Minjok Essay: Are you one of us Aaron?

Before I start my essay about minjok, I would like to share a short conversation that I had with my friend Aaron. When I was in America, I was 5th grade in the elementary school and I had a friend named Aaron who was Korean American. I remember a one unforgettable question that I have asked him during the break time. We were talking about something and I said "You are Korean, right?". After few moments, he denied himself as Korean and he said "I'm American". So I said "You look like Korean and you speak like Korean. How can you say that you are not Korean!!" and the reply was "I have US citizenship that proves me I'm American". His opinion was so strong that I couldn't argue with it anymore.

 

 

Can we say Aaron is one of our minjok?
and this is a question that I want to solve during my whole essay.

I have mentioned the word 'Minjok' in my conversation with Aaron. But what is minjok?

According to the National Institute of the Korean Language, 'Minjok' means ethnic group formed with people from region in a long period of time sharing same language and culture. In English, minjok is often considered same as people, ethnic group, race-nation. The history of minjok goes back to 1900s. Minjok emerged by Shin Chaeho during the period when Japan tried to conclude the Japan-Korea treaty of 1905. Shin Chaeho, Korean independence activist, made minjok popular by portraying it as 'a warlike race that had fought bravely to preserve Korean identity'. At that time the most important thing for Koreans was to unite and resist toward Japan's attempt to completely colonize Korea to their terriotory and minjok came in to their mind, and Koreans started to fight back under the name of minjok. Finally on October 15th, Koreans could gain the fruit of independence.

Not only minjok brought independence but it also brought wealth to Korea. In 1950, Korea faced a war which separated Korea into two separate nations, North and South Korea. At that time Korean Conflict brought disastrous results to Korea. Korea's GDP was near zero and people were suffering to death. 1st president, Syngman Rhee, tried to rise Korea to its original place so he emphasized minjok once again to unite people from new-born South Korea. President thought in order to make changes Korean should move by groups not individuals. Thus, in his speech he said "United we stand, divided we fall" underling the importance of minjok. After this event, Koreans were able to make some improvements but they were falling behind compared to North Korea at that time.

The biggest leap in Korean economy occurred during the 5~9th president Park Chunghee. Some people call him a dictator being the president for more than 15years but it is true he has built a Korean society that can be seen now. During his term president Park Chunghee did something called 'Saemaeul movement'. Saemaeul movement can be translated as the new community movement which launched on April 22, 1970  to modernize the rural South Korean economy. This ideology of minjok made people to gather and actively engage in this movement and made them to think "We can do it". By this Koreans were able to accomplish something known as 'Miracle on the Han River' which is the term that people use to describe Korea's rapid economic growth after the war. By emphasizing minjok Korea could gain so many things in such a short period of time.

Nowadays, when ask Koreans about minjok they tend to focus more on something called 'Danil minjok' which is a group that is connected with pure blood. Thus, we don't give the title of 'Danil minjok' to people who have different nationality. But, when we think of Aaron, this seems to not fit with what Koreans think of minjok. Aaron is American but he was born under Korean mother and father which makes him a pure blood of Korean. So the concept of 'Danil minjok' is quite ironic in this case. Furthermore, in Korea we call Korean Americans a 'Dong po' which means they are the members of our Korean minjok. The concept of minjok is so subjective to conclude minjok in to a one definition and people have their own different definitions of minjok. Thus, despite all these minjok controversies, I have come up with my personal definition of minjok.

Minjok is group of people who are unified as one.
Minjok is just another word for unification. If they think they are Korean and can be unified as one of us, I think they can be called our minjok.

I defined minjok as unification because it's not the blood bond that brought us independence, and wealth but it was unification. When we look at our history, people say that we have accomplished independence from Japan because it was the power of our Korean pure blood. However, this is not correct when we see what actually happened in Korea. Korea have accomplished independence not because of their pure blood but they did because they were unified as one. Furthermore, in the book 'Ethnic Nationalism in Korea' written by Gi-wook Shin, the mentions about a special event that happened in Korea in the year of 2002. 2002 World Cup is one of the most fantastic moments that Koreans remember. During the World Cup, Koreans called themselves as 'Red Devils' and very passionately cheered Korean national team. Gi-wook Shin says this event showed Korean's strong pride that they are connected with single blood line by far ancestor called Tangun and he showed a survey done by KBS that Koreans think the blood is the most important thing in Korea. However, this survey was done in 1999 when internet wasn't even commercialized, and during my research I found that many Koreans don't think they are danil minjok anymore. In my opinion, it is 21st century now, and people have something called internet that connects every people all over the world. Also, Korea is becoming a multi-ethnic society. There are many Korean Americans, many mixed-blood, and also people who have changed their nationality to Korea. From what we can see now in the year of 2013, 'Minjok' should be defined as unification rather than old-fashioned Danil minjok.

