I Survived and Thrived? My First Korean Class :)

Before I came to Korea, many of my Korean colleagues especially worried about how I would be able to manage eating Korean food and sleeping on the floor. I would always say, "Don't worry I will survive...and thrive!" I didn't want to just focus on surviving when I got here. I really wanted to use this opportunity to create something and to grow.

So, I survived and thrived? my first Korean class in Seoul. There are four other students--two business men from Japan and two English teachers from the US. Our teacher speaks Korean the whole time but uses actions to help explain what she is saying.

Our first lesson was about the conditional or subjunctive--yikes! I could feel my brain becoming stressed because I didn't know as much as everyone else and couldn't understand what the teacher was asking me. I kept reminding my brain why I was learning Korean, kept trying to relax and smile, and sometimes asked my classmates for help. By the end, I felt like I had accomplished something.

Why is it more difficult to learn a second language later? According to David Sousa who wrote a book called How the Brain Learns (2006), the brain areas involved in learning a language don't respond well to foreign sounds after the preteen years. So, additional areas of the brain have to be programmed to recognize, distinguish, and respond to foreign sounds. Also, the grammar and syntax rules of the native language interfere with learning the second language. Sousa concludes that learning a second language as an adult may require more focus, more effort, and greater motivation. Yes! So, back to studying!