👨🏻🏫How I Became a Korean Teacher... A Good One!
A brief story of my language journey
Hi there!👋🏻
I hope you are having a great week! As might have seen from my IG stories, I spent a week in Vancouver and ate so much good food (I’d fly back in a heartbeat if I could🤤). As much as I enjoyed my time back home, I am now feeling fully recharged to start my Korean 101 course with a new group of students!
First, however, take a look at these lovely class photos we took on our last day!
Don’t we look super happy together? This is what happens in my class!💙 The course registration is now open to you, my subscribers, before it opens to the public! Leave a comment or send me an email if you have any questions!
Now, allow me to share the story of my becoming a Korean teacher.
It actually goes back to my first year as a grade 10 student in high school. It was not long after I moved from Korea to Canada and I became good friends with this guy named Kevin in a physics class. He was very interested in Korean movies and had already watched some of the masterpieces such as “Old Boy”, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Memories of Murder” (these movies were directed by the two most prominent movie directors from South Korea, Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. Highly recommended!👍🏻). I don’t remember what compelled me to teach him the Korean alphabet aka Hangul during a physics class, but I taught and he learned. It was quite amazing how quickly he was able to read and write Korean and we spent a lot of time in class scribbling random stuff in Korean, because we both didn’t pay too much attention in class😅. What’s funny is that he still remembers how to read and write Korean to this day, even though he never pursued formal study of the language. But, I’d say teaching Kevin Hangul by writing all of the letters on a loose leaf 19 years ago was the start of my teaching experience.
Ever since, language has been a big part of my life. Imagine yourself going from Korea to Canada at the age of 16 without knowing much English and going to school right away the night after your arrival to a new country. Terrifying, isn’t it? While it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, simply because I’m such an optimistic person (it just means I don’t think much), I had to learn English as fast as I could to understand my teachers, make friends, write exams and eventually graduate. Surprisingly, I happened to pick up the language pretty fast and I got interested in more languages when I started going to university. As a matter of fact, I took many language courses like Spanish, French and even Cree (it’s a language spoken by the indigenous people living in Canada). My second year, I started learning Chinese as one of my electives and I continued studying after the course which led me to become a fluent Chinese speaker (I’m very proud of this achievement😂).
Fast forward to 2020 which we all remember very clearly that we spent most of our time at home due to Covid-19 outbreak and I was no exception. I was home alone and got tired of playing computer games with my friend after just a few weeks. Then, one day, I started to think—what could I possibly do at home as a side hustle to make extra cash?
It didn’t take long to get the idea of teaching Korean online💡✨.
Although I enjoyed teaching Korean to a few buddies back in high school, I really had no idea how I was actually going to teach people online. Consequently, it was not easy at first and I struggled with things such as how to explain grammar concepts and finding the right material for lessons. However, I started to get the hang of it and my lessons gradually got better and better. As time went by, I had lessons booked every single day. I had all seven days of the week open for my availability and taught numerous students to gain as much experience as possible. The lesson hours ended up accumulating to more than 600 hours of teaching in about a year of time and I have spent around 1,000 total hours teaching Korean to people from all over the world. Obviously, there are many Korean teachers who have spent more time teaching but I have developed my own teaching techniques and methods to maximize the effect of the lessons. And I strongly believe that I’m doing a pretty good job because I see the majority of my students feeling content and satisfied with my courses.
I’ll stop it here and I’ll probably write you another email with detailed information about the course tomorrow. But, don’t hesitate to ask me any questions if you have! If you are ready to sign up, then click here.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day!
다음에 또 봐!💙
You are such a human Tower of Babel! 👍😁👍 Teaching a language isn't easy. Both my parents were English teachers and growing up helping mark papers, I know that just because you can speak a language well doesn't mean you are good at teaching it! I'm bi-lingual too, but there's a difference in acquiring (picking up) a language as opposed to learning (studying) a language. So, in Brizzy-speak, "Onya Mate!"
You're a very entertaining teacher! Your magazine articles are just as engaging as your instagram videos - you have writing super-powers as well as speaking super-powers!
Thank you again and again for sharing your talent! To Joseon, and Beyond!
It's always good to hear about someone's achievements during the pandemic. I lost my job (like many other people), and some other opportunities, and just focused on baking and cooking to keep myself busy🙄