Why should we memorize Scripture?

Today, I am going to Bible camp which is a bit more special than other camps. In the camp, I will be demanded to memorise plenty of verses of Bible. Now, on the way going to the camp. I would like to write 'why memorising Scripture is important. 

 First, Jesus who was a role model for every mankind memorised Scripture. Bible tells us Jesus was always equipped with memorised Bible verses. He chased away the temptation of Satan through Bible. He used to evangelise people, quoting Bible verses.

 Second, it fills our heart as well as knowledge. This generation has everything for satisfying our body. We can eat whatever we want and there are so many fun things we can enjoy. However, people still have emptiness in some part of their heart. Soaring suicide rate, serious crime rate, and the number of people looking for intense stimulus certifies certify that people are suffered from mind illness. Bible says 'Do not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind'. We need to renew our life to fill our heart, memorising Bible verses broaden our perspective from worldly vision to heavenly vision.

 All in all, memorising verses make our life more fruitful and help us to be more resemble with God. (Also, going to Memorising Scripture camp is worth ;p)

Why Study Abroad?

 

Why Study Abroad?

 

Many students choose to attend schools or universities outside their home countries. Why do some students study abroad? Use specific reasons and details to explain your answer.

 

Response

 

As a globalization comes many learners want to study abroad because there are so many great advantages of learning abroad. I believe that going overseas to study helps students have an opportunity to acquire a new language and to enrich their experience.

First, studying overseas makes learners have a chance to acquire a new language. For instance, students who are born in the country where English is not commonly used, need to study the global language. Then, what is the best way to acquire the new language? That is the study abroad. If they learned a language overseas, they have the culture as well as a language itself.

Second, going abroad for study enriches their experience. If students stayed in their own country, it looks like frogs in a pool. This is an era of globalization. Go to the wide world, and don't be locked itself. Learners not only have a chance to gain knowledge and experience from their instructor but also to develop their study, its thinking methodology given by this education system and teachers abroad.

In addition, learning overseas means pupils are traveling, making international friends, and so on. Obviously, students' knowledge about the world will be expanded. Learners can visit many beautiful places, meet many people and try a lot of things. It will be its unforgettable experience which follows until the end of their life. One of my friends thought that going to another country is very hard because there are many sequences to be accepted, but actually, it is not true. As everyone knows, if you are a person, it is easy to go.

Studying overseas has a lot of good things. There can be negative factors of learning abroad, but absolutely, that is without parallel between them. Do not have to hesitate study abroad. Be brave and if you have a chance just run against a situation.

 

 

 

Answer to random questions 2 (Member or Leader)

You have decided to give several hours of your time each month to improve the community where you live. What is one thing you will do to improve your community? Why? 

Response:

It is easy to stay alone and do our own work, but doing something to improve our association will give you not only a sense of belonging but also the knowledge that you are making our neighborhood a better place, Also, as globalization comes, you cannot avoid the group society. Therefore, you need to get involved somewhere, clean up and make your group better, so that everyone wins. Now, there are several things to improve our group.

 

First, you can give back to your association by volunteering. There are a lot of worthy causes, and they could be as simple as volunteering to coach the kid's neighborhood ball team, organizing a bake sale or fundraiser for someone that may be sick or needy in our association, volunteering at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, or helping or visiting an elderly person who otherwise may not have any family to do so.

  

second, you might clean up your association. Organize a group of family and friends and set aside one day a week or month to get together and pick up the litter and trash on the roadsides or beaches in your community. It doesn't have to be just your street that you clean up either. Take turns cleaning each other's streets or pick a different street or section of road each time. Just be sure to take proper safety precautions. 

   

Third, you could be active in our association by taking part in local activities such as church events, charities, town hall meetings, or community voting. If it affects you and our group, take part and voice our opinion.

Answer to random questions - Do the best ideas arise from a passionate interest in commonplace things?

Present your perspective on the issue below, using relevant reasons and/or examples to support your views.
"The best ideas arise from a passionate interest in commonplace things."

Response
 The statement claims that people tend to come up with brilliant ideas from a passionate interest in usual things around us. Passionate interest always makes people think more deeply and be more creative, no matter they are in the scientific field or daily life. In my opinion, the statement above is true, in that many great ideas which have developed the world came from commonplace things in daily life.
  Generally, a passionate interest stimulates people to think more deeply, and this is likely to strike them. Countless examples prove the power of passionate interest. Nobody does not know the story of an apple falling on the head of Newton. Numerous people have seen a falling apple, but only Newton had a passionate interest in why it falls, why everything falls. Newton developed the theory of gravity, and a whole system of classic physics was instituted based on his work. Another great physicist, Einstein has developed relativity theory. People wonder how such great idea came to his mind. He said he was too stupid to understand the concept of space and time that most people easily understand, so he had to think it over and over again. I did not come from something special but from repeated thinking in commonplace things. In daily life, most people have some creative ideas in things they are interested in, such as how to use their house, car, computer more convenient.  In conclusion, best ideas arise from passionate interests in commonplace things, as well as in the scientific world like the field of physics.