Now getting back to Aaron. Is he one of our minjok?
Well, it depends on him whether he thinks he is one of Korean minjok. Since he has pure blood of Korean on the perspective of Danil minjok he can be considered as our minjok but minjok is group of people who share same culture. He denied himself as Korean but there are many Korean Americans that have very deep bond with Korea thinking they are Korean as much as they are American. Thus, I think it is not the Koreans who decide whether they are our minjok or not, it is themselves who decide where they belong to.

This is a news about Korean website called 'Uriminjokkiri' which was made to intentionally criticize North Korea's dictatorship. One thing that is interesting about this website is that it uses the word minjok to North Koreans saying they are also one of us. Their opinion is hereditary dictatorship should collapse one day, and North and South Korea should be united.

 

References:
National Institute of the Korean Language, 민족
Wikipedia, Korean ethnic nationalism
Wikipeida, Samaeul Movement
Wikipedia, Miracle on Han river
Gi-wook Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea

 

Rhetorical Device: Hyperbole!!

<Hyperbole>

 

What is 'Rhetorical Device'?

Rhetorical Device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading him or her towards considering a topic from a different perspective.

 

What is Hyperbole

Hyperbole(과장법) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech from a Greek word meaning excess. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally

-wikipedia

Hyperbole is often used in poetry and is frequently encountered in casual speech.

 

Examples

-“It was so cold, I saw polar bears wearing jackets”

           One easy example explaining hyperbole.

           Polar bears live in Arctic and they don't wear jackets.

           Didn't really saw polar bears wearing jackets but it is used to describe the weather is frigid.

 

-Hyperboles shown in advertisements

iPhone 5: Browse, download and stream content at blazing-fast speeds.

           Blazing-fast speed is an exaggeration. Everyone knows that iPhone is not that fast.

 

Samsung GALAXY Camera: Shoot, Edit and Share instantly to get a thousand likes on your photos!

           Thousand likes is an exaggeration. It is really hard to get thousand likes on facebook.

 

Why do they use these hyperboles?

           They use it to persuade customers. It enlightens the product value.

          Better than saying you can instantly get 10likes.

 

-"My toaster has never once worked properly in four years. I follow the instructions and push two slices of bread down in the slots, and seconds later they rifle upwards. Once they broke the nose of a woman I loved dearly."

Speech of Woody Allen for college graduates.
This time, hyperbole was used to add humor to the speech. Rifle upwards, broken nose.

Group discussion on TOEFL!

In Mr. Menard's class, we gathered in groups of four and discussed about TOEFL writings written by our classmates. Our topic of  TOEFL writing was to write about the changes that new 21st century will bring. Everyone did good on their writings but I thought Jinuk's essay was the most creative one among them. And here's the result of our group discussion!

Hyunsoo Jeon (Seunghyun's response) http://bloglogfogmog.blogspot.kr/
1. Great examples (Specific & appropriate for the topic)
2. Great organization (Very TOEFL-style, but still, great branching out & great wrap-up)
3. Various changes in various fields (Communication, science & education)

Seungjun Lee (Jaewan's response) http://menboong.blogspot.kr/
1. Gave nice examples (Kyoto Protocol, etc.)
2. Out of the three reasons he used as support, two of them are really strong
3. No grammatical errors.

Jonghyun Wang (Jihun's response) http://jihunkmla.blogspot.kr/
1. Not an overview of the 21^st century, but very focused on one topic (power shift)
2. Might better to use objective POV for examples
3. Good organization

Yong-han Jung (Jinuk's response) http://kmlaenglishwriting.blogspot.kr/
1. Title: WWW (World Wide Web) – also an example of world w/o wires
2. Divide the use of wires into two parts (connect info & charging)
3. Good response to prompt: It’s future technology that we’re looking at
4. Making his own equation for the technology: Creative; Help the readers understand what he’s trying to say.

