Lesson Course TEFL

Problems for learners in south koreaAs korea attracts more and more foreigners that live and visit the country, koreans are likely to be exposed to English and pick up certain vocabulary words. This is especially true for koreans that live in the cities according to the Frankfurt International School. Darian Godfrey of tesolcourse.com addresses the fact that a typical ESL student in korea has acquired a vocabulary of English words that they use on a daily basis. These words would be called loan words, where English words have found their way into the korean language. Such examples would include: coffee, wife, hamburger etc. M.S. Park whose article was featured on koreanalyst.wordpress.com explained how these loan words or konglish words need to be un-learned by korean esl students. The korean language does not conjugate verbs in relation to the subject of the sentence. The Frankfurt International school rationalizes that this is one of the reasons why korean esl students have such difficulties remembering the ?s? to end the verb. Park writes that there are no words in the English language that end with the ?s? sound, which is why shirts becomes ?shirtsuh.? M.S. Park further explains that korean words always end with a vowel. So wife, would be pronounced ?wifuh?, and hamburger, ?hamburguh?. English words can also be wrongly put together that makes an awkward sounding dialogue. tesol online courses gives such examples as ?eye shopping and ?live beer? as incorrect uses of loan words in the by korean native speakers. Also, koreans have a tough time with the r, v, f, and ?th? sounds when they are pronouncing English words. So when it comes time to teach words that have these consonant letters, students can mispronounce the words, this turns into ?dis? and coffee turns into ?koppee.? Choral repetition, practice conversations and audio lessons can help students improve on their pronunciation. This is why English vocabulary words can be stressful for some esl students to learn. Ken Eckert brings to light that the three main grammar points that he has seen korean esl students struggle with are: prepositions, articles, and word order. Eckert explains how confusing it can be to learn prepositions by giving such examples as ?why do we ?ride on a motorcycle? or ?in a car? but just ?go home? from this example you can get a glimpse of how confusing prepositions can be to the native korean speaker. There is no easy way to teach prepositions other than students just have to practice, and memorize how they are used in a sentence. Articles are just as complex for korean esl students to pick up. Eckert likens English language articles to the masculine, feminine, and neutral form ?the? in German. Once again its hard for students to grasp this grammar rule, but in time through repetition ESL korean students will grasp on to the usage of articles to practice and repetition. The last complex grammar point labeled by Eckhert is the English language word order system. The English language word order (S-V-O) is only slightly different from korean language word order of (S-O-V), yet reversing the positions of the object and the verb make producing English sentences that much harder for korean students. Darian Godfrey, who writes for tesol courses online, agrees with Eckert that word order is a major source of difficulty for korean students. This is why common mistakes have students putting the verb at the end of the sentence where it doesn?t belong. There exceptions to every rule. Paul Shoebottom wrote that students should practice with English sentences that do not have the traditional S-V-O word order. This will help students to better conquer the English language sentence structure. The English language can be tough for a native speaker, so I can only imagine the difficulty that esl students go through. This is especially true for korean esl students because the language is vastly different from our own. Hangul has characters where English has a Romanized alphabet. This is why the earlier students can learn a second language the better. Sources Eckert, Ken ?Some Help for Teaching korean esl students? November 18, 2011. http://keneckert.com/esl/learners.htm Godfrey, Darian ?Problems for Learners in South korea? November 18, 2011. http://www.tesolcourse.com/tesol-course-articles/problems-learners/article-05-dg.php Park, M.S. ?The korean Learner of English: English-korean Cross-Linguistic Challenges? November 18, 2011. http://koreanalyst.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-korean-learner-of-english-english-korean-cross-linguistic-challenges/ Shoebottom, Paul ?The Differences between English and korean? November 18, 2011. http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm