节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-06-17
难易度:Medium
关键字:research, baffle, translate, scenery, forum, I Spy
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And my name is Carolyn.
And thank you for joining us for today.
Our lesson is called How I Learned to Read and Write Korean.
We're going to be learning from Jo.
She always has such interesting experiences; and she did get to travel to Korea.
And she's talking about how she learned how to read and write Korean.
Well, this makes me wonder, what about you?
How important do you think it is to learn the local language for a country that
you are visiting?
Carolyn?
Well, I think that if you're going to be there for a while, maybe more than just
a vacation,
if you're there for an extended period of time, you should definitely learn the
local language.
It will make things much, much easier for you as you try to adjust to the new
culture or the very different way of life there.
I agree.
I want to go and visit some places in South America, I would probably need to
learn some Spanish first.
I think that would be important.
And also we learned about Chen Wei-Yin, the Orioles baseball pitcher.
And when I was researching about his life, actually I learned that when he went
to pitch in Japan,
he learned Japanese because he did not want to be seen as an outsider.
So you might have many reasons for why you want to learn the local language.
Now it's time for us to get started with the first reading of today's lesson.
(Music).
How I Learned to Read and Write Korean.
My adventures in South Korea began with an important language lesson.
After university, I decided to move to Daegu, South Korea, to teach English for
a year.
All my research told me it wasn't necessary to learn Korean.
I thought I would need to study it, but every website, blog and forum said no.
So when I left for Korea, the only Korean word in my vocabulary was kimchi.
When I arrived in Seoul, I felt baffled by the unusual Korean writing.
Lines and circles were everywhere I looked; only some were translated into
English.
All right.
Well, let's get started at the very beginning here.
We read: My adventures in South Korea began with an important language lesson.
This is interesting.
Usually I think of a language lesson as something you do in a classroom.
Is that what Jo is talking about here, Carolyn?
It is not.
It's something that she learned while she was in South Korea, not in a classroom
learning a language but just living there.
We see: After university, I decided to move to Daegu, South Korea, to teach
English for a year.
So she graduated from school, from university and moved to a city in South
Korea.
That's right, Daegu.
And she decided to teach English for a year.
Well, I think we have something to learn with Steve and Ken in the Information
Cloud about that word university.
Hi, friends.
If you're still in high school, have you thought about what you want to do after
you graduate?
Are you going to go to college or are you going to go to university?
These are two distinct questions.
But if you're in the U.S., the two questions are actually one and the same.
That's right.
Americans use the terms "college" and "university" to mean the same thing.
It's common to say someone is going off to college even if they're actually
going to university.
But technically, the two terms are different.
That's right.
Colleges are usually small and only offer four-year degrees.
Universities are large, made up of many colleges.
For example, Ohio State University has its own College of Arts and Sciences
among others.
Though they're smaller, some of the top-ranked schools in the U.S. are colleges.
One example is the Ivy League school Dartmouth College.
And that's quite different from a community college, which offers trade and
technical certifications and training, but seldom offers four-year degrees.
Which are called bachelor's degrees.
Universities, on the other hand, can offer advanced degrees like master's
degrees and doctoral degrees.
(Chinese).
It is an interesting difference between those two words.
Well, continuing in our article Jo writes:
All my research told me it wasn't necessary to learn Korean.
So she had done a lot of "research." And that is a word from the Word Bank.
It means that you look something up.
You look up the information, and you gather research.
So all of her research that she had collected told her that she didn't need to
learn Korean in order to live in South Korea.
That's right.
And you can use this word "research" as a verb as well.
Often I use it as a verb.
I had to research many things for my trip.
I wanted to get the best prices.
I did a lot of research.
Or maybe in school you have to research a lot because you're writing a research
paper.
Or maybe you've graduated, you're working, and your job is in research.
You get to research many things.
That's right.
So this word can be used in many different ways: to research, to have some
research, or a research paper, many ways that you can use this word.
Well, continuing she says:
I thought I would need to study it, but every website, blog and forum said no.
So she thought that if she wanted to move to South Korea, she should study some
Korean.
But everything she read, every website, blog and forum said she didn't need to.
That's right.
It seems like a lot of foreigners that went to Korea were suggesting it's not
important to learn the local language.
Now a forum is a meeting place for an open discussion.
It could be an official meeting place, or you could go somewhere online and many
people are talking about a certain topic.
That's right.
So when I left... or when Jo left for Korea, the only Korean word in my
vocabulary was kimchi.
So kimchi is a popular Korean food, a pickled cabbage usually that is kind of
spicy.
And a lot of people enjoy eating it; and this was the only word in Korean that
she knew.
That's right.
It's the only thing she knew how to say - kimchi.
There are many different kinds of kimchi, and it is delicious.
Well, we continue.
When I arrived in Seoul, I felt baffled by the unusual Korean writing.
I think you might feel the same way when it comes to many languages.
You feel baffled about something.
Let's take a look at that Word Bank word.
To be "baffled" is to be confused by something.
That's right.
So if you are baffled, then you are very confused.
You don't understand it at all.
And if you are looking at a writing that you are not familiar with - a different
language - maybe you know Chinese but you don't know English.
When you see English words, they might baffle you.
You might feel baffled by them, very confused.
Well, what baffles you?
Sometimes when I'm looking at directions that a friend gives me, the directions
baffle me.
I'm not really sure what they mean.
I'm not sure where I should go because I am just baffled.
Oh. And Jo was baffled by these things that she was seeing.
She says lines and circles were everywhere I looked; only some were translated
into English.
So she was baffled by the lines and circles that are used to write Korean; and
they were everywhere she looked.
That's right.
This phrase "everywhere I looked" - everywhere I went, I saw these things.
Something else that could be everywhere is the convenience stores.
They're everywhere you go.
That's right.
So everywhere you look, you can see a convenience store, a 7-Eleven or a Family
Mart, they are everywhere you look.
You might say: I was walking through the woods, and there were birds everywhere
I looked.
They were all over the place.
That's right.
Well, we do have another word here we want to talk about.
It is the word "translate." This is from our Word Bank.
When you translate something, you're taking it from one language and saying it
in another language.
Have you ever translated something from Chinese to English before?
Or from English to Chinese.
If you are learning languages, it is important to know how to translate things
correctly so that you understand their meanings.
Well, right now we want to take some time to join Michelle in the Language Lab.