Week 14 Team Korea

[Joshua]

EXAMPLES:
Problem: Superficiality during interviews (Lookism)
Thesis (Solution): The government should require that all people wear bags on their heads during job interviews.

Problem: Air pollution in Seoul
Thesis: The government should require all cars in Seoul to be replaced by horses.

Problem: Sungkyunkwan's Seoul campus is too small.
Thesis: We should build more classes in giant balloons that float above the 600 building.

These solutions are NOT real and NOT practical. They would solve the problem but NOBODY would really think these are good ideas. They are ridiculous.

IF you have any questions about you thesis please email me at [e-mail]

FORMAT:
INTRO:
Hook
Thesis:
Even though (counter REASON 1), (opinion) because (Reason 1 and Reason 2).
THESIS HELP



BODY 1:
Reason
Evidence (2 or 3)
Transition Question (see attached handout)

BODY 2:
Answer
Reason
Evidence (2 or 3)

BODY 3 (COUNTERARGUMENT):
Anti-thesis (Some will claim that…..). REMEMBER: antithesis is opposite of thesis!!!
Reasons (2) supporting anti-thesis
Why it isn’t always true/not important
Prove it

CONCLUSION
Summary
Thesis (rephrased)
Power ending (call to action, vivid image, prediction, etc.)

[Alex]

It's so long... Do I have to write my essay like this?? TT

[Kim jiwon]

Thanks Joshua^^

[Joshua]

The essay above is NOT ridiculous, but it is a good student example from last spring of what an A+ essay looks like.

[Joshua]

Korean Children Don't Have To Learn English at A Very Young Age.

When did you learn English at first? Probably most of you learned English at the third grade of the elementary school, but it is considered late these days. Recently the age that Korean children start learning English becomes much younger than before, and some parents teach their kids English even though they are just two or three years old. Furthermore, the kindergartens that specialized in teaching English become more and more popular. Their cost is surprisingly expensive more than college's tuition fee, but more surprising thing is that many parents want their kids to go those kindergartens, so, to go there, they must wait for 2 or 3 years. Like this, today Korea parents are eager to teach their kids English, and really want to improve their kids’ English skill. Then, what do you think about early-childhood English education? Is it useful for children? I believe children should not learn English at a very young age for several reasons.

Firstly, if we teach our children English too much at that time, it can cause troubles to our children. A person's childhood years are the most important years of a person's life, because during these years we learn about relationships, begin our formal education, and develop our moral sense of right or wrong etc, through various experiences. However, when our children learn English at a very young age without proper guideline, the other part except language part can't develop well. In reality, many parents teach their kids English using cartoon or tape, so many children just watch TV or listen to tape for 5 hours every day to study English, but it is very harmful to our children. According to Seo Yu heyon, professor of medicine at the Seoul National University said that the frontal robes, the brains that are considered our emotional control center and home to our personality, are developed from 3 to 6 years old, so it is important to teach manners, morals, and get various experience at that time. However, when we focused on just learning English too much, children can't have chances to learn many things.

Secondly, language has a soul and identification of the nation. Remember we learned about the colonial period at the history class. Under the Japanese rule, many nationalists thought if we protected our things, like our language, our customs, etc., we could gain the key of independence, so they taught Korean secretly. Also, have you ever read “The Last Lesson?” In the book, teacher Amell said, “We stick our language even though we are under the other country's rule, it is like we have the key of a prison.” Like this, language has a soul of nation; moreover, our language helps us to know who we are. In native tongue, there are our ancestors' custom and culture, and it has to do with our present life. However, if our children learn English at a very young age without understanding of Korean, they can't use various and specialized words in Korea, and they can't understand our cultural traditions. TV show, "Sangsang Plus" gives us an example. In that program, panels guess the word, which is unknown to teenagers. Those words contain our ancestors' custom and history, but today's teenagers don't know those words and it is natural that they don’t know the background of the words. Undoubtedly it makes our identification weakly. Therefore we should learn beautiful Korean words instead learning English at a young age. Of course it doesn't mean that we don't have to learn English, but it means it isn't late we learn English after we learn Korean and make our identification firmly.

Lastly, many people who agree to early-childhood English education say that it is useful for improving our global competitiveness, because English is widely used in the world. They say that when we learn English at a very young age, our pronunciation and our speaking ability get better than we learn English at an adolescence, and it is more efficient. Needless to say, English is important in 21st Century. However, do you think the people who learn English at a very young age speak English fluently? I think learning English at a young age isn't efficient to our children and it can't make our children speak English fluently. For instance, imagine you teach the word "court" to two kids, one is 5 years old, and the other is 14 years old. Who can understand well and use this word properly? At a very young age, the children don't know abstract word, so they can't understand well. In addition ministry of Education experimented 40 children dividing into two groups, 5 years old and 9 years old who had not learned English. According to this experiment, 9-year-old children learn faster and their pronunciation is more accurate than 5-year-old children. 9-year-old children understood well, and they tried to correct their mistakes when teacher taught it. Also, they tried to relate the words to their experience. For example, teacher taught them "black" and they related this word to "black coffee". It helped them to remember easily. On the other hand, 5-year-old children couldn't concentrate well, so it was hard to teach and spent more time teaching same words. Also, they didn't try to correct their wrong pronunciation, when teacher taught it. In short, we can learn just basic words and phrases when we learn English at a young age, and it is hard for young children to pronounce words correctly. Moreover to speak English fluently, we have to speak English in everyday life, but we can't do that since we live in Korea. Therefore even if we learned English at a young age, we forget most things easily. For that reason learning English at a young age isn't efficient.

When we consider the development of our children's brain, formation of identification, and efficiency of early English education, early-childhood English education has bad effects on our children. We already know the importance of English, so we can't prevent parents' effort, but we can show them proper guidelines. Now, we must prevent kindergartens that specialized in English for children's balanced growth, and provide our children with systemic education program, which is not just teaching English, teaching all part balanced. Also, we must prevent media's exaggerative advertisements, which encourage parents to pursue early-childhood English education. These days, many parents teach English to their children at a young age for their pleasure. However we must consider seriously that learning English at a young age is really helpful for our children. Our ancestor said, "Education is a long range-project of the state." Our children live next generation, not now, so we should try to educate them for the future, not for just our present satisfaction.

[Joshua]

Handouts are attached.QUOTE and paraphrase.doc
Transitions between Paragraphs.doc