On the 27th and 28th of July, Mr Yoon held a special Rocket Korean Workshop here at Penang Korean Class.
During the 2 days workshop, participants who had zero to little knowledge about the Korean language at first were taught how to read and write the alphabet and how to speak confidently.
As a team member of uBitto and someone who participated in this workshop, I am here to highlight some of the key things that were shared from Mr Yoon to every single one of us who were there!
1. BE FAST
This word is actually an acronym. Bet you didn't know that 😉 Well, neither did I!
Basically, what BE FAST stands for is :
B – Belief
Believe that you can.
E – Exercise
Exercise anything good for the heart and for the brain.
F – Forget
Forget yourself; and bring in the beginner's mindset. Don't be afraid of mistakes and be eager to learn!
A – Active
Be active in learning by exposing yourself and getting used to the language by speaking to the natives or even teaching someone eg : friends, family. Language learning is not a spectator sport.
S – State
Learning is state dependant.
T – Teach
Again, language learning improves when you start teaching someone else the basics. By doing this, it can help you to refresh what you learned earlier and allows you to find out new things and quicker ways to improve too!
2. Common Traps
What Mr Yoon is trying to convey when the words “Common Traps” appear in conversation is usually what “traps” others from learning a new language.
The most common one is the First Language Interference. When we start learning a new language we tend to translate whatever words we learn into our own mother tongue.
Sure it helps us to understand better, but people fail to realise that most of the time the sentence structures and the right timing to use those new words can be a little different depending on which language you use.
Sentence structures in English (for example) and Korean can be really really different. So, Mr Yoon's solution to this is to avoid thinking in your first language when it comes to speaking in another one.
Some wise words from him : Eat like a Korean, Speak like a Korean and Think like a Korean!
3. “What do people do when they get lost?” “What do they do to not get lost?”
Obviously, when people get lost especially in a foreign country, the first they do is duh… ask for directions! Of course, gadgets like our phones can be really handy to have GoogleMaps for help but what if you run of out data? Or battery?? :O
Even though we can't speak the native language of whatever country we're lost in and the people there can't understand us (that is my biggest fear lol, speaking from experience. your writer here got lost in Bangkok for a whole hour. not a really pretty sight).
We still make the effort to communicate through body language! That's the key thing. EFFORT. To ask, to communicate. To break out from that comfort zone.
With that, to prevent ourselves from getting lost we must prepare things in advance eg : maps, power bank, a fully charged phone, functioning data etc.
Same thing with learning.
When starting to learn anything new, we can all agree that we all get lost at some point. Especially in the beginning because we just don't know where and how to start!
That's why, in order to help the participants to not get lost Mr Yoon came up with a “Theme Park” concept which includes a map to our uBitto Korean World!
Just like how in theme parks you get the map of the place then you start from the first attraction to the next to avoid getting lost and feeling all jumbled everywhere, same goes with how this workshop has been carried out.
We started from the beginning which was an introduction and then the memorisation of the Korean vowels and consonants. After that, Mr Yoon brought us further into the “advanced rides” in this Korean Language theme park one by one under his guidance.
Eg : Vocabulary, Grammar, Writing and Speaking!
You'd be surprised if I told you that all of the participants can read and write Korean after only 2 days.
Well, that's exactly what happened!
The goal of this workshop is to help people to speak Korean with confidence, regardless if their vocabulary range is big or not. Mr Yoon helped the participants to understand that as long as the natives are able to understand what is trying to be conveyed, having the PERFECT GRAMMAR + VOCABULARY is not required.
This just helps to build confidence of speaking out and allows people to learn and adapt to Korean faster! (and any other language really)
Getting used to speaking especially with the native speakers can really break boundaries!
All of us here at Penang Korean Class would like to thank the participants for joining this workshop and for making it a fun one. New friendships were made and we hope that whatever knowledge shared from Mr Yoon was helpful and useful!
Most importantly, we hope you all had fun!
If you managed to read this blog until the end and you're feeling all blue that you didn't get to join this workshop due to whatever reason, don't worry!!
Here at Penang Korean Class, Mr Yoon offers easy and on the go livestream classes and even onsite classes as well! You can choose any of these options but best know that all of us here can guarantee one thing.
You'll be able to brush up your vocabulary, grammar and speaking skills in no time! We provide you the information, it's up to you to put them to use 😉
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