Song for my art project!!

VIVA LA VIDA

 

 

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemie's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
Now the old king is dead, Long live the king

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered the my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand


I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
Once you go there was never
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what's I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavaly choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world


This is a song that I choose for my art project. It is a song by coldplay and  I have to make an album cover for it!! It is a quite interesting topic to do a project on but I'm actually writing on my blog about this because I cannot come up with any more ideas how I should make the album very creative. I don't know if someone will see my blog, but if you are please comment on my post about how you feel about this song and some ideas how I should make my album cover :)
Thank you~ (And maybe later, I'll post  my album cover here)

Montly TOEFL Essay #2: 3 keywords to 21th century

What change will 21th century will bring to us?

 

            It is now 21th century when people all look forward to see a new development that 21th century will bring. Humans have developed many things in 20th century and the progress still continues. By looking at the age of planet earth, 100 years is not a big thing. However, humans were able to accomplish many things in a very short period. I'm going to talk about the things that technological advancement will bring to our lives in 21th century by giving 3 key words.

smart       fast       eco

 

SMART!

          
'Smart' became a widely used word after the introduction of smart phones in 21th century. Smart phones are more than a device, it enable people to communicate rapidly and fast even in the far distance. Many people might think even 2G phones were adaptable to do these tasks but smart phones are the actual ones that made people live in 21 century. Facebook, Twitter are one of the most widely used social network system that everyone at least one account. By this people were able to communicate not just thorough voice or text, but even videos, pictures, and their own handwritings. This created something called smart revolution. In the future, wearable computers will be commercialized. Google launched their own wearable computer called Google glass. This enables people to communicate by eyeball movements. Wearable computers were invented by engineers in the past but it was hard to actually commercialize. Thus, Google has possibility to create a new device that will lead the 21th century.

 

FAST!

"The early bird catches the worm". This is one of the most well known quotes all around the world. It teaches us a lesson to act more rapid to gain benefits. 21th century will be a fast moving century like an early bird.
People want to use their time efficiently and the desire has lead to the creations of cars, trains, and airplanes. Now, people are moving faster than ever and world is being globalized. On the other hand, it is not only the humans that are moving fast, information moves even faster. On the internet we are able to communicate with friends all over the world, and it makes a whole new society that they can share their information, ideals, and emotions.
People living in 21th century say that it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have it in your mind, but what matters is to draw knowledge out of the internet faster than others. 21th century will demand people who are able to extract information in just seconds.

 

ECO!

21th century is the century that we have to start concerning about our environment. Our usage of resources has boosted as the result of technological advancement. In other words, people's pursuit of convenience has created something inevitable to change. Nowadays, almost every family has at least one car and some have two, producing huge amount of carbon dioxide resulting global warming. This wasn't a common thing even in late 20th century, and this is expected to increase in the future. Beside cars, smart phones are  also threatening the ecosystems, especially gorillas. Smartphone uses coltan which is used to store electircal charge. Since, coltan is found at the eastern regions of congo, gorillas are loosing their territory due to human's minning activity. 
We cannot make our environment as same as the old times, but we can start to reduce our usage of resources. Our little habits of not taking the convenient route will save the environment of 21th century.

 

           In 21th century, people will live a life that is much better than before. However, we always have to think that easier path isn't always a good one. World isn't made just for people living in 21th century, it is made for us and our future generation. Like our ancestors have build the earth of their descendents, our job is to protect the earth and making it a better place for our sons and daughters.

Weird Nacirema people! (Body Ritual Among the Nacirema)

          

Nacirema=American??

 

 

           It was Thursday that Mr. Menard asked us to write an in-class essay. And he gave me a piece of paper, which was filling two whole pages. This writing was about Nacirema people and their cultural behaviors. According to Horace Miner, the writer of this writing, Nacirema is a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. I never heard or learned about these people's culture. Thus, their weird behaviors were very surprising to me at the first time. From private shrines to charm-boxes, everything was unfamiliar and different compared to my life. But on the next day, when Mr. Menard told us that Narcirema is a word which wrote American backwards, I just couldn't stop from laughing. Also, everything written on the essay was true life of Americans, just written in different perspective.

