Korean Fields — Teaching I
Author: 106501054 Dino 謝銘鴻
I am a NCCU student and now studying Introduction to Language Learning. In this semester, my group and I are going to learn Korean, aiming to be able to have basic conversation with native speakers in the end of this semester. Details and processes of my learning will be recorded in this website, Korean Fields. Welcome!
Today (2020.12.18) is the first day of our group’s Korean teaching. We will teach Korean, which we have learnt for over 14 weeks, to other groups. Eva and I will be in charge of the teaching of the first week.
Purpose
Our group aims to let student acquire the language of inquiring direction and different places in Korean. Therefore, we will introduce basic vocabulary of places, such as restaurant, post office, school, etc. In addition, we will introduce some handy sentence patterns about inquiring the direction of certain places, imitating the scenario where people need other’s guidance.
Teaching Material
For the first week, we have developed two teaching materials. First one is a handout with blanks that need the students to fill in. These blanks are all the contents in the lecture, and we encourage students to write down the pronunciation of different vocabulary and sentence patterns.
The pronunciation written down on the handout could be in any form. Students can write in English, Chinese Phonetic Alphabets, Chinese words, or any phonetic system, so long as students are familiar with that system and are able to memorize the Korean words by that. Perhaps some students will consider it too casual; however, we believe that the phonetic aspect of a language should be mostly considered in the process of learning language.
The second teaching material is a sheet for student to practice what they have acquire during the class. There are some questions on this sheet, and students are encouraged to utilize their handouts to complete these questions.
The first question set is the vocabulary part. There are six pictures of different places, and students have to write down the correct answers to each picture. Of course, the answers to the questions would not be the Korean words, but rather the phonetic systems used in students’ handouts. The second questions set is matching of sentence patterns and the sounds. Students have to match the sentence meaning to the correct sounds. By this practice, we anticipate that students will develop oral abilities to communicate in Korean.
Teaching Scene
Firstly, I introduce the vocabulary which students will use in their conversation afterwards. Since I only have 15 minutes, I use the repetition method to strengthen students’ memory of these vocabulary lest they will forget due to the burden of learning is too heavy for them.
Then, Eva continues to introduce the sentence patterns. Similarly, she does not teach too many new sentences in this lecture so that students have more chances to memorize what they have learnt today.
After that, we arrange a quiz for students, which is based on the sheet we have distributed beforehand. The purpose of this quiz is not only to sharpen students’ knowledge of their learning, but also to preview the activity we plan to have next week.
Students’ Feedback
Many students have commended that our group have done a great job on our teaching contents, which are not too heavy for them as Korean first learners. It shows that our strategies do work to some extend: students would not feel stressful and would be able to learn Korean without burden. However, some of the students think that the loading could be increased, which means that we have to think of a way to enrich our teaching contents for those who are capable, or willing, to learn more than average students. Also, some students have mentioned that the teachers’ pronunciation could be improved. I am aware that my pronunciation should indeed be upgraded. This is the most disadvantage I have during the process of teaching.
In general, our group has a great performance in the first teaching activity. If I could improve my pronunciation, everything would be perfect.
