For the past two weeks or so, my wife and I have been working with a young Korean woman by helping her with her English. It's been an interesting experience thus far.
Yesterday we tried a little experiment. In my best Shakespearean voice, I read her a few nursery rhymes. She took notes in Korean, then either told us or wrote about the poem in English. While she performed much better than expected, her phrasing was a bit comical, at times. Not surprisingly, she had a bit of trouble matching up singular and plural verbs with the subject of sentences.
Though our main task is helping her with English, we've made this a two-way learning experience by having her teach us a wee bit of the Korean language. While she has exhibited a great deal of difficulty with pronouncing the r and l sounds, we have just as much difficulty trying to pronounce Korean words correctly.
I have always been intrigued by languages. It truly is interesting how different cultures view the world and this can be readily seen in the different phraseology employed to describe it. Not only do we term the world in different ways, but we speak utilizing different areas of the lips, mouth, tongue and throat.
I have no great philosophical point to make here. All I am reporting to you is that this experience both is a bit exciting and a great learning experience for the three of us.
Yesterday we tried a little experiment. In my best Shakespearean voice, I read her a few nursery rhymes. She took notes in Korean, then either told us or wrote about the poem in English. While she performed much better than expected, her phrasing was a bit comical, at times. Not surprisingly, she had a bit of trouble matching up singular and plural verbs with the subject of sentences.
Though our main task is helping her with English, we've made this a two-way learning experience by having her teach us a wee bit of the Korean language. While she has exhibited a great deal of difficulty with pronouncing the r and l sounds, we have just as much difficulty trying to pronounce Korean words correctly.
I have always been intrigued by languages. It truly is interesting how different cultures view the world and this can be readily seen in the different phraseology employed to describe it. Not only do we term the world in different ways, but we speak utilizing different areas of the lips, mouth, tongue and throat.
I have no great philosophical point to make here. All I am reporting to you is that this experience both is a bit exciting and a great learning experience for the three of us.
Fun :)
ReplyDeleteHere are some tips from my time teaching Thais, Koreans and my current life with a wife who is Asian.
If you view your face side on as you say 'l' and 'r' you'll see the mouth is quite different for both sounds. It is very useful to demonstrate these from the side to a student. They get an image to aim at and this visual cue can be a stepping stone, instead of aiming at sounds they can't differentiate too well, they get a kinetic to attach to the sound.
Also spend time on b, p, l, r, f, v, ch, and sh.
and demonstrate the subtle differences. 'b' is soft and 'p' pushes more air. Then home in on two words that are only different due to the first sound: Chip Ship.
show how a 'v' uses the top teeth on the bottom lip as does 'f' but 'v' holds and vibrates whereas 'f' is airy and opens up.
'l' starts with the tip of the tongue on the top teeth, whereas 'r' is quite different, it begins with the odd, open, nothing touching anything place. This key difference stops them mixing the two.
most international learners of english do not know our 'little' alphabet of sounds a, b, c.. only our big alphabet of letter names A, B, C..
have fun :)
All I can say is (Tao) WOW!
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