 |
| Mr. Thomas Santos providing a workshop on "Teaching in the Target Language Without Translation." |
THE AMERICAN EMBASSY'S REGIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE OFFICER
After Korean language classes, we attended a workshop by a guest speaker named Thomas Santos. He is the Regional English Language Officer (RELO) from the American embassy, and will be with us for a two-part workshop on teaching English in English in a Korean classroom.
While it may seem like an obvious concept at first, there is apparently a huge debate right now about teaching in the target language without any translation. I remember my four years of Spanish classes in high school, where my teachers would speak in English to teach Spanish. I never thought about it much - how in/effective this approach may be, or whether there were other strategies for teaching a foreign language - until I went to college and took more Spanish courses.
LEARNING SPANISH WITHOUT TRANSLATION
At UW, I experienced firsthand what it means to be taught a language by only hearing, speaking, and writing in that language. Although college-level Spanish was difficult, I was still able to derive comfort in how familiar this foreign language was to me. My "r"s rolled in a way that made me the envy of most of my classmates, and my pronunciations were diamond-cut in their precision.
LANGUAGES & SHARED HISTORIES OF COLONIZATION
In elementary (still living in the Philippines), I heard stories about how my mother's side of the family had Spanish blood. In junior high (once in the U.S.), I quickly developed a passion for learning more about Spanish-speaking countries - especially those in the Americas. It wasn't until college that I came to understand more that my affinity for things Spanish was historically-based.
My "r"s rolled enviably and my pronunciations were diamond-cut thanks to 333 years of Spanish colonization of the island-nation of the Philippines. My passion fixated more on the Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas because most shared a common history of being colonized by Spain. Language-learning, first with English, then with Spanish, and now with Korean, started on a thought-provoking note for me from the very start.
LEARNING KOREAN WITHOUT TRANSLATION
Our Korean language classes here in Jungwon are taught by professors from Korea University, one of the three "SKY" schools (Seoul, Korea, and Yonsei). They speak to us only in Korean - thereby providing a demonstration for those of us who have not yet experienced what it looks like to teach a language in the target language. Despite my sneaky little complaints over the length of class-time and the mind-numbing amount of memorization we have to do, at the end of the day, I recognize that receiving such a high-quality (and free) language instruction is an immense privilege - something that other Fulbright programs do not provide, but something which the Korean Fulbright program has ensured was included in our training.
Back to Mr. Santos. His workshop was very informative and very interactive, but one thing he said that has really impressed itself on my mind is this:
"To learn a new language is to lose an immense amount of power."
People around the room slowly nodded in agreement. Mr. Santos continued by saying that being a beginner can be especially infantilizing. More nods as minds everywhere connected what he was saying to our classroom experience, where teachers talk very. slowly. with. us. Just because they need to in order for us to understand! Since I have experience learning a foreign language myself, I feel more equipped for the job that's ahead of me. However, there is more equipping to be had and, even before this, maybe more experiences up ahead involving the loss of "an immense amount of power" before I can re-learn to place myself where my Korean students will be in my English classroom.
MY QUESTIONS FOR YOU
Do you speak another language? If so, how did you learn? Did you experience the immense loss of power that Mr. Santos talked about at the beginning of your journey to learn the language? If you don't speak another language, what is preventing you from doing so? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
