Watch Dianely's video about her Korean Class at Sogang University, which she describes below, above.
By Dianely, NSLI-Y Korea, Summer 2014
Summer of 2014, I took part in the NSLI-Y Korean Summer program, located in Seoul. I had learned the basics of Korean on my own, so one can imagine the excitement I felt to be learning in an actual class. I expected our Korean class to be a typical language class. Our class at Sogang University turned out to be one of the most wonderful experiences in my life!
Our class was four hours long, with three 10-minute breaks in between each hour. A four-hour long class sounds a bit tedious, but time would just fly in our class! We had an hour each of reading, writing, speaking, and listening. On the first day or so, it seemed as if all we did were worksheets. These worksheets were a review to refresh our Korean knowledge. Of course, we continued to have worksheets throughout the program, and we took quizzes and tests to check our progress. However, we always did well on our assignments because we learned the material so well!
One of the reasons we learned the material effectively is because our class constantly did interactive activities. We did all kinds of activities such as role-playing, games, and even a fashion show! The role-playing scenarios were my personal favorite activity because they helped us improve our speaking, which was a big help when we explored Seoul. Although the activities were always fun and had us laughing, we always learned from them. For example, when we were learning about clothes and how they fit a person, we did a “fashion show.” Another example is when we were studying adjectives; we had a pretend auction where we described our bags. All of these activities helped us learn and retain information while having fun.
The majority of the classes in our program had about 12 students, but my class had eight students in it. The small sizes of our classes allowed for our teachers to provide us with their full attention. It also allowed my peers and I to become good friends with one another. Because everyone in my class became good friends quickly, our classroom was constantly filled with laughter.