It was really amazing day! Sunny and warm! Besides, I had a real fun time with my friends, playing basketball. After the game, we went to Thai restaurant for dinner. We also had frozen yogurt. It is so great to have a nice fro-yo place near my office. Today, there has been one big question in my mind, “Can you really speak English?” What does it take to be able to SPEAK English? Throughout my life, I think I had gone through a few steps to be able to at least communicate in English.

1. memorizing vocabulary : Initially, I thought I need to know a lot of words to be able to speak English. So, whenever I saw new words from books, I looked them up in my dictionary and memorize the meaning of the words, writing in my exercise books. This definitely helped my reading but not speaking.

2. memorizing sentences or paragraphs : But then there was a big change in my studying pattern after I met the greatest English teacher in my life, Jinyoung Kim. She told me, “You cannot SPEAK English if you do not practice to use words in sentences or phrases. You think you can easily make sentences by organizing some of the words you memorized. That is not going to happen especially when you try to learn English after you are all grown up.” From that time, I basically memorized almost all of the paragraphs of many TOEFL books. The other thing she asked me to practice was INTONATION. Korean is monotonous. That is why it is so hard to speak English with intonation for Koreans. For example, “만나서 반갑습니다(Man na seo ban gap seup ni da.)” is “nice to meet you!” in Korean. Korean one is so monotonous whereas English one has high pitches and low pitches. I guess if you say “nice to meet you” without intonation, then American people would think, “I do not think you mean it. Maybe you do not want to meet me any more??” Well, to practice these, everyday, standing up in front of a mirror, I talked to myself in English. Even in subway, I just talked to myself, memorizing all of the paragraphs. People looked at me like someone crazy. Even Jessy told me, “You are crazy! Are you married to English?”

3. Learning culture : The longer I live here in America, the more I feel like it is really required to learn and understand the American culture to be able to speak English. That is why, whenever I hear a new expression, I have to ask, “Why do you use it in that case?” or “Why does it have that meaning?” For example, today, Andrew taught me two new expressions. One is “throw down” and the other one is “mano-a-mano.” Then, I asked him like “Why do you use it for that case?” and “So, when you are young, did you use mano-a-mano when you are drunk and having fun with your friends by like pretending fighting?” I mean… Think about it! If you know the origin of the words or expressions, it is really a lot easier to understand, remember and use them in the right context. I know I am still far away from being able to speak English well. But one lesson I would like to share with you is: “Do not afraid of saying, ‘I am sorry! I do not know what it means? Can you explain it to me?'” I mean you have to admit that you cannot be perfect and need to continue to learn as much as you can in your whole years in America, right? No pain, No gain!

I guess this kind of processes would be the same for learning any languages. Do you have any special tricks when you try to learn other languages?

Korean equivalent of “throw down” : ‘한판하자'(han pan ha ja)

Korean equivalent of “mano-a-mano” : ‘일대일 대결’ (il dae il dae gyul)

Don’t use these Koreans to Korean people! They know TaeKwonDo. You would get hurt. Did I tell you that I have a black belt? 🙂