Essay Contest Result

The 21st Century may shortly be defined through one word: globalization - the era of digitalization and internet, of freedom to travel around the globe, international communication and knowledge without boundaries. People everywhere are becoming more and more interconnected, and the internet gives the privilege of knowledge at the distance of a click. We are more and more interested in other cultures and also influenced by the abundance of data we can find regarding certain places, people, foods, etc. But what defines us as humans? One of the factors that comes along with the distinction from other species is articulated language and the power of communication. In our days, we have reached the point of a lingua franca around the world, which is the English language, thanks to its socioꠓhistorical context. But people are in a constant thirst for knowledge, so in order to expand the power of communication, and also in liaison with the times of globalization and advanced technology, we are also studying other foreign languages, sometimes with a clear scope, and other times just for pleasure or as a hobby. There is a large palette of languages we can choose to study, and they may represent more or less of a challenge depending on our native languages, thus, for example, a native Spanish speaker will find it easier to comprehend and assimilate Italian, than a native Korean speaker. Why is that so? Because different languages may be "descendants" of an ancient common language, leading to similarities in grammar, vocabulary, semantics, phonology, and so on. It is of utmost importance that instructors of a foreign language are aware of the linguistical differences and similarities in languages at a "cellular" level in order for the students to be able to convert and express another language's coding.

This opinion essay is constructed similarly to an article, portraying the author's personal opinions based on her own studies, knowledge, and experience studying different foreign languages, understanding as such the struggles of learning the system of a new language and the mistakes that need to be avoided during the teaching process. Studying a foreign language effectively and with a clear goal requires professional assistance via a teacher or an instructor, thus we shall tackle the specter of language acquisition in a formal setting, not self-studying, although a change in formal instruction of a language may lead to an upgrade of self-study materials too.

To bring a base to our discussion, I shall give a few details regarding why I personally feel that there is a need for the Korean language to be taught in a differentiated manner according to the students' native tongues. My mother tongue is Romanian, part of the Latin family of languages. Just like most European people, I have studied English since kindergarten, and during middle school, I had to choose a second foreign language, my choice being French. These languages are similar in the way of constructing sentences and vocabulary, although English is a Germanic language, it is easy to acquire thanks to the abundance of English contents we are used to see and hear all around us since childhood. My undergraduate studies' major was English and Russian linguistics and literatures, along with the necessary courses to be qualified to teach these languages, thus here is the start of my real understanding of why it is important to teach a foreign language differentiated according to the students' linguistic background. During a semester abroad in Moscow, I had the opportunity to study at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, and that is where I have witnessed how different teachers would instruct, fully in Russian, different groups of students: if the student's native language is Latin based, then a Russian language professor who is an expert in Romance languages linguistics would teach the class, the same for Germanic languages, and also differentiated for Chinese, Japanese, South-East Asian languages native speakers, and so on. My perspective is that of a European who speaks a Romance language with Slavic and Balkan influences over the language's phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. These five key factors represent the mechanism of a language, each language carrying its own specificities and variations. Further details regarding other languages are redundant to our situation, so let us delve into our point of interest – Korean as a foreign language. Personally, I have studied the basics of Korean language (the alphabet, important words and phrases, most important grammar points, honorific language, etc.) in Romania, under the guidance of a Romanian teacher and following the King Sejong Institute's manuals, and then I have studied Korean language for one year in a Korean University as a preparatory language year prior to my master's studies in Seoul.

