I think that if you choose to live in a country where the language spoken is different to you own its only right that you should learn the language. However in a year in Thailand I learnt very little Thai. I decided that, with my undisciplined nature, the only way I will learn Korean is by going back to school.
I duly signed up for a block of seven weeks of lessons, four hours a week, which started on Monday. I went to bed early on Sunday night as I wanted to be all switched on and wide awake for my first time back in a classroom (as a student) in 10 years.
My plan somewhat backfired though. At 3am I was wide awake and sleep was not going to come back. I ended up watching Bad Boys, then the extra time of the World Cup final – so I actually saw the interesting bit of it, then The Holiday. At 9am it was time to get the bus into town to my lesson. Pretty much as soon as I sat down I started falling asleep….not quite the start to the day I’d had in mind!
The first lesson was intense. I went in with no prior Korean knowledge, and very quickly felt like the thick kid in class! Everyone else seemed to already have some knowledge of the Korean alphabet, or they were just very quick at picking it up. I came away feeling overwhelmed and with several pages of homework to do.
Not wanting to feel so clueless in my second lesson I actually studied for once. I must have spent a good three hours trying to learn and practice what we had been over in class. Its just not going in though!
I was feeling quite nervous about going back for the second lesson, I knew that I wouldn’t pass the test we were having on the letters and words we’d covered in the first lesson, and that really didn’t inspire me to want to go! But I didn’t want to quit either. It was only as I was on the bus heading into town that I realized that it wasn’t so ridiculous that I was struggling – the amount we’d covered was like learning the entire English alphabet in one go!
Surely the second lesson couldn’t be so bad…….Oh it could, and so much worse! The teacher is a maniac! The amount of work she covers in an hour and forty-five minutes I’d teach in about six hours! The class was marketed as a beginner class, and granted it does start at the beginning, but it moves forward at a million miles an hour. I did wonder if its just me, I know I’m a slow learner, especially with languages, but I’m starting to feel a bit better speaking to other people that have done the course previously. Almost all of them have said that they didn’t like how the class was taught, and that it covered too much ground too quickly. Between that and the amount of homework that’s given a lot of them quit. We’ve been give 15 pages of the work book to complete and 50 words to learn before the next lesson. Completing the pages wont be a problem as its practicing writing the letter and words, the copying is easy, it’s the understanding that’s hard and takes the time!
It seems like such a shame that the course isn’t better designed and taught, after all the people that go are going because they really want to learn the language, but from what I can tell what the class actually does is alienate people………or maybe that’s just me!
Julies Jaunts 