Jiae Kim
Literacy Memoir
Many people would mainly answer “Japan or China” if asking what country they know in Asia. However, actually in Asia there are so many countries including my country, Korea. Korea is a small country but the economic ranking is top eleven. My all families are also Korean and there was no mixed blood. Of course I was born to parents who speak only Korean so naturally I have grown up in the environment always speaking Korean. People who live in other country would be surprised for the fact that my family has come from the only single-race. However, my family history is not unique in Korea. Almost Koreans have only Korean ancestor. Korea has been considered as a single-race nation. The one of the biggest characteristics of my country is that we have our own
alphabet named “Hangul” which is very scientific. It can be the result of the fact that Korea has the lowest rate of illiteracy all over the world.
Just as a child from a different country gradually acquires a mother tongue from their parents, a Korean also acquired to speak Korean in the home. When I was little, my parents always read books to me before I fell asleep.
Whenever they did, I tried to awkwardly mimic their pronunciation but later I could speak and express my opinion pretty well. The most remarkable thing unlike other country is that a Korean already learns how to read and write the Korean letters “Hangul” before he or she entered an elementary school.
To me, acquiring writing and reading Korean is much easier than learning to how to grab the pencil. To be specific, Korean has 10 vowels and 14 consonants. It is created using phonetic qualities, and speech organs’ movement
such as a shape of mouth, tongue, and throat. Moreover, it has a closer link between spelling and pronunciation that any other language. It makes Korean children to have literacy quickly. Therefore, the next step such as writing and reading was really easy because Korean has one-to-one relationship between spelling and letters unlike English. After I learned Korean letters “Hangul”, I could read all of the Korean words. Every times I wanted to show off my literacy to others so I tried to read out all of the signboards on streets when I was
walking through.
However, from the beginning, Korean did not have “Hangul”. Actually, my ancestors had our own language but did not have their own written letters for it. So, during those periods, they borrowed and applied Chinese Characters. Chinese character had difficulty in fully expressing Korean’s spoken language. To be specific, it would give rise to inequality in society. Only the educated could write and read and it fostered a huge educational gap between people. At that time, “King Sejong the Great” really wanted to give opportunities for people to read and write their own language. He genuinely loved all people and tried to create their own language. Finally, at 1443 “Hangul” the King Sejong created which is a very scientific language that reflects speech organs and human value. After inventing “Hangul”, Korean could have a literary regardless their class and it change from a stratified society to a horizon society.
Korean language itself has encouraged Korean people to swell with national pride. It has played a role to bond with Koreans as the one. Therefore, I also have received great impact on Korean language to form national identity, ideology and value system. The fact that we use the same unique language together has brought about a strong ethnic community.
Seven years old, I started learning English. If someone only heard this information about me, he or she must guess I am able to have a great command of English. Honestly, I cannot English well regardless learning times.
Exactly even though I have studied English for almost eighteen years, just four years passed from the day I began to learn how to write an English essay. I had no chance to write a kind of English essays until I had entered the University. My English learning only focused on reading rather than writing during my high school life. To be specific, I could read very difficult and tangled sentences, paragraphs, and even essays but I could write nothing but simple sentences. Unfortunately, not only I but also almost Korean students were in the same
situation.
When I was seven, first thing I learned in English class was to repeat a teacher’s alphabet sounds and write down them several times on my notebook. Thanks to earlier English alphabet writing instructions, I can proudly show off I have a very legible and neat handwriting in English. Strictly speaking, I had only the great handwriting, not how to organize the paragraph. In Korea, English education totally has laid a huge emphasis on English comprehensible competence such as reading and listening. Many Koreans have really intelligent English reading and listening skills because of endless practicing in a school. (Sadly, in my case, comprehensible skills lack until
now.)
In Korea, a university entrance test places more stress on the language comprehensible competence rather the production. Also, when Korea companies hire employee, they require the English certification such as TOEIC,
TOEIC SPEAKING, TOEFL which are mainly composed of reading and listening questions. Therefore, the current English instruction in Korean school naturally follows the stream of Korean society and has firmly solidified the problem of English education at the high schools.
In an English class at the high school, I mainly wrote the same sentences repeatedly in the name of improving writing skills. This repetition encouraged me to enhance the ability of discerning grammar correctness in English but it really discouraged me to create the contents smoothly and coherently when writing English essay. A Korean teacher cannot help using the grammar translation method in English classes because of the limitations of the
class time. They were assigned each thirty students in a class and there necessarily existed English ability gap among students. However, fifty minutes in one class did not enough to support all of the students so the teacher had no choice but to utilize the grammar translation method in order to treat different levels of students.