The instructors of Korean language in Korea are definitely very well prepared to teach the language from a native speaker's perspective, but what I have found as an impediment is the lack of linguistic awareness towards other linguistical systems, or specificities of different language groups. One does not have to be fluent or even know another language to be able to understand the mechanics behind another tongue, they just must be aware of some key elements. European languages speakers are used to understanding and studying a foreign language that has noun cases and verb conjugations, word families, and a phrase structure of subject-verb-object, which is the same as their native language. The problem that appears with Korean language is that it is an agglutinative language, meaning that the grammar and understanding of language is based on particles that adhere to words in order to form meaning, other languages that possess this specificity being Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, some Uralic languages, and a few others. More so, a Korean sentence is structured as subject-object-verb, meaning that the translation cannot happen mot-a-mot in the student's mind, but they would have to understand and master all the five factors of the language's system in order to become fluent. Romance languages have genders, but Korean language does not present this particularity. All these differences will bring up questions on the students' side, and the Korean language instructor should be able to answer and give proper explanations in order for their students to assimilate and remember the particularities of the Korean language.

A group of Korean language learners cannot be diverse, in the sense that it cannot contain both Romance language speakers, Chinese speakers, Hungarian speakers, Japanese speakers, etc., as they require different explanations and methods of instruction. Speakers of Spanish, for example, struggle in general with the pronunciation of certain Korean language sounds, so they would need extra care and classes to correct their pronunciation, while Russian speakers may need explanations and comparisons of the location particles –에/-에서 through the respective corresponding noun cases in their language – accusative and prepositional cases. These apparently small details may help the students to become fluent faster and more effectively, while also having a feeling of closeness with the Korean language, in contrast with how most of them feel – the struggle of studying an "alien"language, too different from theirs. Far from the truth, as the more one understands and finds good linguistic explanations over time, the more they realize that semantics and pragmatics are conveyed in a similar manner in all languages since the human mind is constructed in the same way; the core of the problem is finding the right pieces and morphological substructure that stand behind the scary differences in between languages.

Thus, for an improvement of the teaching of Korean as a foreign language I bring forth two proposals. Firstly, the preparation of Korean language instructors. It is not my intention to imply that the instructors must be fluent speakers of another language, but I only suggest linguistic awareness towards other languages and their particularities. The techniques of teaching Korean are different between instructors who have studies Korean language and literature in order to teach Korean language native speakers, and instructors of Korean language for foreigners. Instructors of Korean as a foreign language need to be prepared to understand the most common mistakes different groups may make, and also the necessary comparisons and explanations for important concepts in order to bring understanding and trigger the natural acquisition of the language. My second proposal is targeting the remake of Korean language manuals in collaboration with linguistic experts in other languages, thus a joint effort of philology masters in both Korean language and other languages to reach a consensus and target different groups specifically through the manuals of Korean as a foreign language. Just as how a Korean student studies English differently than a Dutch, Argentinian or Bulgarian one, Korean language manuals, especially at the beginner to intermediate levels, should contain friendly explanations and comparisons with what the student knows already from a linguistic point of view. More so, there is a tendency to reserve the early teaching of Hanja elements to students whose native tongue is Chinese or Japanese, under the pretext that other students from different countries would not be able to fully understand or memorize Hanja until they reach an advanced level. In my opinion, this is a great mistake, and Hanja should be introduced as early as possible along with the first steps of studying Korean language, as this would build the base of future complicated words and awareness towards the morphology of Korean language. If we view the study of Korean language as a puzzle, studying Hanja since the beginning is similar to putting together pieces of puzzles in similar colors, leading to a faster completion of the puzzle and the polishing of skills when it comes to making a more complicated puzzle.

To conclude, Korean language is becoming more and more of an interest around the globe thanks to the Korean Government's great soft power capabilities. In order to maintain and boost this interest, I have proposed that the method of teaching Korean as a foreign language be upgraded and molded upon the needs of students depending on their mother tongue. This article represents only the mere beginning of an idea, as clear and specific proposals imply an advanced and prolonged professional research in order to bring high quality results. Korean is a beautifully melodic language, with a rich culture to back it up, so I truly believe that the experts should take advantage of the present global popularity of Korean language and improve teaching methods in order to secure a stable position in the fight for power at socio-cultural level, language representing the gate to effective communication and mutual understanding.