Rob's TIP#2 For Living in Korea As an English Teacher: Learn Korean!! By Rob Julien At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

If one of your goals while you're here in Korea is to learn about the culture, then there are two things that you really want to get into while you're here:

One is the food, but that's another time. The other is the language. These two things are both real points of pride to almost all Korean people.

And honestly, you don't have to speak Korean fluently. In fact, most Korean people have come to expect that people teaching here won't learn anything at all beyond hello and thank you, so all you have to do is learn a bit more than that to be impressive. Just making an attempt will go a long, LONG way.

And my first tip for you, if you do decide you want to learn Korean, would be to learn how to read. I've actually been teaching Korean for 3 years now, and I think the biggest mistake people can make that will lead them to inevitable failure is by trying to learn the language without getting the reading and writing down first.

Honestly, it's not that difficult. It's not like Chinese or anything like that where you have to learn 3000 different characters. It's actually even simpler than English when it comes to the alphabet.

There are 14 consonants, each with their own sound, and 10 vowels, again, each with their own sound. It's not uncommon for people to go from knowing nothing to being able to read Korean - albeit slowly - in under two hours.

Now that's probably the quickest I've heard. It may take you a little longer depending on your ability to learn that kind of stuff and your commitment to it, but the point is, it's not difficult.

But besides all that stuff I mentioned above about how a lot of Korean people will be impressed by your efforts, learn how to read just to make living here WAY easier on yourself! Honestly, just being able to read menus in restaurants, signs, basically anything you see will really help make living here much, MUCH easier.

There is so much English around just written phonetically in Korean, that even if you didn't know how to actually say anything, just the ability to read will really help you.

Another BIG benefit to learning Korean while you're here is to help you in the classroom. Now I don't suggest using Korean very much in the classroom at all since, for most kids, that's the extent of their exposure to English so they definitely shouldn't spend too much of it listening to you speak Korean, but when it comes to actually teaching, it's amazingly useful to know and understand the differences between Korean and English and to be able to use that to recognize, explain, and fix common errors that your students will make simply due to the way they're used to speaking in Korean.

Now those certainly not the only benefits or reasons to learn Korean while you're here, but that's all I'm gonna say on this for now. I think you get the point. But in the end, it's your decision. But I can guarantee you that you'll never regret the decision to learn the language. In fact, after my 6 years of living here, the only regret I ever hear is from people for not deciding to do it earlier.

And either way, I hope that helps and that you enjoy your time here. This country really does have a lot to offer.

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