 

           After I knew that this writing is about Americans, Every puzzle pieces of Nacirema started to fit into the reality, and it was all true. Knowing the truth of Nacirema was knowing the true thoughts of mine toward cultural relativism. At the same time, it gave me an opportunity to look back at myself, how I felt about different cultures. And as we all consider As I described 'weird behaviors' on the paragraph one, I wasn't having positive attitude toward Nacirema people. Everyone who read this essay for the first time would have felt same as mine, and this is the main point which author tried to point out about cultural relativism. People claim cultural relativism, and they think they make interpretation of different cultures based on cultural relativism. However, as a human being, it is hard to understand other cultures, even if they do, it is just their outer side not the inner true feeling.

 

           This is writing also criticizes behaviors of American people. By looking at Americans in different point of view, their behaviors just look awkward and stupid. However, the truth is 'We are actually practicing this'. I'm not American but these Nacirema behaviors could applied to my life also. According to essay, the author describes ritual activities of Nacirema people are focused to the appearance and health of human body, criticizing what is now called lookism. For example, they rely on charm boxes, which seems very stupid activity, and relying on magicians for their healthcare. Anyone who didn't know the truth at the first time would think that people are having foolish phobia toward things they shouldn't be afraid. However, when we know the truth, situation flips over. This is the moment when people starts to question themselves. "Is it the real life of ours?". Nowadays, people put a lot of focus on their looks. As it is described on the passage most of Americans consider themselves ugly. Also, when we look at the case of Korea, we see many hospitals for plastic surgery, and most of women have their double eyelid operation. Society just leads them to have these surgeries, because society wants those people who have more good looking rather than people without double eyelid.

 

           Last week, I had a Chinese presentation about Chinese cultures and one topic was to research about 'China's uncleanness'. When the word 'Chinese' comes into my mind, I had a prejudice that Chinese are dirty. I knew I should consider cultural relativism, but my thinking toward Chinese seem unchangeable. However after days of research, I found out that they were in inevitable conditions of being dirty. There were no clean water resources provided to poors, and no houses for them to block from harms outside. Considering China's population, the number of poors just exceeds the populations of many other countries. I think this can be considered to the case of Nacirema. It isn't important to understand in the way how we look at ourselves. We must not have a stereotype that they should act like us. Being different doesn't mean being wrong. This writing about Americans gave me a huge lesson how I should react to different cultures. Also, as I mentioned on the paragraph 3, nowadays, people fear from too many things. As the members of a society, it is important for us to remember that we are the ones who control the society, not the society itself.

Academic movie review: Stupidity? (The Age of Stupid)

Are humans intelligent?

           It is definite that humans are intelligent. Humans know how to control their instincts unlike other animals, and their acts are based on rationality. However, even if humans are intelligent and rational, they are so stupid that they make themselves dangerous by their own hands almost to the death. Which means, human activities that are done so far is threatening their own human beings.

 

           Now, it is THE AGE OF STUPID. Human's eagerness of comfortability caused many harms(global warming, climate change) to our planet and it will happen more frequently in the future.  And the movie 'The Age of Stupid' is a good example for stupid human behaviors toward the climate change.

           The Age of Stupid  is a short movie directed and written by Franny Armstrong in 2009. This movie is a documentary movie, made by combinations of many documentary film about climate change. The story begins with an old archivist from devastated earth of 2055 living in a archive where all the resources are stored. Before the old man starts to show documentary, you can notice that he is repeating same question over and over again with the regret mixed into his voice.

"We could've save ourselves."

This short sentence contains many things that will be discussed later on the movie.

We could've save ourselves but we didn't. We could've save ourselves from the climate change but we did not do that. Why not?

           The purpose of this movie is to persuade audiences that climate change is a serious problem that we face today and we have be desirable to solve this problem not just being stupid. But, since this movie is just 89 minutes, it seems hard to persuade the audiences in such a short time. However, by providing examples of real documentary films, it makes the movie more credible and unbiased by looking at one problem with different perspectives. And the movie especially talks about the oil(oil is the main cause of stupid human activities), providing different view with three people.

