In this blog post, I’ll summarize my learning journey and reflections, focusing on my English study methods during high school, my activities in the American TV Drama Club, my experiences with consideration and cooperation, and my career plans.

Academic Experience

I enjoyed English class in high school, but I wasn’t particularly good at it. My school grades remained at a Level 2, and I realized on my own that my fundamentals in conversation and grammar were lacking. However, I wasn’t sure how to address these learning challenges. To improve my grammar, I tried taking online courses, and to work on my conversation skills, I watched a lot of American TV shows. Yet, I didn’t see any noticeable improvement in my grades or proficiency. In my sophomore year of high school, I met a talented English teacher who marked a new turning point for me. The teacher, who had studied abroad, had conducted extensive research on English learning methods. As a result, she was able to provide appropriate solutions to the learning challenges students faced. First, she taught me how to infer the content of a text by looking at the title before studying the main text of a unit. She had me analyze the title to determine what the content might be, what type of text it was, and what the characteristics of the protagonist and other characters were. At first, I didn’t really understand the effectiveness of this exercise, but later, when I encountered college entrance exam questions, I could infer the general content just by reading the first sentence or paragraph. When we began analyzing the text in earnest, the teacher told us to avoid paraphrasing—a common mistake students make. Up until then, I had been trying hard to understand the text immediately by translating English into Korean, which has a different sentence structure. As a result, it took me a long time to interpret the text. Instead, following the literal translation method recommended by my teacher, I practiced interpreting the text phrase by phrase, even if the sentences weren’t fully formed. Doing this not only sped up my reading but also allowed me to grasp the overall meaning even when I was only interpreting individual words or phrases. Finally, after finishing the reading passage, I practiced memorizing the entire text. Amazingly, the more I repeated the passage, the more naturally I internalized the sentence structures. Without having to struggle to memorize different types of sentence structures or analyze grammatical structures, I was able to naturally master complex sentences.

School Activities

I’ve always liked English and had a strong desire to improve. So, I always wanted to speak English as fluently as American high school students, and with that ambition, I joined the TV Drama Club. As the name suggests, the TV Drama Club was a group where we watched American TV shows together and used the subtitles to study English. Although the club didn’t have many members, it had the cozy atmosphere of a small English study group. Since I usually watch a lot of American TV shows and enjoy American culture—including pop music—I really enjoyed my time in the club. During my freshman year of high school, the main show we watched through the club was the classic ‘Friends’. ‘Friends’ is a series that began in the 1990s and ran for 10 seasons, so it was a very extensive show. Additionally, educational CDs and subtitle analysis materials based on ‘Friends’ were already available on the market, making it easy to utilize these resources for our studies. So, every week, we would prepare a set portion of the show to watch with our club members and practice summarizing the content. At first, since my English skills weren’t fully developed yet, it was difficult to understand the plot using only English subtitles. Therefore, to study in stages, we watched the show with both Korean and English subtitles displayed simultaneously. When watching American TV shows, I didn’t just sit there staring at the screen like I would when watching alone at home. Since we were watching for educational purposes, I took notes while watching to achieve our goal. My notes consisted of looking up and writing down any unfamiliar words that appeared in the subtitles, and whenever possible, I also jotted down long sentences or idioms. Because we were watching together as a group, I couldn’t pause the show to take notes, so I had to stay focused and keep up with my notes on my own. At first, I found these activities quite challenging.
Even when I tried to write down words, I couldn’t figure out the spelling, but my friends seemed to be doing much better than I was. So, I studied vocabulary on my own whenever I had a chance and memorized English words commonly used in daily life to avoid getting confused about their spellings. As I studied this way, my note-taking speed eventually increased, and by the time we got to Season 5, I was able to write down words immediately. By the time we watched Season 7, I had reached a level where I could not only write down words but also idioms and sentences immediately, without any issues with grammar or spelling. Using our notes, we shared words and idioms that were difficult to interpret and organized the common ones separately in a notebook. For difficult passages, we all used electronic dictionaries together to look up meanings and example sentences, and it was very helpful to be able to review what we’d studied right away during our next viewing session. Being able to review immediately meant that even when similar words or phrases appeared in the next episode, we could naturally review what we’d studied previously. By watching and studying American dramas in this study group format, we could feel our reading comprehension and grammar skills improving significantly.

