Since primary school, we were required to take English classes every semester. However, the classes back then were not for us to use English in our daily life, but to take a test and get a good grade. My teachers would stress a lot on grammar or vocabulary or phrases when it came to tests, so I was trained mostly at reading and listening instead of speaking and writing. This flawed training system resulted in my lack of confidence in speaking. What I’ve learned in the classroom is not that useful in my real life, such as having a real conversation with people in English. It became better when I went to my high school when almost everyone around me was speaking English, but my conversation skills did not leap until I came here.
I started watching Korean variety shows and k-dramas since my eighth grade, and some Korean words started to sound familiar to me while I don’t know the exact meaning of the sentences. The summer before I came to Richmond, I finally decided to take a Korean class, since I’ve wanted it for so long. It was a traditional class as well, with one teacher standing and teaching and five students sitting in front of her. What makes it different was that for each class, our teacher would chat with us in Korean for twenty minutes. If we wanted to use any words or phrases that we haven’t learned, she would explain it to us. I learned the words fast, so at our next class, I would try to use the phrases we learned the day before. In this way, I would feel like I’ve learned it in my heart. I still need to work on vocabulary and reading in Korean a lot more, but this kind of classes lead me to my goal as having conversations with people faster.
From my learning experience, encouragement and recognition give me confidence and motivate me the most. I’m usually more comfortable in small classes compared with big lectures. In the FIRE model, I lean towards a factual, rational and evaluative student. In “What’s your learning style”, my highest score is in Auditory. It says that I learn by hearing and listening. I got the highest scores in Musical and Self in “Multiple Intelligence Assessment” as well, which shows again that I learn by speaking and listening. As a result, for my language learning experience, I find study partners or small learning groups suit me the best. I can practice by speaking and listening, and I will be able to get feedback pretty quickly. To expand my learning activities, I can break down the sentences in tv shows, learning vocabs from lyrics of K-pop music, or even try out the script of K-dramas. As I believe, learning new things in a familiar scenario will make the memory stay longer than usual. These activities different from daily conversations or simply grammar points will bring more fun and interactions to my learning experience.