           Oil also known as petroleum has been dominating our lives since late 19 century. It is used in variety of purposes starting from transportation to clothing. Now, the demand for this cheap and efficient energy source has grown so rapidly that it's the most used energy source throughout the world. In order to give more accurate and unbiased view, the movie shows three different documentaries related to oil.

 

           The first documentary is about a story of  young aged man who owns his low-price airline in India. Airlines are one of the most high consumers of petroleum since their jobs is to fly airplanes for far-distances, so a lot of oil is consumed. For the international airplanes about 36,000 gallons of oil is used for 10 hour flight.

           Second documentary film that archivist shows is about a man who works for an oil company called 'Shell'. His work is to analyze the samples brought from the under ocean and he decides whether it is adaptable place to drill the oil. Thus, he is contributing to the oil production.

           For the last, there is a woman from Nigeria who suffers from harm driven by the oil companies. There is no clean drinking water for them to drink, and the atmosphere became murky that it is even hard to breathe. All these harms came from desire of oil companies to make more profit.

           Now, by taking three examples with the perspective of economy, we can notice there is serious inequality among these people. First example is a 'consumption activity', second one is 'production activity', and the last one is 'allocation activity'. Each three activities rely on each other to form a economy system having all having profits. However, Nigerian woman from the third example gets all the harms from the process of production and consumption. For example, strong and rich country like USA consumes huge amount of gasoline and huge amount of carbon dioxide is being emitted to the atmosphere which causes the global warming. Thus, it seems fair that USA gets all the disadvantages for producing greenhouse gas but it all goes to the underdeveloped countries especially located near the equator. Total increase of temperature of the earth is just critical to them unlike USA, located in the northern hemisphere. These countries suffer many climate changes like flood and hurricanes driven by developed countries. Developed countries get to have benefits contrary to underdeveloped countries.

 

          The reason that I chose 'Stupidity?' for my writing is because I wanted to question if human beings are intelligent(What is the standard point of intelligency?). Other animals which are concerning about extinction of their specie might be regarded as more intelligent animals than human beings in our 'Age of Stupid'. Now it is time for us to look back at ourselves worring about the future as we did in the long past before the evolution and making earth a better place for our future generations.

 

<People trying to see global warming as a natural process>

Reflection of 'The age of stupid'

 

 

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_age_of_stupid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

http://navercast.naver.com/contents.nhn?rid=116&contents_id=3754

http://navercast.naver.com/contents.nhn?rid=116&contents_id=5270

 

Personal Narrative Speech- My life in America!

Good morning! Today I'm going to talk about the some experiences that I have experienced during my life in the United States.

           Since my grandparents and cousins on my father's side live in America, I had a lot of opportunities to go to America and study during my summer vacations. But, my parents actually wanted to have more quality environment for me to study for a long period of time not just for summer vacation. So after a long conversation about the actual benefits that I can gain from education in America, our family decided to immigrate. At that time, I was just 5grader in Elementary school so I wasn't fluent in English. Therefore, it was hard to express my opinion and have conversations in English. I thought it would be challenging to go to America and get along with native Americans but at the same time it seem exciting to live a life in America. Due to my past experiences, I expected my school life in America would be harsh, and I was right. I went to Elementary school on the next week that I have stepped on America, because my mom said it won't be any beneficial to drag more time. And starting from that point my life started to tangle. First class that I took in my Elementary school was a science class. According to my memories on the first day, science teacher was talking about some topic related to solar system, but all I hear was language that did not belong to our solar system which was a serious problem. This also happened to me in my daily conversation with my friends. I could understand some basic conversations but it was difficult to me when they started to talk about some jokes. For example, my friend said "Do you know how to wake up Ladygaga? poke her face!"and I couldn't understand. So I tried to find a solution, and finally found the solution that can be connected to all daily conversations. My solution was to act like 'I understood everything' by giving a little smile. So in that case of Ladygaga, I could just smile showing my expression of understanding. But, it had a significant problem. One day my friends were talking about something and I smiled as I usually do pretending that I understood everything. However, one girl turned to me and said "You think that's funny?" and she started to cry. At that time I realized something was wrong. I didn't know they were having serious conversation, and she got angry because I was keep giggling about the things that were so serious.

