Reflection Paper 1
Born and raised in South Korea, I grew up speaking only Korean. However, after I moved to America when I was 8 years old, I started to slowly lose my fluency in Korean. Coming to America posed a great challenge on me. I had to start learning the native language, which was English. My brother did not have a hard time adjusting to speaking only English because of his numerous tutoring sessions that he had learning English in Korea. However, I did not have such a luxury.
When I arrived in America, I was shocked at how different everything was, especially the spoken language. When I went to my first class in the 2nd grade, I was paired with another Korean speaking student that translated for me. However, my grades of D’s and F’s showed that this was ineffective. After the 2nd grade, I started to understand a few of the sentences and what other people were saying. By the start of 4th grade, I was able to understand everything and speak somewhat fluently. This was in part, due to being indulged into the culture and having multiple ways of learning English. I heard it, saw it, read it, and had to speak it.
However, learning English and being only exposed to English had its drawbacks. I was slowly starting to forget Korean. I was having a harder time understanding and speaking fluently. I did speak Korean with my parents, but I started to stutter more.
In high school, I took three Spanish classes. I had a hard time keeping up in those Spanish classes, barely managing to get a B in those classes. I did enjoy learning a new language and speaking the language with my friends who were also enrolled in the same course. I found out that the best way I learned the language was through flash cards, seeing and speaking the words in both English and Spanish. This was only effective with learning vocabulary words. To actually formulate sentences, I had to practice by speaking to my friends. This proved very effective and I still have some of the skills to speak Spanish today. My teacher in high school also utilized many games to try and teach us Spanish in a fun way. This was somewhat effective due to the execution. During the games, only two people went at a time in a span of 50 minutes. This would only give a few times for the students to actually play the game. During the tests, I was getting low grades. This was due to the fact that the test was all spoken and I had a hard time understanding the professor. My weakest aspect of learning Spanish was the listening side. I performed better when the test was written down and I could go at my own pace. During this Korean learning session; however, I would like to learn how to write more proficiently, which allows me to communicate with my grandparents.
Comments
Oh Jacob, such a silly little boy.