Lee presents new model for teaching Korean language

Yookyung Lee, adjunct instructor of Korean language in the Department of World Languages at Boise State, presented a workshop titled, “Transitioning to the New Normal: Designing (A)synchronous Tasks in Task-supported Curricula,” at the 27th annual American Association of Teachers of Korean conference held at Cornell University in June. The workshop was co-presented with Angela Lee-Smith from Yale University and Haewon Cho, Siwon Lee and Eunae Kim from the University of Pennsylvania.

The group presented a new task-supported curricular model for low-proficiency learners at beginning and intermediate levels. The model, already implemented at a number of private and state universities, provides a systematic roadmap and scaffolded instruction with which to transition from perception-based to production-based tasks. These tasks adhere to the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ Can-Do Statements, while also connecting students’ in-class learning experiences with outside-of-class tasks.

The group demonstrated their model with hands-on activities on how to:

• Design a contextual task or assessment for meaningful interaction.
• Provide scaffolded input utilizing authentic sources like Youtube, vlogs and websites.
• Streamline authentic perception-based and production-oriented tasks.
• Select and utilize tools to design technology-mediated synchronous tasks.
• Provide assessments and feedback.

Lee reported that the team’s guided tasks and assessment tools benefited the development of students’ linguistic confidence and intercultural competence. Based upon feedback and observations among students in her Korean language classes, Lee also saw students foster their sense of achievement in learning.

The group published their model as four open educational resource Pressbooks on the University of Pennsylvania website:

• You Speak Korean! Book 1 (synchronous)
• You Speak Korean! Book 1 (asynchronous)
• You Speak Korean! Book 2 (synchronous)
• You Speak Korean! Book 2 (asynchronous)