EEE Week12 Assignment: Compare Struggle with Fight

Compare Struggle with Fight

Korean learners often find difficulty in Vocabulary when they study English. This is because there are too many words to know and it is hard to use them in the right context. The case, English expressions struggle and fight, can be a one of the examples. As for the range, this is a first difference between the two: struggle is only used for abstract events, whereas fight can be used with specific things. The difference between the two expressions is not only in range, but also in usage. In order to find out the difference in usage between the two expressions, I investigated 100 KWIC concordance lines from The Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies, 2008-). This technique reveals typical phrases in which the expressions struggle and fight usually occur.

The chart in the site shows that struggle is more often used in formal situations; academic, news, or magazine. This is usually related to the politics, period, or something else. The most common phrase including struggle was (24 tokens) “struggle to/for [do something].” Similarly, 8 tokens of struggle show in the phrase “struggle with [something].” These examples are used with the words which mean politics such as democracy, anti-colonial. These words are generally used in formal situations. In contrast, fight is seldom followed by nouns or pronouns that mean events or performs. In the sample concordance lines, most sample concordance lines show that fight is used in informal situations.

The concordance lines show that fight is more frequently used in informal situations as a spoken expression. This word can be used to express specific events or other things; weakness, infection, or sports(boxing). Most example concordance lines appears in the form “[prep] fight to” when fight is used as a verb, or this is used as noun alone.  

Both expressions mean ‘trying to do against something.’ Struggle often appeared in formal situation such as “democracy,” but both expressions are used in against situation to reverse the surrounding.

The corpus study indicated several differences in usage between struggle and fight.  I expect that learning these typical patterns will help Korean learners use struggle and fight more naturally.

Reference:

Davies, Mark. (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.

EEE Week11: Report about Survey of College Extrance Exam

 

Introduction

Every year, over six-hundred thousand people take the College Entrance Exam, and it becomes a huge issue in the whole country. However, people tend to concentrate on only score for entering the college, not on quality in terms of original objectives of the College Entrance Exam. In order to make the people who will become a teacher have proper sight, the researcher decided to investigate (1) what they know about the original objectives of College Entrance Exam and (2) what the alternatives of this policy are.

Method

To find out the students’ prior knowledge, the instructor designed a survey with 13 items. The survey is mainly composed of three parts. After asking basic information: gender, age and major, the survey investigated how long the students have studied English previously. It also included 5 questions about studying English. Then, in the following section, the instructor made 7 questions about the College Entrance Exam. Using own experiences, It was hypothesized that the students in the class would think more about the original objectives of College Entrance Exam and reflect on themselves than about score and values of the university. The survey was administered during the eleventh day of class and 8 students responded.

Prior studying English

According to the responses, all of the students have received English Education up to 6 years through by academy. Five-eighth students have experienced tutoring or going academy to get a good score in English. Nearly all of the students had studied English to use English well, and 25% of the students had studied English to enter a good university. Based on academic-based English study, a number of students think about the absence of speaking activity as the problems of studying English in Korea. Teaching both writing and grammar is tied for second.

Knowledge of College Entrance Exam

A number of students had problems with talking about the College Entrance Exam. It was because they did not know exactly what the original objectives of the College Entrance Exam are. The students seemed stressful on this policy, but 63% of all did not have exact reasons that are related to the original objectives. They did not know what the original objectives of College Entrance Exam are. Only 25% of all answered their own opinions: “The exam arranges students according to the score and makes them enter the college.” “To find out whether the students are qualified to study in university,” and “To help students get good grades.”

Knowledge of English on College Entrance Exam

Except one student, all students thought that the College Entrance Exam is not helpful to improve their ability of English skills. One student gave some reasons: “This exam focuses on grammatical elements too much.”, “It is focused on just score.” Another student also served some reasons: “There is a problem with the relative evaluation,” “The College Entrance Exam helps only improve the receptive skills, not productive skills.” and “it is boring, nor use, just hard, for exam.” Perhaps the school should address what the original objectives of College Entrance Exam are and teach the subject according to the objectives.
 

Conclusion

           All things considered, the survey revealed some topics that will need further instruction in the alternative of the College Entrance Exam. Mostly, the students do not have knowledge about this exam and are not interested in original objectives of this. The students need to concentrate on the definition of this Exam as well as test of teacher certification for next generations.

EEE Week5: Assignment!

  Quite a number of high school students do not like poem because they tend to think that poem is boring and this is hard to understand easily. How would you like students to think about learning the poem? As a teacher, we may want students to learn the poem entertainingly. In order to teach successfully, teachers should make students get motivation and they have motivation when they learn about things which are related to them. Therefore, there are four great poems in my hand, but If I have a chance to teach the poem to high school students, I would choose “To A Daughter Leaving Home”. This is suitable for high school students. There are two reasons to explain why.

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   First of all, the message would be suitable for teenagers. As I referred above, high school students are only interested in learning when they have internal motivation. Besides, they feel internal motivation when they learn about something which are related to them. Through this poem, the reader can have a chance to remind the memory of their early days. Also, a girl in this poem becomes more and more independent physically, emotionally from her parents. High school students are in the same period with her, so they are sympathetic to her feeling. Meanwhile, this poem tell high school students to think about parent’s love and fear. They are in a stormy period of adolescence. They are very sensitive, so they often might have trouble with parents. Feeling parent’s love and fear for them with friends in unusual space is much more effective than in their own house. Lesson from the poem is not heavy to accept and this is related to teenager’s life, so the teacher can achieve amazing message effects in learning poems.

   Secondly, the language used in this poem would be suitable for teenagers. According to the input hypothesis, it is good to teach +1 difficult level than student’s level. In this time, students have motivations to learn something. In this case, the words in this poem are neither difficult nor easy to understand. Students could comprehend the contents easily but they might find dictionaries to know the meaning of some words. Meanwhile, the  language does not have periodical implications, so students do not have to go through a hard time to understand background knowledge of period. Also, the form of words are simple and repeated so that the teenagers can understand easily.

   Poem is not popular for teenagers because they tend to think that poem is boring. This, however, can be broken with interesting teaching method, tools, and realia. Above all, teacher can teach the poem successfully with interesting contents, theme, and message. When we consider the characteristics of high school students: sensitive and emotional, we can teach poem excitingly. In all these ways, the poem “To A Daughter Leaving Home” is suitable to teach for high school students. Giving chance to think about their early days and parent’s love and making motivations to learn are the reasons.