TESOL ESSAY #1

Jin Suk Choi

A lot of people these days try to learn new languages besides English and their own native language. However, learning a new language is a very hard thing to do and many people give up in the middle of studying. I have learned Japanese as my second language excluding English. I lived in Japan because of my father’s work and lived there for almost 11 years, every two to three years.

It was my second time I visited Japan when I actually started learning Japanese. I was seven years old and I attended Japanese public school. Even though it was my second time visiting Japan, I didn’t remember a single thing about Japanese since I first visited Japan when I was a little baby. Eventually, I had a very hard time to understand what the others are saying. However, after a few weeks, my homeroom teacher at that time introduced me a tutoring teacher who was Korean and knew Japanese very well. That’s how I started learning Japanese. I had extra few-hour classes  after school with my tutor.

Thinking back, it was very interesting how he taught me Japanese. He always reminded me  that learning a new language has to be very fun and not dull or boring. The first homework that he gave me was read comic book that was very popular at that time. I thought he didn't want to teach me at all but as time went by I started to understand those books and within two to three months I was able to read it by myself and started to use basic Japanese. Other homework that he gave me was very odd compared to other teachers, for example, watch Japanese movies and animation with subtitles first and then watch without it.

The tutoring teacher taught me Japanese grammar and vocabularies by relating it to my interests such as animation and movies. His teaching type was more like involver and enabler type. He had spent time with me reading comic books together and letting me learn by myself. Since it was a tutoring class, I did not have an opportunity to do activities with other people, but it really helped me to work with Japanese and didn't have a lot of problem be with the Japanese students and classes.

One of the aspects that I really expected my teacher was that he respected me even though I was a little boy and used honorific form of language to me while teaching. It can be very disturbing for an adult to use honorific language to a kid who is a lot younger than him. In addition to that, he not only taught me Japanese language, but also he taught me how to get along with Japanese people. He showed me around new places in Japan and teach what I should do and not to do to Japanese people which I still use the knowledge now.

It was a successful learning for me and that I would like to be a teacher like him who respects people not depending on their age or anything and teach in variety of aspects. I would like to obtain a lot of good aspects from him during this TESOL course and apply it to my future classes.

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