An Example of Consideration and Cooperation

By the time we entered our sophomore year of high school, the American Drama Viewing Club had entered its second year. During that time, we had watched over 200 episodes of various dramas. At first, we found it difficult to follow the plot, so we watched with Korean subtitles on at the same time, but gradually we were able to understand the content using only English subtitles. Of course, when relying solely on English subtitles, we sometimes struggled to catch dialogue that went by too quickly, but once we got used to it, our listening skills improved to the point where we could even understand quick jokes and laugh along. There were even some dramas with relatively simple plots that I could understand without English subtitles. While my speaking skills were still somewhat lacking, my listening skills had improved significantly in comparison. So, after confirming that my listening skills had improved, I planned to create subtitles to put my skills to the test. Together with fellow club members, we decided to collaborate on creating subtitles for a new drama ourselves. When creating the subtitles, we didn’t simply paraphrase them directly into Korean; instead, we wrote them in English first and then produced the Korean subtitles by translating them literally. Creating two sets of subtitles was a time-consuming task, but as our speed increased, it became an enjoyable activity. We divided the drama into seasons and episodes, and paired up in groups of two to split the work. I was in charge of creating the English subtitles, while my partner immediately interpreted them and wrote them in Korean. Since there are subtitle-making programs available, we were able to create them easily. I would play the drama and watch it with my partner while typing the English subtitles on my laptop. As we interpreted the dialogue together, my partner would also write down the content in Korean. It was a labor-intensive task, as we had to pause the video after every line of dialogue to type the subtitles, but since it was an activity we both enjoyed, we lost track of time. As a result of our efforts, we were able to produce high-quality subtitles, and I felt a great sense of pride in providing them to underclassmen for use in their club activities.

Growth and Career Plans

Among my educational experiences, school had the greatest influence on my career path. In particular, the person who provided a new turning point for me—someone who loved English—was my English teacher whom I met during my sophomore year of high school. The study methods she taught me and her attitude toward constantly researching English teaching methods had an overall positive impact on me.
Watching my teacher constantly study and work hard, I resolved that I, too, would become an educator who always strives to improve. In particular, my greatest area of interest is English learning methods. Even though I personally loved the English subject, my grades weren’t particularly high, so I was always thinking about how to improve my study methods. In fact, if I had been a student who was naturally good at English and had an exceptional aptitude for language acquisition, I probably wouldn’t have had to worry about it. However, the time I spent grappling with these learning challenges allowed me to try out various learning methods on my own and assess their effectiveness. I found great joy in this process of applying diverse approaches to solve learning problems. Therefore, I aspire to work as an English instructor who devises various teaching methods for English grammar, reading comprehension, and conversation. I also hope to serve as an English education researcher who immediately applies the methods I’ve devised to students and evaluates their effectiveness. After enrolling in the English department, I will receive a comprehensive education in English, English and American literature, linguistics, and interpretation and translation, while striving first and foremost to become a diligent student myself. This is because I believe that an effective educator grows from being a diligent student. Based on this belief, during my freshman year, I will build a solid foundation by studying English composition, reading, and discussion. In my sophomore year, I will focus on improving my English pronunciation while thoroughly studying traditional English grammar. In my third year, I will begin studying modern grammar in earnest, systematically applying my learning by sequentially studying English syntax, English lexical semantics, English phonetics, and discourse and sentence analysis. In my fourth year, I will take courses in English teaching materials research and English teaching methodology to prepare to become a future English instructor.