became familiar with the chart and learned which sounds had symbols to represent them and which did not. In order to have us practice and to check if we had understood, the teacher asked us to write our names using the Hangeul alphabet. By doing so we realized which sounds from our own languages do not have a direct correspondence in Korean.
This was very insightful for us students since even though we still heard somewhat different sounds when the teacher spoke, we could find in the alphabet the sounds that were relevant and try to pin down what we heard to the expected sounds. There was no longer an infinite possibility of sound combinations; they could be restricted by the alphabet. If I am correct and the aims of this lesson were for most students to be able to perform communicatively in a greeting and getting-to-know-others context, and acquired a basic understanding of the Hangeul alphabet and the construction of syllables, I believe that the aims were achieved.As I say, most of the students were able to perform in the greeting setting and to write their names. At the same time, some seemed extremely frustrated by the end of the lesson.
Many were drawn back by the fact that they did not understand everything that was being said by the teacher; they focused more on what they did not understand –which was plenty since we are true beginners– and got frustrated with their lack of understanding fully. Many said the lesson had moved too quickly from one activity to the next, not allowing enough time for information to be processed.It was difficult to take notes because of the speed the teacher introduced activities and for students that rely on writing to solidify memory it was challenging. Learners that rely on listening had a better time and did not experience the same level of frustration from learners of other styles.
The activities were mostly to develop listening (to the teacher and to other classmates) and speaking skills; the text provided, as for the dialogue which had been posted on the board in Roman characters for us to follow, seemed to be more of a guide for students pronunciation than on working on reading.As far as I am aware of reading implies the use of the script of the language studied, in this case the Hangeul alphabet, which was not used in our case. Therefore, we could say that the basis for the future development of reading skills was introduced when the Hangeul alphabet and its system was learned by us, but not that we read. In order to start developing some writing skills I would have shown the dialogue also in Hangeul and not just in Roman script. One could say, as mentioned above, that listening skills were performed the whole time the teacher spoke.
The teacher gave much input during the entire class, and we students built up our language based on what we took from her. The teacher repeated once and again the utterances from the dialogue both to the entire class and to specific students and pair of students when asked to or to correct pronunciation. There was certainly much more input than output although speaking was the skill students seemed more aware of performing. Through some drilling games and a question and answer game students produced what they had learned. The balance between input and output in speaking seemed appropriate, since production followed exposure to the language.
In this specific case and level more input than output is the balanced needed for successful learning to take place. As a concluding thought, I believe that in order to reduce stress, students seem to need to be aware of the objectives of the language class in order to be prepared for it and to work towards these objectives with the teacher. This, it seems to me, may help minimize some of the frustration that arises from lack of complete understanding, which is quite possibly unavoidable in a class of adult true beginners taught in a communicative approach.
