Aside from noticeably improving my knowledge of and ability in Korean, I also find that being a full-time(-ish, more on this later) student is great for reflecting on language teaching and learning. Here are a few reflections that have stuck with me:
- Obligation is a Good Thing: Maybe one of the biggest things I get out of language classes is the obligation to show up, participate, do homework, etc. Outside of language classes, it is incredibly easy to just not use the language, and this can be true whether you are in an immersion setting or in foreign language setting. Hell, I'm married to a speaker of my target language, but because she speaks English incredibly well, it affords me the opportunity to be lazy. And I take that opportunity much more than I should. This summer I had to schlep 1.5 hours each way across Seoul for my 5-days-a-week classes, during morning rush hour. It was not always a fun commute, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. Having an obligation to learn and use the language is key. In my research on online language learning platforms, this is often the biggest missing element.
- I am 99.99999% in favor of Target Language Only classrooms: With all due respect to translanguaging/plurilingualism/plurilingual repertoires/etc., in a language-focused classroom there's nothing quite like near-exclusive use of the target language. Having to struggle through your misunderstandings and botched expression pushes you to recall words and structures as you re-work things. Asking for help or clarification in the TL in the classroom prepares you to do the same outside of the classroom. I relished being the only L1 English speaker in my class this summer. There were multiple Vietnamese and Chinese speakers, who all made great efforts to stick to Korean during class, which I really appreciated. Occasionally, though, there would be a side-huddle among some shared L1 speakers... which was a little jarring, honestly. Everyone else just had to sit and wait! Luckily my classmates were very kind about reporting back to the group in Korean.
- Bilingual Dictionaries: Oh, right, that .00001%? I fully support individual use of bilingual (electronic/web) dictionaries. Especially as vocabulary gets more advanced and abstract. It's just such a huge time saver and I found my understanding of Korean words was better after a few seconds looking at definitions and examples in the KOR-ENG Naver dictionary. In some cases, teacher explanations led to confusions for me, likely due to my own deficiencies in lexical knowledge.
- Meaningful Communication - 말처럼 쉽지 않다 ("Not as easy as saying it"): The program I attended prides itself on it's communicative focus, and in many ways, they get it right. For example, we had an assignment where were gave a little presentation on a news article and then presented three topically related questions for whole-class discussion. This was probably my favorite week in class- we spent so much time talking about current events in Korea and elsewhere that we were genuinely interested in, and using grammar and vocabulary we had learned came naturally when we needed it. On the other hand, I think it is still common pedagogical practice to also spend a fair amount of time doing the whole "go around the room and have everyone make a sentence using the target grammar structure." This does involve speaking, but it's not really meaningful or contextualized communication. It also means no one else is talking!
- Language students can have a lot on their plates: I hinted at this previously, but even though you might be enrolled full-time in an intensive language program, you might end up having a lot of other responsibilities to deal with. In my case, I had some work scoring essays and teaching an online class. I also became a father! Some of my classmates were putting in lots of hours at part-time jobs to support themselves. This kind of stuff makes it hard to do homework/projects as well as you'd like, and can negatively impact your sleep schedule, too. Some students do kind of get to "live the dream" where they have lots of time to study class material and really take advantage of immersion/social opportunities, but not everyone gets to do that. This really made me think about the expectations we have for international students in intensive English programs back home. Many are young and on generous scholarships, but not all of them. On the teaching side of things, I think that means we should really do our best to take advantage of class time, such as creating opportunities to write or work on presentations in class (with teacher and peer support!), and perhaps not assign too much weight to "busywork" like workbook pages that are so easy to just assign as homework.
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