The good of writing journal.

 Journals are good for visualizing and externalizing what I have read. Actually, I have had some difficulties in understanding PLLT. The organization of the book was clear but sometimes vocabularies, structure of English made me frustrated tricky. Above all, the content was terribly difficult. Because this book is introducing so many theories with the summary, not with full explanation, I could not deeply understand them. I had to listen to the lecture of a professor as well as read the book several times. Normally, after all, the steps, I wrote a journal and it was helpful for me to externalize the complex theories by myself.

Writing journal is good!!

My practice on storytelling

My practice on story telling. I was asked to share a story about my experience of a stumbling block in terms of understanding culture, so I wrote a script!!

Let me tell you my story about stumbling block that I have experienced. This happened in the conversation between my Thai friend and me. We met at a mission organization named OM which stands for operation mobilization. First, I think I need to tell you guys who he is. He is one of the members of royal family in Thai. He was a relative of Thai’s king. Okay guys. Let’s imagine what it’d be like if you have same power and authority as a king. Have you ever imagined you become a king or a queen. If so, what have you imagined? Boys, I know what you have thought. Many beauties in your arms, a super car that is crossing through a high way fast without an interruption. How about girls? luxury goods such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci? Or A shiny jewel such as diamond? it great. It makes your heart beating only by imagining your life as a king or queen.

However, the story I’m going to tell you could be a bit different as you expected. Of course, king of Thai has power and authority and their relatives also have high social economic status. But, also there are so many rules they have to follow. One of the rules is obeying one who is in higher rank such as parents, aunt or uncle. Let me tell you how ridiculous it is. Because In Korea, we also have some hierarchy in our family, but nothing can compare to Thai’s royal family life. My Thai friend has an aunt, and both of them are not poor. They have houses, cars, own shops such as café, markets. However, their aunt keeps saying she does not have money so even she can’t afford monthly charge such as electricity fees and water charge. And, because in their culture one who is in the lower rank must be obedient to the higher one, he cannot resist to it. Even she asks him to pay for her children’s tuition. However, he said he cannot refuse it. So, one day he came to me, and said ‘John I have a serious agony’. And the agony is that I just told you so. So, I told him that that’s so ridiculous. Who does not know she is rich! She has houses, a cafe and a shop, just logically explain it to her and do not get any nonsense charge. However, what he answered to me was ‘thank you, I want to, but I can’t, this is how we live.’ At first time, I had no idea to understand it. It even made me so angry because it was not reasonable and fair. However, after I got to know the history of kings, eventually, I would be a little bit understand why they have that strict rules even though it could be abused and ridiculous. Historically, King’s family has been full of trickery and betrayal even involving murder, so sometimes they needed to be machiavellian. That is why they must have the strong rule to control the hierarchy. So, This is the end of my story telling. Do you have questions?

What are the charateristics of a successful language teacher?

What are the characteristics of a successful language(English) teacher?

     Since the world has made, there always have been learning and teaching. Humans have been studying to find effective way teaching and learning. As a result of the effort to promote the learning process, pedagogy becomes a promising subject.  Philosophy of education, educational psychology, teaching method etc, so many related studies have emerged and have been developing, accordingly. As synthetically considering it, there could be some characteristics of the successful English teacher.
     First, a good English teacher has to understand different types of each student and has strategies to handle those. One of the big differences between the old school of linguistics and a contemporary trend is whether the education is learner-centered or teacher-centered. In conclusion, learner-centered education seems more desirable. Each student has many different types of a learning style, levels, personalities. Therefore, a successful teacher needs to be able to create an ideal classroom environment.
     Also, the successful English teacher should be a role model for their students. Normally at school education field, learners are teenagers or younger. They are at the period when the ego is not firmly set and unstable. In their perspective, the grown-up is the object of envy. Especially, a teacher has a huge impact on their value. Thus, the teacher needs to be a good model for students. It contains not just the English performance of teacher but also the attitude including behaviour, dress.
    Lastly, a teacher must love their pupils. Even though love is a metaphysical word in which standard unit of measurement is ambiguous, it is the most crucial requirement of teachers. Love is interest and motivation, bringing out goodness. Henry David Thoreau once said, ‘be not simply good; but good for something.

