TEFL Coudersport Pennsylvania

As I prepare for my first year of teaching in South Korea soon, this topic struck me as quite practical and useful as a teacher of esl to Koreans. It's now more evident to me that understanding some of the main differences between Korean and english will help me to cater lesson plans to address common problems for South Koreans when learning to speak english. Besides sentence structure differences, scholars attribute problems with pronunciation with the differing alphabets. Basically certain sounds in english are simply not present in the Korean language. These are sounds like –th, -v , -z , and –f . Words like “teeth”, “vest”, “zoo”, and “fish” might give a Korean student some difficulty when speaking. One reason Koreans have difficulty shaping their mouths into these sounds is because they rarely have done so before. To address this problem a teacher will need to spend time on these problem sounds, showing students how to shape their mouths. This could allow for some fun times in the classroom by introducing some tongue twisters or songs to sing for practice. Additionally, the students may not have heard much modeling of the english language before. Students may be able to read english very well, but have no idea how it is supposed to sound (especially when the Korean alphabet tends to be quite phonetic, yet english is not nearly as phonetic). It is then quite necessary for the students to get practice in the classroom including listening exercises, choral repetitions, role-plays, and consistent reminders about english pronunciation. Another problem South Korean students of esl may have is the fact that each consonant must have its own syllable. Therefore, english words like “edge” and “whisks” would be a challenge to pronunciate. The Korean language doesn't conjugate verbs in the same way as english, so a student may not understand why he or she can say, “I eat”, but needs to say, “He eats”. Additionally, almost all words in Korean end in a vowel sound that releases the consonant at the end. This typically means Koreans have difficulty ending words in a consonant, meaning they will add a vowel at the end if there isn't one. Again, it seems the best way to address these issues are consistent reminders and a lot of practice listening and speaking. It was interesting to me to learn that the Korean language is a syllable-timed language, meaning that the right intonation and stress of syllables is very important. I can imagine that this would be very confusing for a student of esl and that it would result in all sorts of tones, stresses and unconfident speech. As a native speaker of english the tones and stresses come naturally, and so I will need to continue to study these in order to help students successfully utilize these important indicators of meaning and mood in everyday communication. Another intriguing theory on difficulty with english pronunciation are that many children have a short frenulum, a tissue in the tongue, which can prevent lateral movements of the tongue to produce some sounds in english. Some parents intending the best for their children spend thousands of won for their children to receive surgery and speech therapy so their child can better compete with peers who are increasingly pressed to master english. Scientists are unsure of how much difference this surgery makes on a persons' ability to speak english, but it has seemed to help some. Lastly, one of the main and likely most frustrating problems for teachers and students is “Konglish”, or Koreanized english. Konglish is most commonly found in the form of “loan words” from english. This means Koreans may use “pija” for “pizza” etc. This is a great problem because it will take a lot of correcting and possibly be confusing for the students. However, “Konglish” could also present a great stepping-stone into learning english for the students because many words will sound very familiar. I am very glad to be aware of these common pronunciation problems for Koreans. It seems evident that the best way to combat these issues is to consistently encourage, remind, model for, and practice problem sounds with the students. Doing these things, a teacher should be well on his or her way to truly helping their students become accurate and fluent in english. Resources: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm http://hiteacher.com/korea/teaching-english-to-koreans.htm http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1korean.html http://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-course-articles/problems-learners/article-05-dg.php