For Moon Dan-yol, a popular English lecturer who is also known as Daniel Moon outside of Korea, English speaking is a subject closer to physical exercise. "When we sing a song, we use about 400 muscles, and the same complicated muscle movement is involved when we speak," Moon told The Korea Herald.
Moon is widely regarded as one of Korea's top English teachers, particularly in the field of speaking, and said there are three basic principles that bolster a successful learning process for verbal communication.
The first principle is the internalization of key expressions and sentences. "The key is how many times you actually speak the phrase or sentences of the target language," Moon said. "When we pick up our mother tongue, we just listen to the language input and try to imitate the sound in a constant cycle of input and output that forms the crucial connection between listening and speaking."
Unfortunately, Moon said, there is a persistent misunderstanding about the connection between listening and speaking. Some experts, including English teachers and study guidebook authors here, argue that listening constantly to English input will lead to an improvement in speaking ability somewhat automatically.
Moon said this theory is not valid.
"Listening to English audio tapes endlessly does not guarantee your English speaking proficiency will improve. You have to speak the sentences yourself, internalize the sentences and make them your own," Moon said.
If they had interviewed the other guy I would have pooped my pants.
Or one of the white people.
9 comments:
I didn't know the writer was from the TV show (then again, how much Korean TV have I watched in the past half-year? Almost none, outside of sports events that everyone seems to have on).
The points about internalizing English and making effort towards progress were definitely parts I could agree with though.
I like that Moon Dan-yol. He seems like a nice guy. I also find the permanent patina of frustration and exhaustion that hangs heavily around his eyes pleasingly apposite.
Back in the days when I had to get up at 6.30am(this was a couple of years ago now), I used to watch English Cafe as I was eating my cereal and I grew quite reluctantly fond of it, but in the way that you might grow fond of a growth of your face or an incredibly annoying co-worker. Isaac Durst is quite good at what he does (entertaining children), and again, seems like a nice enough chap, but he used to be joined by this other fucker who used to ham it up like he thought he was Jim Carrey, and for whom a painful death could never come soon enough to please me.
There was also a tasty gyopo lady (I assume she was gyopo on account of her accent) who constantly gave off the aura of tolerating her amateurish co-broadcasters for just precisely as long as it took for her to get spotted and hauled up to the dignified level of celebrity that she clearly believed she deserved. Most likely she was a dreadful person off camera, but she certainly raised my spirits first thing in the morning.
Oh yes, and I also like the band in the background, because they're always talking amongst themselves whilst they're in shot, which gives the Cafe an extra dose of amateurishness.
The guy seems to have his own theories of what he is doing and seems confident in his methods, that is much more than what I can say about my own English teaching style. Also if people are responding to him he must be doing something right.
"Moon is widely regarded as one of Korea's top English teachers, particularly in the field of speaking..."
That's amusing to read, since the grammatical mistakes in their scripts (even for the native speakers, like that tool Isaac) seem to outnumber the correctly recited non-sequiturs. That might be a good show to teach parrots how to recite amusing phrases, but for people who aspire to improve their conversation and listening skills...learning to chant barely intelligible gibberish might not be the best approach.
Many Korean shows that purport to teach English, seem to do more to reverse the process of language acquisition, by allowing people to edit their scripts with little more skill than a native-speaking 8 year-old has.
Does English make you hard? Do you wanna level up your SLE? You can learn the English from the Koreans on TV. Some have mistake, but also native speakers can make the mistake too, so it the same.
It's like making the public school English textbooks. They are made by Koreans. What kind of brass balls do you have to have to have a non-native speaker make the textbooks? My favorite was the older textbooks at public schools where the white kid comes to Korea and sees a hanbok in the window.
Paraphrased except for the last line.
"Oh...what is it."
"It is hanbok."
"I will take it."
Well done, gentlemen. You dont need any input from us to write those books.
I agree with what Moon says, because that's how I learned/am still learning Korean.
"I wish I were smarter" = fine use of subjunctive mood.
Indeed, but it still makes for a great screenshot.
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