My frequent mistakes in English

My frequent mistakes in English

     Mistakes that I frequently make in English are pronoun, complicated subject, complicated adjective, making questions, intonation, rhythm (리듬), spelling, word use ( ex I prepared some material -> I brought some material.)  pronunciation especially /the/, /r/, /ch/, /z/ sounds which are not in Korean, articles. Among I am introducing three mistakes that I make most.
My most frequent errors in my English is putting proper articles   in front of nouns. I know rules and concepts of articles. Normally, 'an' and 'an' are followed by countable singular nouns. 'An' comes before words starting with vowel sounds such as /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ sounds; on the other hand, 'a' is followed by words starting with consonant. Even though I know the rules, it is hard not to make this mistake.
     My second most frequent mistake in English is distinguishing 'he with she'. In Korean, when we use the pronoun for a person we only use 'he'.
Another mistake that I usually make is making Korean-like sentences. Sometimes, I make the too long subject to an effect of Korean habit. Also, sometimes, I choose the wrong vocabulary. To be specific, during a microteaching, I would say ' I prepared some material'. Because in Korea a sentence 'I brought some material' which is appropriate in English has the same meaning as 'I prepared some material' in translation.
    Therefore, through the reflection of my mistakes, it is convinced that CHI (Contrastive Analysis hypothesis) and CIL have some point in that I make frequent mistakes in the areas that Korean does not have.

Am I communicatively competent?

While reading through the passage of PPLT, one discussion topic came to me.
"In you foreign language, would you say you are “communicatively competent”? Defend your response using some of the categories discussed in the first part of this chapter.", so I decided to make a diagnosis and defend it!

     According to the Canale and Swain who are eminent scholars, communicative competence is comprised of four subcategories – Grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic, competence, strategic competence -. As I analyzed my competence of communication through based on the theory of Canale and Swain, I would say I am communicatively competent, overall.
First, as to grammatical competence, I am capable of tuning into the linguistic code of English. In other words, I have a lot of knowledge about the language as well as knowledge of the language. I have learned English in Korea for 10 years, and most of them were about the knowledge about the language. I have been taught knowledgeㄴ of lexical items and rules of morphology, syntax, phonology. Since I graduated a high school, I have been studying English Education in which studying structure of English is necessary.
     Second, my discourse competence which refers to the ability we have to connect sentences in stretches of discourse and to form a meaningful whole out of a series of utterance is estimated higher than intermediate level. To teach the students who try to acquire English as a foreign language, a teacher has to have an ability to make fair intersentential relationships in teacher talk; otherwise, because second language learners sometimes get a direction of the teacher not literally but through the situation, students would face difficulties in comprehending the instructions of teacher. I have been teaching students through teaching practice in middle school and an after-school program in high school. My discourse competence has been improving, and it did not prevent basic-level-students from understanding instructions through connect of sentences.
     Also, while studying and working in the UK, I have improved my sociolinguistic, strategic competence. I would work at a mission organization at Stratford. As an English learner not a master. I had to more focus on relationship and use strategies of speaking as many as the lack of the language. In a mission, it is required that I am able to adapt to some environment regardless of my preference. The most important thing in tuning myself into a society which is totally different from where I live is understanding of the social context. In that situation I successfully finished my jobs, understanding the information they share, roles of the participants.
     When I adapted to a new country where English is their native language, I had some difficulties in communicating without hesitation, but overall I can convey and interpret messages and negotiate meanings interpersonally. Therefore, I would say I am communicatively competent.

My challenges in learning Chinese

My challenges in learning Chinese


I have tried to learn Chinese when I was in a high school. Actually, I had a bad feeling that is something to do with China because I have seen so many corruptions of China through news, teachers and people. I also had a Chinese friend, and we did not have the good relationship. He was so selfish that I was always asked to tune myself into him. I did not have any distinguishing at the young age, so I just tried to understand him and help him out; however, finally, I got exhausted and stop being friendly with him. As I think now, he was full of ethnocentrism. He was so proud of his background that he did not want to compromise but make others follow him.
Because of those experiences, my view toward China was terrible. However, I knew China is one of the major developed countries, and the power of the population and national resources have lots of possibilities of prosperity. I felt like I must learn Chinese as a tool whether I like it or no, so I decided to learn Chinese. This had a big impact on my learning. Even though I was learning Chinese, this language did not attract at all.
When studying English, I first started with instrumental motivation. However, the culture of countries where English is the first language, and many cool English speakers around me encouraged me to change my instrumental motivation to intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, my bad memories about China kept me from improving my motivation. Finally, I stopped studying Chinese because I lost my interest.