After graduating from the high school, I got lots of interests in education and also I wanted to study English language more professionally. Due to these reasons, I became to select my major, English Education at Hongik
University in Korea capital, Seoul. At the first year, it was not easy to adapt myself to new circumstances. I took an English beginner composition class on my first semester at the university. The professor was Alyssa Kim and her class was for beginner but I felt an advanced class. The majority of classmates graduated from prestigious Korea’s foreign high schools that invest almost times to educate English unlike regular schools where I graduated from. Almost of my classmates already possessed abundant experiences and competences to organize an
English essay. These competitive circumstances had me more press down and get rid of my confidence. My first English composition class life started with anxiety.
Writing about an admiring person was the first topic. Following a professor’s instructions, I did brainstorming and I decided Yu-na Kim, a famous Korean figure skater whom I really have admired in my life. I chose my admired person but I could not start writing in English. In my head, English and Korean words and sentences mixed up in my head whenever I started do the essay. At that time I really confused and I tried to seek out the quick solution to complicated writing procedures. That was a translating Korean into English! First, I wrote an essay in Korean and translate it in English. To be specific, I made a complete essay in Korean and translated it line by line. I considered this as a perfect plan. It was not until getting a feedback from the Professor that I knew it was a terrible plan.
After the professor read my first draft, she called back me. I was really ashamed of my first draft and also I felt tense because I was the only student be called back. I thought she would be disappointed me. However, as
soon as other classmates got off the class, she told me her story. She is a second generation Korean-American and her major was English literature and psychology. She has translated the English book into Korean. When she translated the book, she spent a few weeks organizing just one sentence.
I was really surprised because of two facts. First, I did not know she had a great command of Korean because she always speaks only English in front of the students so I have not seen she spoke in Korean. The other fact is
I could not believe translating just one sentence spent a few weeks! I translated one essay just spending a few hours. She smiled at me and she said to me, “Every sentence is really important and especially topic sentence is the most important. There are so many ways to express your ideas so what you have to do is to think deeply and find out the shiny sentences. Whenever you write a sentence, try to make a clear, short and connotative sentence.” Her advice completely changed my writing pattern. I tried to construct even one sentence with sustained effort and I completed the final draft clearly. Even though my draft was relatively lack comparing to classmates’, I gained a beneficial awareness of the right writing attitude from the beginner English writing
class.
I got A from the Alyssa’s writing class so I was really proud of myself because she recognized my improvement of writing during one semester. Therefore, I registered the English writing class again at second year but it was for intermediate students. The professor was Ryder and she really emphasized the handwriting, so from first day, I wrote an essay by hand. The first topic was the difference between a high school and a university. When I submitted the first draft to her, I was really full of the certainty that I would receive a great comment and feedback from Ryder because I am a good student who got an A at the beginner class. However, the reality was different. Her teaching style was distinct from the Alyssa’s. She wanted to share the writing feedbacks so she
told the class each student’s major and huge mistakes anonymously. However, almost errors she told us were mine. I could know because I wrote these errors.
This was the second shocking moment to me. In my essay, there was no spelling mistake but there were so many non-sense expressions. The most memorable error was the “flexible timetable.” I wanted to form a sentence that
means university students have more freedom to make a timetable unlike high school students. I had a habit to look up a word in English-Korean dictionary to find out the definition of the words and I always used English-Korean dictionary whenever I did English writing assignment. I thought this habit was good but it was not. The professor, Ryder suggested students to look up the English-English dictionary because it showed more exact definition and helps to figure out even subtle nuance in English. Right after, I closed my Korean-English dictionary and only concentrated on my English-English dictionary. It really worked to improve my English instinct. First essay was the score of 5 out of 10 but the rest every four essays I got 10 scores. During the intermediate class, I learned two lessons: One is that a student should not be excessively proud of oneself without what I had gotten a grade before. The other is to develop the ability to understand the nuance of the word.
At third year, having an unassuming attitude, I took an advanced English writing class and the professor was Christopher Doll. In this class, there were rarely restrictions about topics. The professor just told what kind
of essay students should write in a class and he gave a freedom to choose the topic. During one semester, the class curriculum followed the order of writing five essays: a classification, comparison and contrast, argumentative, literary analyzing, cause and effect essay. The beginner and intermediate classes gave me
a concrete topic and every professor corrected closely the essay and gave a feedback so I could easily start to set the outline. However, an advanced class was different. I needed lot of time to search information and make an outline.
Christopher emphasized the writer should consider the reader and give information through the essay. Therefore, at the pre-writing stage, I tried to make a solid outline and made a great effort to write an informative essay. Its efforts made me invest lots of time to set up the foundation of writing and I finally realized the importance of the pre-writing.
Through the beginner, intermediate and advanced English writing cass, I noticed the three fundamental literary attitudes; clear sentences, proper nuance of the words and the importance of pre-writing. Looking back over
a twenty-three years of my life, literary memoir realted with both Korean and English really have influenced my thought and behaviors.