STARTBODY

Teach English in Hengling Zhen - Jinzhong Shi

Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Hengling Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Jinzhong Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.

It is commonly said that the English language is among one of the most challenging. A plethora of tenses, exceptions to conjugations, and possible ways to pronounce any given word makes learning English a marathon to anyone past their prime language learning years. On the other hand, the Korean language is incredibly different. With a modern alphabet designed to be phonetic, language learners can quickly and reliably pronounce almost any word they encounter. The Korean grammar system is based in Eastern languages, giving sentences a very different structure than Romance languages. The differences between Korean and English make teaching English to Korean speakers a challenge. This essay in particular will explore the peculiarities of English and how they are perceived by Korean speakers. Identifying parts of speech can be an initial challenge to Korean speakers. In the Korean language, parts of speech are often marked by their own particles, one syllable tagged at the end of the word to indicate its function. In English, we have no such particles. Indeed the reader and listener must discern each word’s function as they digest the sentence, using their previous knowledge of sentence structure and context. Additionally, the concept of articles is foreign to Korean speakers. There is no way to specify “a” or “the” in Korean; this concept and the difference between the two must be taught to Korean speakers, who may continue to struggle with articles for many lessons or even years. Verbs are also peculiar in English. The twelve tenses and seven ways to discuss the future are mind blowing to Korean speakers. In Korean, there are fewer tenses with far fewer exceptions to conjugation rules. The “perfect” and “perfect continuous” forms of the present, past, and future tenses are not found in Korean and are a challenge to discern. The active and passive voice are also a peculiar part of the English language. Although they are essential perhaps not the most challenging topic, it is much simpler to identify in Korean. Verbs are modified with the presence of a syllable to show if they are being used in an active or passive form. English has no such tool to quickly identify this, and one must use context and previous knowledge of the English to become familiar with identifying voice. The concept of plural versus singular plays a much larger role in English than in Korean. Korean speakers are not required to identify if a noun is plural or singular, and verbs are not conjugated differently based on plurality. If a Korean speaker so desires, they may specify how many of a noun there are or add a particle expressing plurality. However, these are not required and the absence of the plural particle does not necessarily indicate that the noun is singular. In any case, verbs are conjugated the same way. One aspect that may be a relief to Korean speakers is that there are not any grammatical changes to English based on who is speaking to whom. In Korean, there are different grammar and vocabulary rules based on honorifics, which play a large part in Korean culture. To get this wrong could be disrespectful or embarrassing to the speaker and listener. However, in English, there is nothing such as this. There are a few formalisms and vocabulary words that make one sentence more polite than another, but nothing on the scale that Korean requires. Thus, Korean speakers get a bit of relief for once!


ENDBODY