I had never meant to teach English. I tutored now and then when I needed to get pocket money. But mostly I was too busy wrestling with my own English.
Then something happened that drew my attention to others' English. That attention became a question that led to another question, and then another, and they did not really stopped. Twenty years had gone since then. It all began when I met Korean American kids while studying in the US.
It was right after I switched my major and went to an art school one hour from LA. Around the same time, a friend of mine, an immigrant, moved into the neighborhood near that school. She had a six-year-old son, a 1.5-generation kid who, born in Korea, came to the US. He had just started first grade.
My friend and her husband commuted an hour to downtown LA every day. Due to the notoriously heavy traffic on the 5, they could not make it back in time for school pickup. Me? I spent all day drawing. My schedule was wide open. Narurally I ended up with picking him up, along with his friend, and that friend's little brother. Just like that, I was running a "daycare until the moms get home." I helped with English homework, taught them Korean, and drew pictures with them. We got along super well since I am Disney kid at heart. Word must have gotten in the Korean American community. Sooner or later, I was introduced to them as an "English teacher."
Why me, in a country full of native speakers? At first, I was puzzled. Back then, people assumed that you picked up English just like that by setting foot on American soil--even more so if you moved there as a small child, or were born there. But the reality turned out to be quite different.
First, English WAS their second language to them. Its reason was quite simple: their parents were Korean. If a mom who feeds you, puts you to sleep, and play with you, is speaking Korean, your first language is going to be Korean. It is true anywhere you go in the world. Even if your dad was a third generation Korean American, it did not much matter if he got home after midnight and only ever saw his kids asleep.
In the middle of vast northern continent, which made you feel a deep "boom" when your airplane entered its skies over after crossing the Pacific Ocean, a home where you parents spoke Korean was still a little Korea!
Second, the sock the kids experienced on the first day of leaving their little house for preschool is beyond imagination. Their parents who made them unprepared never magined what their kids were being asked to absorb. Some got nosebleeds, some wet their pants or some even touched their genital.
It was not just frustrated about being unable to communicate. Something more fundamental was shaken: their sense of who they were.
Why can those white kids speak English well, but I can’t?
Why am I here if I speak Korean?
Why suddenly do I have to speak this strange language?
These small kids could not find words to explain them. But they understood something very quickly: English is survival.
For five years, I looked after about ten kids from pre-kinder to twelve-grade, observing their difficulties. Each of them were trying to find their own ways.
One of them became truly bilingual. She had a strong desire to communicate with her parents, and a fierce pride not to fall behind her peers. She found her own way by using books as her surrogate English parents.
Other three became the typical A+ Korean Americans. Their English, of course, was better than mine. Still their parents wanted to know whether they were doing good. Yes, they were.
Other three became the ordinary Korean Americans. They were not exceptional, but made friends, passed graduation requirements, and moved forward.
But there were three who drew my attention. Their English seemed to start, then stopped. When English stopped, all other things stopped as well. They became isolated at school. Their self-esteems dropped. The behavior problems appeared. In the empty home, when his parents were work, one of them became game-addict. Watching hide keyboard, and her son hunt for it, made me feel sad.
But what frightened me most was that their thinking seemed to stop, too. There was an unmistakable feeling: words circling around thought, never hitting the core. It felt like white fog fill up in their brain. English was delayed, and so was Korean. Returning to Korea was not an option, either.
I was not a language expert. There was little I could do, and I felt powerless. I spent about twenty years studying humanities, and learning to observe people through art. Yet, here were these poor kids in front of me, and I could not help their English. I hated it.
The more I thought about it, the more unfair the situation seemed. None of them chose it. Could I blame parents who never imagined that their kids would face a language problem like this? Financial situation could not explain this: kids were from the wealthy family, middle-class family and low income family. One of dads was an interpreter.
So I gave up tutoring them. Still, I found myself asking a question: WHY? There had to be something in English that Koreans kept tripping over. Something common enough to appear in different kids, in different families and under different situations.
This question turned out to be the most stubborn problem in Koreans learning English. It was a reckless question to take seriously. But I could not put it down. Twenty years has passed, and I am still talking about it.
Thanks for reading thia far!
I will appreciate any comments. 🙂
