Supporting Bilingualism or just Korean language??

Current president Lee in Korea is the guy, who argued that Korea should adapt English as an official language of Republic of Korea together with Korean language. This is very controversial in Korea. One side says that the adaptation of English as an official language in Korea will totally brainwash Korean people especially children and Korea will lose its own thing completely over time. The other side argues that Korea should adapt English as an official language since it is going to bring great economic upside and is the flow of contemporary period.

I think I can get some idea from the discussion whether to focus just on English language or encourage biligualism in the US. As we discussed in the class, adaptation of English as an official language in Korea can increase the illitaracy rate of Korean lanugage which is gonna be problematic while it could make the whole Korea open-society where diversity can be respected with inflow of many informations beyond the barrier of language.

Banking theory vs. Education as Practice of Freedom theory

I spent my whole life back in Korea but recent three years in the US. I basically had an education until I go to highschool and go through military service. In Korea, students are supposed to have a passive attitude in education. We basically just sit down and listen to the teacher who speaks out. When we speak out a word without any permission beforehand, we often get battered-this is common in Korea. In the army, it was way harsher. We were not even allowed to bring up any opinion. All we could do was reporting something and ask what we can do. And the senior officer ordered what to do. I guess all these education type is banking type of education.

However, when I first came over to the US, the education style was totally different. Professor basically introduced some topic and allowed us to interact each other to discuss about that. Since I am majoring in business, the style was open-ended and casual in general, which i can call education as practice of freedom.

I think it is dumb to say which is better or not. Each of the education style has its own upside and downside. To get some complex knowledge, banking style might be better than the other, however, for something that requires creative and logical reasoning, practice of freedom style might be better than the other I guess from my personal opinion.

What happened to me a a year and half ago: rude or ignorance??

I was living at a apartment in Los Angeles a year and half ago. At that time, my English was even worse than now. I did not even know how to respond, when a person do some generosity to me. When I was getting out of the front door of the building, a man opened the door for me. I appreciated it in my mind, but I could not speak out anything because I did not have any confidence speaking in English. When I was about to leave, the guy screamed! Hey, you Asian guy! Shame on you! Don’t you know how to say thank you at this event? I find you Asian guys always rude and selfish! Do you go to UCLA? What’s that for? Shame on you!!! I totally understood what he way saying, though I did not know how to explain. I think ignorance often causes misunderstanding that the guys who just came over to the US are rude.

Korean English

I want to mention about Korean English which the guest introduced on last Thursday in the class.

In Korea, the importance of English is emphasized pretty much. Since South Korea is influenced by the US and closely connected to the US in terms of economy and politics, the importance of English has been emphasized and they learn English from their young age in Korea.

However, because of the ineffective education system, most of Koreans can speak only broken English, which is a total Korean style English. Korean people in general use English in the order of Korean language or mix Korean word with English word, which cannot be seen as English. Since that phenomenon is widely pervaded, we even have a new word indcate that, which is “Konglish.”

The importance of restriction of bad words

I think today Sam brought up a question why we need to keep children from using bad words even though it is obvious that they will learn and used to bad words at some point at their life?

Personally, I am also a proponent to restriction of bad words. The reason is that I think people form the way they see the world mostly in their young age. So if they keep using bad words in their young ages, they might form a negative perspective on the world being obssessed by the languages, which will negatively influence their whole life.

On top of the bad words, same would be the case for porn, violence, and et cetera.

Different types of English in terms of blah blah.

Since it has been only 3 years for me to be here in the US, I feel a big difficulty communicating with people in English  in my everyday life. However, there is a variance of difficulty in terms of situation.

When I talk to Asian people, especially who were not born in here in the US, it is quite comfortable to communicate with them in English. And when I talk to people who has been here only for a few years just like me, I also find it easy to have conversation with them in English.

I guess the reason is that the types of people I mentioned above knows what kind and level of Enlglish I am familiar with and makes it easy to carry on the conversation. I am still scared when I need to talk on the phone with a stranger who does not know that I have been in US for not a long time since the person I am talking to might think I am playing him or I am a stupid.

Mr. Gates’ Trope.

I guess race gives people a pre-perception on people as Mr. Gate introduced it as “Trope.” When I was volunteering, a few kids just recognized me as a Chinese. I guess that the place where they were living didn’t have any Asians, so the kids might have an idea that Chinese equates in general to any Asian. The kids came to the conclusion that I supposedly had some great martial art skill because of some movies they watched in the Television.

Yesterday when I was volunteering at the Saint Martin elementary school, I got a chance to confirm my assumption above. Basically, since there is only 1 Asian in the whole school, the children had no chance to get to know Asians. On the day, teacher showed them a movie, “Karate Kid,” where a Japanses old man was really strong and a master in Karate. After the movie, a bunch of students asked me if I was a Japanese or if I was also master in Karate or if I could punch anyone down like the Japanese actor in the movie.

The meaning of Contact Zone

I feel that every place in the US can be seen as a contact zone. As a man from Korea, where it is only one ethnicity, Korean, I find it interesting to see people who look different and use different languages to interact with each other.  Especially in the kindergarten I was doing the volunteering job, I find it interesting in that sense. Half of the children in the kindergarten are black, the other half is Latino, and there is one Filipino girl in the Kindergarten. When I mingle with them in the courtyard, I find that all the children come from different backgrounds, and they interact and have to adjust themselves when they conflict-which happens almost every 15 minutes.

One funny thing is that when I led three children, Cameryn, Jeremy and another Latino boy, they were all friendly with me. However, they showed some non serious aggression toward me calling me Chinese, which I suppose is a reflection of their parents’ words or something. It absolutely reminded me that I was in the contact zone. I still remember them saying “Go back to your hometown, China!”

Can Research be reciprocal??

I absolutely agree with Moll and Cushman’s opinion that interaction with the subject of the research makes the researchers better conduct his or her job and therefore be able to help the participants. For example, I was volunteering at the kindergarten and saw a boy, Caesar,  being isolated with an almost-crying-face. My first impression was that the other boys were mean to him. However, after joining them and playing with them, I saw that he was hitting some other boys around him, who ended up retaliating. Then, when the teachers came over to figure out what happened, he just made the face again and pretended to just cry. If I just looked at them, the children in the kindergarten playing, without participating, I would only have understood them at a very shallow level. After finding out what happened, I approached Caesar and told him about the implications of his actions, and told him that I knew and saw everything that happened. From that time on, I saw that he wasn’t mean to the other boys. So, I think research can be reciprocal

My first journal post

I was overwhelmed by several diverse ideas that brought out in the class lecture. The ideas about literacy are way beyond the definition of literacy itself. It could be expanded into several different meanings when it is applied to several different cases. I hope  throughout the courses and the tutoring/mentoring I will be able to learn the practical meaning of literacy.