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Problems Facing Korean ESL LearnersIt is important to identify an ESL student?s native language, because students from various nationalities will learn the concepts of the english language differently. In this research article, I plan to demonstrate the problems many Korean ESL students may face. It is first important to note that the Korean alphabet and english alphabet differ drastically, which can make learning english difficult for inexperienced learners. It is important that ESL teachers spend a lot of time teaching beginning learners the structure and sounds of the english alphabet. The Korean alphabet is called ?Hangul,? and it was introduced in the 15th century by King Sejong to replace existing chinese script (Hanja) (esl.fis.edu). Hangul uses fourteen consonants and six vowels (thinkzone.wlonk.com), while the english language uses five vowels and twenty-one consonants. Hangul can be written horizontally or vertically, but the horizontal style is much more favored and is also similar to Latin script. Many Koreans are exposed to the format of Latin script and therefore have no particular difficulties with the english writing system (esl.fis.edu), however, it is essential to teach beginning students how to form and pronounce the letters in the english alphabet before teaching grammar and sentence formations. The phonology in Korean is very different than english. The Korean language is a syllable timed language in which individual stress is insignificant. This is a major distinction from the english language which instead relies on stressed syllables to define the meaning and intentions of the speaker. Many Korean students have a ?flat? quality when they speak english. The main difficulty in the pronunciation of individual words lies in the reproduction of consonants. Several english consonant sounds do not exist in Korean. The most significant of these are the /?/ and /ð/ sounds in words such as then, thirteen and clothes, the /v/ sound, which is produced as a /b/, and the /f/ sound which leads, for example, to phone being pronounced pone. (esl.fis.edu). Therefore, it is important that the ESL teacher incorporates pronunciation drills in his or her lessons. Korean is an agglutinative language which means that the verb information such as tense, mood, and the social relation between speaker and listener is added successively to the end of the verb. This is in contrast to english which makes extensive use of auxiliaries to convey verb meaning. Teachers should therefore expect Korean learners to have issues producing correct verb phrases. Koreans also do not conjugate verbs using agreement with the subject, this is why many Koreans struggle to remember the ?s endings in english in the third person singular. Korean has a Subject ?Object-Verb word order, while english uses a Subject-Verb-Object word order. Also, Koreans avoid personal reference, so it is common to encounter Korean students speaking in sentences that only consist of the verb. Though there are differences in the form of english and Korean sentences, generally Koreans pick up on the english format quickly. However, Korean students need extensive training and practice in working within the permitted exceptions in order to avoid monotonous written text whose sentences all start with the subject. Furthermore grammatical categories in Korean have no clear correspondence with those of english. This often results in Korean learners using a noun or adjective where english would have used an adjective or noun. For example, a Korean may produce the following sentence: My daughter doesn?t come to school today because she is illness. Also, articles to not exist in Korea, so learners have significant problems with the complexities of the english article system. (esl.fis.edu). It is important for ESL teachers to be aware of his or her student?s nationality, because students of different backgrounds will have a variety of strengths and weaknesses. For Koreans in particular, the ESL teacher should focus most on pronunciation, verb formations, and the alphabet. Therefore, by acknowledging a student?s weakness, the teacher can strengthen the student and build a solid foundation for english learning.