MY MBTI TYPE

MY MBTI TYPE

     According to the result of MBTI, my personality type is INTP. Actually, it does not perfectly fit in how I am, in that I have been trying to change my personality, and actually, the results have been changed - I have done it twice. Therefore, I would like to more focus on how I am than the result of MBTI but based on my INTP type.
     INTP stands that I tend to an introvert, intuit, think, perceive (rather than extrovert, sense, feel, judge). In a word, I am an idea-bank type. I always pursuit something new, and refuse to be framed in a rule. At the same time, I enjoy deluging books and imagine something creative. This characteristic sometimes drives me bored in a classroom, when class consists of only one-way lecture or repetitive task. Even this reflected on my teaching experience. When I planned a lesson, it sometimes took more than 15 hours to come up with ideas, and finish the plan. This is because as for me, making students not only have fun but also think a lot, is more important than having them memorizing few sentences.
     Overall, the characteristics are really helpful in terms of a process of studying including such as speculating, analyzing. On the other hand, apparently I am not used to having a good relationship with people around me. Because I am accustomed to estimating things through my logic, and accept only the facts which are reasonable. Because other's thought is not as important as rationality, I do not follow a crowd. I rarely compliment people because my personality does not allow me to say good words without reason. Therefore, people who do not understand my characteristics gets annoyed due to this, and I have some difficulties in having the relationship with many people. In order to overcome this shortcoming, I try not to show my mind and thought directly, but step back and wait and see silently. sometimes I try to find out any strengths of people, and just compliment those right way without speculating.

Children's Secrets of successful learning!

Children's Secrets of successful learning!

      Children might have some secrets of success: not monitoring themselves too much, not analyzing grammar, not being too worried about their egos, shedding inhibitions, not letting the native language interfere much, I am going to put those secrets to use in your own learning.
     In my opinion, some of the positive factors of SLA of children could be available for adult learners, and others could not for them. Therefore, to begin with, I would like to separate those factors depending on the possibility of use. As for adults, having their native language not to be interfered is not possible, as long as they totally forget their mother tongue language, while learning, or they just accumulate their knowledge of target language separated from their first language, which is not only impossible but also inefficient. On the other hand, not monitoring themselves too much, not analyzing grammar, not being too worried about their egos, shedding inhibitions could be used in my own learning. Among those secrets, I would like to choose two factors to consider.
     First is not analyzing grammar. Analysing grammar starts from the process trying to translate the language. This is because, if the learners approach the language on structural(or behavioristic) basis, they are likely to focus on the form of language. To prevent this, the learner should be able to study, and be taught in a communicative approach. Personally, I would like to adapt this notion to me like next. First, I can try to see language as itself. Basically, the Korean and English have  a totally different order in a sentence. This is why in the process of translation, Korean reads English backward. However, by trying to read the English straightforward regardless the difference between Korean and English in terms of a form of language.
     Second is not being too worried about their egos. I have a fun story about learning English.  The personality such as inactiveness, thinking a lot (rather than speaking a lot), are considered as bad for language learners. As I reckon, those personalities depend on my worries about my egos. Because I studied English education already, I knew what I am supposed to do in the class to learn quickly. Even though I had known this, I had been reluctant to be active and talk enough in class. However, one day, I got a chance to get into a class where there is no one that I know. In the class, a thing comes to my mind is ‘no one knows me in this class anyway, why don’t I become the one that I would hope to be in the class?’. I just put it into practice in no time without being worried about my ego and was able to be an ideal student at the class.

My learning style?

     One of the must-read books of students teacher, PLLT contains theories of learning styles. one of the theories claims that there are five learning styles - FID, right/left brain, ambiguity tolerance, reflectivity/impulsivity, visual / auditory / kinaesthetic -. So, this time, I would like to reflect on my self and write about my learning style
     First, I am naturally biased to the field independent style as I supposed, but I try to go with field dependent style. I have been taught that I　need to look into facts holistically not to be a blind man groping parts of an elephant in schools, and I know in the information-oriented age, it is important that synthesize a lot of information by discovering the relationship, background between those; therefore, not by nature, but by training, I become a field independent style-like person, and I believe this is how I am.
     Second, I tend to use my left brain more frequently than another side. I do not have the good of right-brain dominance such as drawing, discovering metaphors, etc. On the other hand, I am quite good at analyzing, organizing facts, and controlling my feeling. Also according to a theory that using a left hand is helpful to enhance the right-brain, there is no reason that my right brain could have grown properly.
     Third, I am good at dealing with ambiguous theories. Rather I am attracted by the study full of ambiguity such as philosophy and theology. When solving problems of social issues, there are so many things that seem contradict. To accept it, I try to　have my mind open always.
     Fourth, When it comes to the degree of my impulsivity, I would give 2 out of 10 to me. It is quite obvious. I am always cautious. Especially, in the new environment, I become so sensitive that I terribly got stressed. This is because I always think and reflect on myself before doing something.
     Fifth, I am a visual type. I like making flash-cards, learning vocabularies. I am bad at memorizing, but drawing always help my memorization. On a piece of paper, I put a word and draw a picture on the other side.