Job Discussion Forums

[some waygug-in]

I am not quite sure how to write this, but here goes.

What am I talking about? Well, by "critical mass" I mean that when the student reaches a sufficient level of understanding to be able to function in the new language. (not necessarily be fluent)
I studied French in university for 2 years, and though I seemed to be learning during that time, I quickly forgot most of what I learned soon after I finished my courses. I think my biggest mistake was that I didn't go on an immersion course in Quebec where I could have practiced what I was learning.

I studied Spanish on my own for about 2 years prior to living in Mexico, and I was shocked by how little of the language I actually could understand upon arrival. It took me about 6 months of living and working in Mexico, (and still studying Spanish of course) before I reached
"critical mass". What I mean by this is that while I wasn't yet fluent, I did understand enough to be able to function in most situations.

I have been away from Mexico for about 3 years and I worried that I would lose my Spanish, but when I return, I find that it takes me about a week to get back into the swing of things.

Now I am in Korea, studying Korean, and I am wondering if I will ever reach that "critical mass" stage. I have been here 3 years and still my Spanish is way better than my Korean. I would even guess that the bit of French that I remember is better than my Korean.
Part of the problem is that I teach English all day and don't have a lot of time to devote to studying. A lot of the Korean courses are very poorly organized and don't seem to have a logical progression to them. Quite often, the courses will expect students to use vocabulary or gramatical structures that have not been formally presented yet. (I am not saying this is true of all courses, just the ones I have used) Another problem is that the courses try to rush the student through too many new structures without sufficient practice in each one.
I have been studying Korean for 3 years and I still can't function with an all Korean teacher. I have been trying that approach for the last couple of months and have found it to be one of the most difficult and frustrating experiences I have had. Often I can't understand the point of the exercise, and I can't understand any explanation the teacher gives. I'm afraid that I will just have to go back to bilingual classes until I have reached that "critical mass" stage.
God knows when that will be.

I am just curious as to what implications this has for those teachers who insist on English only in the classroom.

cheers

[struelle]

I don't recommend total English-only classes, but I do insist on using the L2 as a medium of instruction, only resorting to L1 to clear up difficulties in explaining complicated words. If a class is taught using translation, it really slows down the pace of learning and inhibits the process of 'thinking in English'.

On the other hand, translation is much more necessary at the very beginning levels of learning a language. After all, how can you rely on L2 to instruct when the student doesn't have a foundation of L2 vocab to draw on?

As for critical mass, I think it takes a relatively short time to achieve functionality in different situations. It took about a year for me to do this in Chinese, but after doing that, I wanted to really get cracking on expansions. This is way easier said than done. For example with food, you can learn the basics to order meals and drinks, but there is a ton of complexity to do with the type of food itself, how to prepare it, and other details.

Another big factor is if you enjoy the culture of the language you are studying. Language and culture can't be seperated. So it sounds like you learned Spanish quickly because you enjoyed the life in Mexico whereas the Korean culture may present more problems. Of course, a big aspect of culture is the role of teachers and how they conduct lessons. I would assume that Koreans tend to prefer a regimented style of learning, and lots of rote memorizations, etc. This may be the style your teacher is using in your lessons.

Steve

[some waygug-in]

I think you definitely have a point with regards to culture and whether or not the student is "into" the culture has a large bearing on their ability to aquire the new language.
I did love Mexico and it's culture, I wish I could say the same for Korea but such is not the case.

I don't agree though that this alone can explain why I have such difficulty with learning Korean. I haven't met anyone who after being here a year or so would be able to speak Korean better than I, although it may be possible if they were able to study full time.

I will say this, I have never run accross so many idiotic language courses as I have since I started trying to learn Korean.

