Why do you learn English?

Asian JJU Boss

The spark that inspired this lesson was an inerview by ASIAN BOSS which focused on English education in Japan and South Korea.

Asian boss is a channel that does interviews on a variety of cultural trends and social issues with a primary aim to:

• get young people to speak up and share their honest perspectives
• to inform and educate young people from all over the world
• to get rid of stereotypes and bridge cultural gaps.

The topic of this lesson was ‘Learning’, and the main task was to interview students on Jeonju University (JJU) campus about their opinions on English Education in Korea.

To open the lesson we show this short commercial the Cat and Goldfish which leads into a brainstorm “Why do people learn languages?”

• stop video at 20 seconds and ask students, ‘What happens next?’
• stop video at 30 seconds and ask students, ‘What is the commercial advertising?’

• To scaffold the learners more we asked them to listen to this interview (45 seconds) and listen for the reasons why each of the students learn English.
• Following this we had a discussion on different kinds of learning styles and asked students to identify which learning styles suit them best and discuss the kinds of activities they should do to enhance their language skills.
• Next is when we show the Asian Boss video and remind them of the task that they have to complete.
• While listening, the learners were asked to note down the questions the interviewers ask.
• After listening the students have a short group discussion on whether they agree with what they heard, and to also share their opinions on why Korean and Japanese can’t speak English well.  This is also a great time to ask students to share thier opinions and solutions on what would make English education more successful.

By this point the students are well prepared for the final task – to interview other students on campus. Here is the worksheet they used. interview-worksheet

• Divide the students into groups of 2-4
• Students choose roles (camera man, translator, reporter)
• Students must alternate roles for every new interview.
• You can ask students to prepare their own questions or provide some, and they make one or two of their own.
• We asked the students to use youtube capture to film the interviews (easy to film, edit and share)
• Students uploaded their interviews to the class Padlet link (here is an example)
• Students return to class for open class feedback.