C&T 598 RR1 Hazara Leon

Dr. Cho
May 25, 2017

English Fever
Korean parents gained notoriety for an extreme practice known as linguistic surgery
(Park 97)

Based on Parks English fever in Korea there are cases where Korean parents force their
children to undergo a frenectomy to correct tongue-tiedness to create a more long and
flexible tongue to correct things like the production of English sounds like r and l.
This is a common case in Asian languages which have difficulty distinguishing between
the two liquid consonants and often pronounce the hard r as a soft l. In fact, on our
second day of student teaching Mrs. Husted encountered this problem with her second
year students who were beginning start their praying session and instead referred to it as a
play session. In order to tackle this issue, Mrs. Husted corrected the classes
pronunciation by showing them the correct tongue placement and repeating the two
words out loud so that the students could visually see the difference and hear it. As a
linguistic student it was quite reassuring to see that there are teachers like Mrs. Husted
who know that linguistic capability like phonology, is something the students can be
trained to acquire and going through a surgery will not make a difference. The fact that
Asian languages have difficulty with the pronunciation of a hard r is because it is not
present in their language as it is in English. With English we are very flexible with the
placement of our r and l consonants, yet languages like Korean tend to only put it at
the front or the end of a syllable and always have a vowel to separate the segments. The
fact that English is more fluid in nature makes it difficult for Koreans to train their tongue
to hit every single vowel and consonant without it feeling like a tongue twister. There is
also the fact that the Korean is Romanized and even referred to in the IPA
chart as both r and l, which just adds more to the confusion. If the only way
to distinguish the two consonants is by their placement in the word then
translating that into the English language would mean learning new rules for
the consonant placement and the articulatory factors associated with both of
the consonants. It is only after studying phonology and phonetics that I was
able to learn how to correct my pronunciation, but for teachers who are
teaching English and have not had any courses in linguistics I imagine it
would be difficult to help the students improve their pronunciation without
knowing the true way in which they differ. Learning a language covers a lot of
components, which we as native speakers are unaware of until we are actually
prompted to study the way our brain works, so I have begun to see how
much more complicated it is to teach English as a foreign language.

Questions:
C&T 598 RR1 Hazara Leon
Dr. Cho
May 25, 2017

How to teach linguistics in a simplified form in order to help pronunciation?

Taking the TESOL Practicum Abroad

Alison construed the practicum as a really rewarding experience in which she learned
about embracing another culture and making lessons that are culturally sensitive.
(Cho & Peter 158-159)

From the Cho and Peter article my impression of ELT pedagogy was that it is a
transformative teaching that demands for an understanding of the social and political
impacts of what we do. One of the participants from this practicum expressed her
learning of making culturally sensitive lesson plans. At first I was quite unaware of what
it meant to make material that was culturally sensitive, but after our first meeting
session I came out with the understanding that culturally sensitive did not necessarily
mean subduing my American culture, but learning to integrate my culture with the
Korean teaching culture in a way that makes both of them shine. However, when it comes
to making a lesson plan I still find it difficult to find the right balance between the two
cultures. When coming up with ideas for lesson plans my thinking style is still very
American and the things I dont consider difficult to learn turn out to be difficult for the
students. Not only that, but as we come up with updated versions of our childhood games
we see that we have to simplify the game or hand out instructions for the students to even
be able to participate in the activities we have created. As I begin this practicum I have
figured out that being culturally sensitive with my future lesson plans will require a better
understanding of the teaching culture in Korea and learning more about students and the
things they are interested in at their age and time. Being culturally sensitive requires a
bigger understanding of the culture, customs and beliefs of the students; therefore it is not
something I am able to understand straight away. As I am introduced to more and more
of our classes I find that cultural sensitivity various by class, so creating a lesson plan
really requires a lot of flexibility and adaptability. Therefore, I hope to gain a better
understanding of what cultural sensitivity really means and how that can be applied to the
way I carry out the lessons, prepare the materials and present it.

Question:
How can we be culturally sensitive when creating our lessons?
What does cultural sensitivity mean?