As for my Korean teacher, to be fair, she's not a real teacher. She's only a university student who is doing this for the experience. I agree that too much translation is more of a hindrance than a help, but it is certainly nice to have it available when those moments arise. By those moments, I mean the times where I scratch my head and say to myself, " I have no clue what she is talking about, why she is talking about it or even what I am supposed to be learning from this".

cheers

[Lyov]

I really relate to your description of your Korean study. Right now I am studying Mongolian and i've run into the exact same problems. I've only been in Mongolian for five months and my language is doing pretty good but the most frusterating thing is to see people from other asian cultures pick up the language so quickly and so well whereas each step for me is such a struggle. My only though is just to keep memorizing words but I struggle with keeping all the words in my brain, they tend to fall out at odd moments.
Something else to add is that perhaps it is just a vocabulary thing because even when you know five out of six words in a sentence it might just be that sixth words that makes the sentence come alive with meaning. I had a foreign friend in China who learned how to say "How much is that?" before learning the numbers so she could only repeat the question without ever understanding the answer.

I feel for you and this is certainly a question that is pressing upon me as well.

~Lyov

[Roger]

Interestingly, no one of you guys mentioned how they are coping with READING in their target language. And yet, knowing how to read and write those words and phrases that you need at the beginning is of paramount importance. As you write down a word you memorise it far more efficiently tre rote-learning. The extra effort that goes into forming those letters that together make up a new vocable have this effect.

But the trouble with Korean, Japanese, Mongolian or CHinese is that you have to learn to write characters rather than phonetic symbols; this takes extra time and effort; you start at a far advanced stage in your life and must bring your level up to that of a local adult who has had the benefit of "studying" his mother20 or so years. You have special trouble looking up new lexical items in a dictionary written in your target language - in Chinese, for instance, you must first of all identify the root of the character, then count the strokes, then find it in your dictionary - you may waste one hour just trying to find 2 characters in your dictionary.

I found learning Chinese relatively easy except that I could, and snot look vocabulary up independently; oh yes, occasionally I find them, but in the majority of cases I despair before I find them. That's a hell of frustration for small lasting effects.

Yet, I believe, based on some of my experience, that you have an inner eye that "reads" those vocables as you speak in the target lingo; I often visualise a word in a foreign language, and presto! I realise what it means, and how to insert it in a sentence!
But this is not possible in Chinese so long as you cannot rea/write it.

[some waygug-in]

Korean is actually written in a phonetic script and I can read it quite well, that is, I can pronounce the syllables. It's trying to make any sense of what I've read that I have problems.

For me, a big problem is memory. I can study something over and over and still not be able to remember it. Quite different from Spanish of French where I could always relate new vocabulary to some similar word in English.

Then there is the problem of syntax, as Korean is backwards in relation to English. This is exedingly difficult to master because even if I know all the right words, I still have to try to arrange them in the correct order and by that time, the person to whom I was trying to speak has moved on down the street or given up on me as some kind of social reprobate.

Then there is the problem of adding topic and subject and object markers, which don't exist in English so they have no direct translation. These are simple enough with short sentences, but when longer sentences arise it can get pretty confusing.

Then there is the problem of the myriad of verb forms. Koreans always teach foreigners the basic 3 or 4 forms, but then they speak using the many other forms that I haven't studied, so the verb becomes unrecognizable to me and I'm back to square 1.


By the way, I am curious about Mongolian. I've heard that it is written with cryllic script, but I have no idea what it sounds like. I've also heard that it may be a distant cousin to Korean. I'm not sure about that, I am just curious.

Cheers

[dmb]

[Lyov]

Modern Mongolian is written in Crylic and is a phonetic alphabet. Old mongolian is downward script but is also phonetic (very different than chinese). Compared to chinese it is easy to read and write.
Mongolian is a distant cousin of Korean and there and supposedly some grammatical relations. Mongolian uses 7 suffix cases and four infixes (which are quite rare in asian languages, does Korean use infixes?) Its a subject object verb language and it has very peculiar (from my perspective) use of verbs and auxillary verbs. The phonetics is usually the most difficult part (until you start figuring out the grammer lol) and is gutteral. For me and most westerners the most distinguishing feature is the use of the trilled 'r' which is a constant feature and can frequently be very distinct and gives the language as a whole a very distinct sound.
Mongolian grammer was originally a conglomorate language based on the various languages used by those people known as the Hunus (or later and in inaccurate phonetic translation the Huns) and was then grammically reorganized around sandscrit grammer but was later mixed with Tibetan, Turkish, some arabic and lately Russian, as well as a few others. So basically the complication have been compounding for a long time. The conquest of Chingiis Xan proved to be more linguistically complicating than anything else and the present language reflects that. The current cryllic script is a direct translation from old mongolian and was evidently written by the demands of Russia in a very short time and has numerous irregularities.
I'm curious to know more about Korean grammer if you'd be willing to share.