           And another moment that I have experienced is racism. In Korea, I have learned many thing about race discrimination toward multi cultural students. The serious problem between student and multi cultural students was bullying. We should not bully them because they are just different from us but I didn't expect that I would be one of those minorities who suffer racism. I didn't experience bullying but there were some moment that made me uncomfortable. My first moment that I have experienced racial discrimination was in summer vacation. In summer every year there is a swimming pool party held by the residents at the public swimming pool. I was waiting in the line to ride a water slide but one of the white twins that were in front of me was starring at my face. It kept on like about 20 seconds. So I asked him "Why are you starring at me?" and the reply was "Hey there is a Chinese guy over here" and he started make sounds that were used to mock Chinese. And I said "I'm not even Chinese I'm Korean!" he ran away. I was just frustrated by this.

 

           The reason that I have mentioned these two experiences is because it gave me a chance to look back at myself. From me being so passive not trying to learn English but try to look for tricks, I could learn that when I face some problems, I should not step back but try to get through it. And from the racism that I have experienced, it gave me a more broader perspective on how I look at people from different cultures. Even though I came back to Korea, these are so valuable experiences and I'm looking forward to experience more on my life in KMLA. Thank you.

Personal Narrative: My Mother

        On the backstage, I couldn't stop pounding of my heart, and my body kept shivering. It was the most nervous moment in my life. To relive my nervousness, I thought about the moments that my volunteering team practiced for this performance.

After few moments it was my team's turn to be on stage. As the leader of the team, I lead the team members to middle of the stage where all attention was focused. I started the performance with the strong beat of my drums. At that time, I put all my efforts and passion in to the rhythm making one piece of harmonized music.
Finally, it was all finished. My team got applause from the audiences and I was so proud and confident about myself that I actually accomplished this.
However, few months before, I wasn't the type of person who is very confident about myself. I was totally different, always depressed and had no enthusiasm.

 

        I was a normal boy who lives in Korea, and had a normal life as others but when my family decided to move to US my life got tangled. In the middle school, my grades were all low almost getting 'F', and I had no friends at all. This was so definite because I couldn't speak, write, read English as fluent as Americans which made me to act passive. As my exhausting school life continued for months, I almost got the blues. My mom was also worried about me. She wanted to help me out but it was hard to find a solution in a new environment.

 

        One day, my mother came to me and said "Since you like to volunteer for others, let's volunteer for people who need your help". I was concerned about myself 'Will I be able to volunteer in a foreign country?'.But on the next day, after hours of thinking, I decided to do it. My mother began to search for Koreans who are interested in volunteering to form a group. And as the oldest in that group, I got the position of team leader.

 

        My team practiced many performances such as taekwondo, and samulnori(Korean traditional music) for six months and the day came. After the performance, our team got famous by doing Korean traditional performances for volunteering. Many city newspapers and Korean broadcasting channel came to our group and started to interview. It was the best day in my life, and also the turning point to be confident about myself being passionate.

 

        Now, I'm so thankful to my mom who put so many effort for me to have self-confidence. And this couldn't be done without her help. This is my experience that I can't ever forget which gave me an opportunity to go beyond myself.

My goals!

In middle school, teachers put a lot of importance on reading and grammar, not writing. So, as other students do, I didn't spend much time on writing. However, by taking this writing class with Mr.Menard, I truly feel my English writing skill will enhance much better than now. Since, I know writing is crucial throughout the whole school life, I set three goals to accomplish before the end of this writing class.

 

1.

I will write with more advanced vocabularies.
When I write, I always concern about my vocabulary. Since, I didn't memorize many vocabularies as my friends do, I strongly feel that my essays are just weak and not influential. I want to write that is well-organized and more influential to others.
So, in the writing class, I will memorize more words and utilize it when I write essays.

2.

I will write faster than before.
I'm the type of person who thinks a lot before writing an essay. Because of this, I spend lots of time on thinking about the ideas and organizing it to make a perfect essay. However, this puts me in trouble when I have piles of works to finish and I still have some essays to finish.
So, my goal is to shorten the writing time, and have more organized essay.

3.

