School and class environment

School/class environment – level of difficulty of classes, overcoming language barriers, etc

Hello~

안녕하세요!

For this week I will talk about school and class environment, more to the level of difficulty of classes and how to overcome language barriers and many more!

But first let me give you a new Korean word for today!

The word is...


과제- gwaje 


gwaje means assignment . This word is frequently used in university than normal school because they have other word for homework which is 숙제. (sukje)

So after this if you hear gwaje in drama or Korean song you can know the meaning of the word aite? ehhe


Talking about the level of difficulties in classes, my major ( the engineering course itself) is a tough course , even if I am taking it in my home country. 

It is 100% more tougher because I am taking it in 70%~100% in foreign language to be exact Korean language.

I was alive for 18 years old using Malay and English as my main languages in my daily life. It is totally a new thing for me.

However, we can become a wiser people as we learn new and many languages. I can say most of my time are used to do the translation as I am doing my revision. Yes! I revised the subjects taught in the classes but at the same time I learn new vocabs everyday. ( But sometimes I forgot the words that I learned which I have to search it again in the dictionary to find the meaning )

How about my exams? Are they in Korean too?

Well.. they do have English-taught courses, and Korean-taught courses. I usually take English taught classes for subjects other than my major subjects so for those courses my exams in English. Other than that it is in Korean. For certain classes, my professor gave me excuses to use dictionary while answering the questions. And sometimes we just ask the professor give us English questions for foreigners. Unfortunately, not all professor agreed to give us English questions.  I got two professors yelled at me during last last semesters because I was asking them to give English questions for exams . hehe. Then they said it is a good way for me to improve my Korean and they don't even asked for Korean version during their time in US. ( most of my professors were doing their PhD in the United States)

All we can do is work harder and harder.

In order to get good grade and survive in this Korean world, of course we have to mingle with your Korean classmates, course mates and your batch mates. Because they are soooo genius and you can't if you are not asking them for tips. They do have the past year  questions and answer scheme for the assignments. Even sometime they don't even want to give us because everyone is competing to each other.

But that's one of the way to overcome language barriers.  You can approach your Korean classmates using their language , Korean language and they will be surprised because you can speak in Korean. They will ask you if you have phone number or Kakao ID then you will go eat together and be friends!

Team project is one of a medium for you to make more Korean friends and overcome language barriers. ( Will talk about how to make Korean friends in another entry . *wink* )

I think I gave lots of explanation about school and classes in my previous entries too. If you have any questions you can drop comments .

That's all for this week.


Thanks for your time!

Have a nice day ;)

Ewha Womans University

Online Ambassador Spring Semester 2016