Press 2 for English-e

After moving to Korea, the realization set in quickly that we are completely illiterate. Not only do we not "know" the language but the written language of Korea (Hangul) is a series of symbols versus traditional letters. Luckily, there has been a push for "Romanization" to help us poor Westerners, but a lot of things are only written in Hangul.

But times they are a changin'! Just as we push our children to learn Spanish in the States, the Korean parents push their children to learn English, Japanese and Chinese. And if they can get an English speaking person to teach them, they tend to learn proper pronunciation.

A few months ago, my neighbor, Heather, approached me about tutoring English for a group of 7-8 year olds. Her family owns a school here and they do after school learning activities for older children. I lept at the opportunity, hoping that they would also teach me some Korean.

I tutor 3 children once a week for 2 hours. We have a basic workbook that lays out the lesson plan for the week, and Heather has asked that I also work with them on their Phonics. Lucky that I have a pre-reader in my family, because that skill is highly polished right now. We review the previous week's lesson, work through our lesson for that week and build our vocabulary through conversation. Then I move on to our book of the week from my book collection. Sprinkled throughout is all sorts of games aimed to help them with their counting, letter recognition, or just to blow off some steam.

This week, we were learning our basic colors and members of our family. The lesson plan had this laid out as members of the family went to a birthday party. Being the good Westerner I am, I baked some cupcakes and colored the icing blue, green, red, and yellow. It's a Birthday Party right???? Plus, I figured the cupcakes would be a special treat for them working so hard on their "lesson."

We had a great time! When I showed them the cupcakes, their eyes widened and they were so excited to get going on learning. I had them ask for the icing by color (and using our Western manners), then we shared with all of the teachers at the center.

Now I just have to figure out how to top this lesson.....

Coloring our cupcakes

Sunny, Jenny, and Justin enjoying their studies