I will write with no grammatical errors.
When I re-read my writings, I find many grammatical errors on everywhere. But, even if I find those errors, I don't know how to fix it, and the correct way to fix it. This is the time when I feel so depressed about my work. I read some books about writing grammar but it was always hard for me to utilize the data from the book in to my writing.
Thus, my last goal in this writing class is to minimize my grammatical errors as possible.

Montly TOEFL essay #1: It's all connected with food!

Describe a custom from your country that you would like people from other countries to adopt. Explain your choice, using specific reasons and examples.

Today, all around the world, there are many customs that exist. All customs have different characteristics that are developed from different ethnic backgrounds. Since, every country has their own custom whether that custom is considered good or bad, it is important to share good customs that can be enormously beneficial to others. For this reason, I want to introduce a good customs that Korea have. My country, South Korea, have many customs. Such as customs that developed by Koreans, and also customs that came across the East sea from China, such as, Confucianism. Between these customs there are good ones that other countries should definitely adopt. For instance, respecting parents, bowing to elder people. Because of this our country needs to learn other good customs from different countries, and if I could have a chance to inform good customs of my nation, I would definitely introduce Korean food custom.

When we think about Korean food custom we usually think about environment-friendly food. These environmental food includes eating vegetables, herbs, and most importantly fermented food. Korea had been developing many fermented food like kimchi, and doenjang which are very helpful to our health. Our food custom, eating fermented food for everyday, has lead Koreans to have more environment-friendly and healthier eating habit. However, in 21 century, many people love to eat instant food that are considered unhealthy, and disease provoking food. Fermented food might not be tasty to people from other countries but as the importance of these food is significantly increasing, it is necessary. Thus, it is important to us to have environment-friendly food and this is the reason that I want other countries to adopt this food custom.

The next food custom that I want to talk about is Korean table manners. Since, Korea puts significant importance on respecting others, from the past Koreans have been developing its own table manners. Specifically, one example of table manner is 'young people should not eat before elder person, and they should not leave the seats before the adults finish their meal'. They consider this as disrespectful thing. This is also connected with Confucianism which came from China, increasing the importance of respecting others. When I was young, my parents always taught me it is disrespectful thing to take a spoon and eat before my parents eat. I still follow this when I get to eat meal with my parents. Also, this kind of table manner should be adopted in other countries to show respect to others and by setting these table manners in different countries, they will know how to react when they are eating with others. I think Korea custom has huge positive aspect on respecting others.

Many countries share different customs from various backgrounds, and Korea has its own custom on food. To sum up, the custom that I'd like other countries to adopt is Korea's food custom. This food custom can be divided into two categories, eating environment-friendly food, and our table manners.

Self introduction~~!

Hello! to all of you who will be seeing my blog. First, my Korean name is 정용한 and my English one is John. This is my first blog that I have made throughout my whole life so I'm not used to this kind of interface... But since I started it I would have to introduce myself first! (If you have any uncomfortable feeling about my blog design, please let me know :)


I'm from Seoul, Gwangjang middle school. And to describe my personality, I might seem a bit quiet person to those of you who don't know  me. But, once you become a friend with me you will find out that I'm not that type of person. I'm actually active person and I like to talk infront of many people. Oh! and I don't have a clear view  of what I should do for my career now. But since I have a big interest on engineering and medicine, I think I would choose between two. For the 1grade 1semester, I'm taking SAT physics for my science module. I think 'Physics' is a really cool subject to learn about motions and energy but at the same time it is the hard one to study.


Since, I have choose to go to university abroad, English takes a lot of space during my study.  I've been living in United States for about 2years, and I took regular school classes, but compared to that I think my English level didn't get to the point that I expected. And because of this I always wanted to learn English more deeply, and by attending KMLA, I believe it will bring me a chance to practice.


I am really looking forward to my English class with Mr.Menard because I think it would be a great chance for me to enhance my English skills. But the true reason that I'm looking forward to it is because I like to write about many things such as, short fictions that I wrote in my spare time, and poems that I use to write when I'm depressed deeply writing is one of my favorite subjects(believe it or not~). I usually take a lot of time to write a essay but after I finish writing it, I feel so proud about my self :)


Thank you for reading my self introduction and have a nice day~