KSL Programs at Yonsei Univ.

 On this post, I want to take a look into the KSL programs at Yonsei University. In KLI (Korean Language Institute) program on campus, there are about 1,500 students learning Korean. Holy Mother! Yes, you can guess how many instructors are working there - 157 teachers. It's just a small tiny land of all foreigners. It indicates that these Korean learners have fed the school more than Severance Hospital has that Yonsei owns as one of biggest general hospitals in the country. Of course, the students are all over the world from neighboring countries like Japan and China to European and Americas. It's just crazy to bump into one onother in the halls without purpose and to stand in a long line in a cafe or a store at the building during the break. The system of the program runs in this way below:

• Number of Weeks : 10 weeks (per term)
• Hours of Instruction : 200 hours (4 hours/day X 5 days/week X 10 weeks)
• Class days : Monday to Friday
• Class Hours : 4 hours Morning session (9:00 am to 1:00 pm) or Afternoon session (1:40 pm to 5:30 pm)
•  Tuition: 1,600,000 won (about $1,600 per term)
• Number of Levels: 6 Levels (1 to 6 as advanced): Each term is for one level.
• Ideal Number of Students (per class): 12 at maximum 
• Duration of Each Class: 50 minutes   9-9:50/ 10:10:50/ 11:10-12:00/ 12:10-1:00

During the first two classes of the day, students take "Intensive" class which focuses on grammar and vocabulary practice. The following class as the third is the students' selection depending on their preferred skill to work on more. For example, there are Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening and Korean Literature. So, this period has students' moving to each room. And the last class is back to the classroom of 1st&2nd periods' to do some more extension activities using the structure and the vocab introduced from "Intensive".  Thus, students have the same teacher for the 1st, 2nd and 4th periods except for the 3rd period's elective one. Graduating from KLI qualifies that you can take a lecture at a university setting.

• The 6 Level Regular Course can be completed in one and a half years.
• The 8 Level Regular course can be completed in two years.
  : The 8 Level Regular Course has been specifically designed for native English speakers. This course provided only in the morning focuses on listening comprehension and speaking ability. Basic grammar and vocabulary will be thoroughly covered for those without any previous knowledge of Korean. Compared to Japanese and Chinese students whose learning speed has shown quite fast, people from Western culture (as we call) choose to learn Korean slowly from the beginning. I heard that their proficiency eventually reaches the higher than students from the 6 level-program do.

Also, I was interested to see the instructors' profiles. To begin with, they must have a Master's at least and their backgrounds are mostly Korean Education, Korean Literature and Linguistics, Korean Culture Study, and General Education. Yeah, that gave me a little moment to measure myself with them.

Anyway, this setting is not quite familiar to me considering where I came from as a second language center in a foreign country, and I wonder how effectively and efficiently this system goes with that copious number of students. I will have an opportunity of observing the classes all day soon.

To be continued after observation...

(Epilogue: GEEZE... WHERE IS MY ENGLISH!)

Halfway through ITKLI

The class at ITKLI (Institute of Training for Korean Language Instructors) has been halfway down to the end of the program. The picture above shows that we took a lecture of teaching method for each skill of language- reading, speaking, listenind and writing. Each professors are currently teaching at Korean Language Center (KLC) and the graduate school of Education of Korean as a second language at Yonsei University. While their lecturing, they showed several samples of materials which are used in KLC classroom. It's basically about the steps consisting of a class. It should be in this order below:

1. Review

2. Intro to today's lesson 

3. Pre step for each skill development (e.g. pre-reading)

4. Target lesson

5. Post step (e.g. post-reading)

We who learned the base of designing a class were supposed to try making materials for a specific skill-focused class and to present the class simulation with them in the following week (which was this week).

As you can see above, my team (13 people) divided into three small groups of four/five people in which each person is in charge of making a lesson plan on each different skill and of simulating on the presentation day. I got Writing part of my group and the other members gave me feedback on my first draft of class material. So did I when they made one.

 

 So, the afternoon class on Mon, Tue, Thur, and Friday ran by skills, and four teams were separated into four different skill-class with each professor who lectured aboout teaching mothod of the specific skill last week. On Monday, my team's skill was Writing. Yes, my presentation was kickoff out of all members'. The writing professor assigned us to design beginners' level. The presentation was given for 20 minutes per presenter and 10 minutes after it was for a feedback discussion, which made about 90 minutes occupy three presenters of us from each small group and we had a Q/A time with the professor.

The comments that the professor gave me was that I looked calm enough for the beginners considering my voice and speed as a teacher talk and the flow of the class with steps in the materials was smooth. The thing that I got advised to be careful is my Korean control with grammatical sentences in directing students. For instance, I didn't agree the ending stem of the sentence with the subject. This ungrammatical ending is used commonly almost everywhere like hospital, shops, and TV shows, so I unconsciously have it in my mother lauguage habit.

I realized how much important my Korean habit is; especially, when it with wrong grammar could affect my future students' language acquisition and it could probably be a good prey that students would hunt me with as they go up to the next level of proficiency.

Anyhow, 12 days has been down and 13 days to go from now on - that means we are about to go into the second half part. We still have contrastive analysis with English and Chinese following Japanese, and the intensive practice of making a lesson plan on grammar and vocabulary. At the end of the program, we have to teach real learners from KLC in their intensive course focusing on grammar and vocabulary.