A light bulb!

I am in my second year of teaching, and although I taught many students in Mississauga that had English as their second language, I still didn't "Get It" until I experienced my own struggles.
Let me explain.

English, as we may or may not realize as native speakers, is a hard language to learn. Just when you think you think you have a consonant or vowel sound down pat, there are rules (consonant blends, suffixes, vowel combinations, heck vowels that have 2 sounds!) ... that go and mess up all of what you "think you know." But, I encourage my students, of course to ... Never Give Up.

Where am I going with this? Well, I've decided to take an active role in learning the Korean language - Hangul. The challenge is this. As you probably know, they don't use our 26 letter alphabet. But they do use consonants and vowels, which are represented by a symbol or stoke. Each syllable in the word is broken up into sections, and the stokes are writing beside or underneath each other. So, first battle is reading strokes and remembering their sound.

Part two ... what does what you just read, mean? Well, you have to memorize the meaning of words. For example: Oma is Mom and Opa is dad (kinda like Dutch). These words can be fairly self explainatory. But some are much harder, for example. Hello is Aunyonhasayo. Goodbye is Aunyonkasayo. Thank You is Kamsumneda. Please give me is Chusayo. Right is Olunchok. No thank you is Guenchana. Your welcome is Chonmoneyo. Taking the words from strokes to what I have written above, is called romanizing the word.
This two step process is what has made me realize the struggles of my students. I have more compassion and understanding when they do not know what a "C" or a "W" sounds like. This is not their native alphabet...especially the Arabic children that I teach. Their alphabet is several squiggles and dots ... or so it looks to me!

The first part of acquiring a language, is the oral communication. So even though my students can carry out a conversation with me, their grammar when writing, or spelling can be way off. I put myself in their shoes. I can speak sentences in Korean, and know what words of this or that mean ... but ask me to write it or read it, and it would take me much longer and I'm sure with grammatical mistakes.

VOCABULARY! There are so many words they hear from me, that they haven't heard before. I take lots of time with new vocabulary before we read stories, because they may KNOW what a tent or a bonfire is ... but have never heard it spoken in English.

I'd like to end this entry with a Valentine's Story: Written by one of my Korean twins, Arnold.

Beginning: The cat is at the Valentines party. The cat ate the cake.

Middle: The dog, is at the party too. Dog ate cake to.

End: Cat and dog want to like give each other card.

Makes sense right? Even though it's a bit mixed up.

I hope that the Koreans I speak with have some compassion for me too! :) In fact, I know they do. Koreans are sweet, and smile a lot, and try to understand. If not, charades is always a handy back up :)

***FUN FACT***

From my Arabic kids, I am learning how to say hello, goodbye, thank you and the numbers 1-10! Since my school is a Turkish run school, my admin is Turkish -- I am learning the same in Turkish! Neat huh?

Wanna Try all three counting languages with me? :) **Disclaimer - These are spelled pheonetically, not properly I'm certain!** ha ha

Korean Arabic Turkish

1. Hannah Wahid Beer :)

2. Deul Ithnain Ekey

3. Set Thalatha Ewich

4. Net Arba Duurt

5. Dasop Khamsa Behesh

6. Yasop Sitta Ahltuh

7. Illgop Saba Yehdee

8. Yahdo Thamnaiah Sehkeez

9. Ihop Tisa Dohkooz

10. Yol Ashra On

...Test, next week :)

Thanks for reading!