[Sheep-Goats]

The L2-only (English only) practice has its roots in the Direct Method in the early 1900s and is upheld/supported by behavoirists (and to a lesser degree strict communicative approach people) these days. What I'm saying is that it's not wholly supported. An analagous situation, quoted rom the beginning of Grammar Practice Activities by Ur:

[some waygug-in]

I'm not sure if I am grammaticaly aware enough to fully answer your question.

Korean uses a lot of suffixes, some of them are a means of denoting various levels of respect or deference, others denote tense. Lack of them denotes familiarity or in some cases authority. I guess Korean is similar to Japanese in this way. Younger people are always supposed to use "respectful words" when speaking to an elder, even someone 1 or 2 years older and as a result of this Koreans seem to have a problem with the idea of making "friends" with anyone who is not their own age. Korean even goes so far as to have a separate set of verbs that are used when referring to elders. (not all verbs, but some)

Others, the ones I haven't really studied yet, so I can't be too sure about them.

I am not aware of any "infixes" but there are a lot of things about Korean that I am not aware of yet. Unless that would be referring to the subject, topic and object markers, but these come after the corresponding words in the sentence so I guess they would be suffixes as well. Korean uses "post-positions" (I don't know if that is a correct grammatical term)
in place of what are prepositions in English.

When koreans are trying to show positive emotion or be emhatic, they tend to stress their "h" sound in the back of their throats. It kind of sounds like they are preparing to 'hork up a loogie'. I found this very unsettling at first. I kept thinking that people where preparing to spit on me.
I find Koreans very loud and boisterous and what seems normal to them comes accross as quite rude to westerners. This is a hard thing to get used to and I don't know if I will ever really get accustomed to it, I just have to remember that in Korean culture it's considered OK.

Anyway, peace and all the best wherever you may be teaching.

Cheers


To Sheep-Goats:
Hmmm. I am not sure what to make of your response.
I used the term 'critical mass' to talk about something related to my own personal experiences when learning languages. I suppose from a more academic perspective it would seem quite naive, perhaps it would be better to use the term "student confidence" or something similar.

I guess what I was trying to describe would be the moment or period when I say to myself, "now I'm really starting to get this", as opposed to the previous period when I just felt like saying, "how on Earth will I ever get this?"

Cheers

[The G-stringed Avenger]

Asians can pick up each others' languages so quickly the same reason Europeans can learn each others' languages fast - the similarities between them. Korean and Japanese are very similar, both in grammar and the features they share such as honorific verbs, directional suffixes, postpositions, subject and object markers and the three demonstratives. Let's not forget the similarities in vocabulary between them, not only from history but also because of loan-words (Korean uses a few thousand Japanese loan-words, for example).
While Chinese grammar is different from Japanese and Korean, there is a lot of similar vocabulary (Shui in Chinese and Sui in Japanese means 'water', Shan in Chinese and San in Japanese means 'mountain'), and all 3 cultures use Chinese characters - which have retained the same meanings in most cases - although Korean has largely marginalised their everyday use.
Compare the progress a Japanese speaker and an English speaker would make learning German, studying the same amount. As German shares with English features such as articles, the present perfect tense and numerous similarities in vocabulary, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the English speaker would make far greater progress in a short time, given that German is not an especially alien language to him. The Japanese learner would have a much tougher time as he would have no common cultural or linguistic affinities with German that he could draw upon.