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Foreign Language experienceI have found that having foreign language experience has significantly helped me in teaching english. My job prior to teaching in South Korea was in a french speaking country, and all of my work was conducted predominately in french. I had studied french in high school and university, but had never had to put it to use in a real-world experience. I knew the grammar and the specifics of it, and was able to speak it well, but living it day-to-day was eye-opening, yet quite rewarding. It all came back to me quite quickly and within a few weeks I was back to a level I was very comfortable with and it enabled me to have a successful couple years living and working there. This understanding of what it?s like learning another language and putting it to use has been very helpful to me as an ESL teacher here in South Korea. Over the past two years I?ve been teaching in a small middle school and high school in the South Korean countryside. As it?s not in the more urban areas of Korea, a lot of the students are less eager to learn another language, as they don?t see the importance of it and it?s not as competitive here amongst students as it is in the cities. Often my students will tell me how difficult english is, and how it is not important to them, or how I don?t understand how difficult it is to learn another language. The last point is where I tell them otherwise. When I explain to them that I have indeed studied another language, and can speak it fluently, they look at me differently. I explain that I know it?s difficult but that it?s been rewarding to me in my life and is an asset to have. When I am teaching, especially something dealing with grammar, I am constantly thinking to myself how to make it more understandable. When students don?t understand I often think to myself about translating the same thing into french, and how I learned it when I was younger. Often times I?ll have an ?Ah-ha? moment to myself and reword the way in which I am explaining something. Yes, Korean, english and french are all different languages, with different sentence structures, grammar, etc, but there are commonalities between them, especially english and french. The experience I have with previously studying a foreign language has definitely assisted me in more ways than one. Not only does it get my students to relate to me and understand that, ?Yes, I do understand why you find it so difficult, but it will come around for you,? but also it helps me in thinking about how I teach and what methods and activities are useful for learning another language. People often say that things are easier said than done, which is very true. You can say how to do something, but if you?ve never experienced it and done it for yourself, than rarely can you actually understand the real difficulties of it. This is very true with learning another language, and in turn teaching another language.
