Reflection on culture exchange

When I started the culture exchange project among international students, I believed that Korean students can casually write their thoughts about various topics related with Korean, American, and Korean cultures. Therefore, I argued as followed.

"I argue that Korean students' English is good enough to communicate with foreign friends in a casual manner. Moreover, I hope my students will achieve high scores from Korean SAT. I study the patterns in English learning under the ESL context and the EFL context because a language and its context determine the ontology and epistemology of a culture, the meaning making system. Let's exchange our inquiries about cultures and languages."

However, I found that Korean students' communication using English took place only when the counterparts are ready to communicate with Korean students. Korean students complained to me that they hope to join the conversation through commenting other students’ blogs but it took too many hours for them to write their opinions in English. I frequently guided students to read other students blogs and post comments. It took 30 minutes to two hours for me to help one student to complete the whole process to do blogging.

Nevertheless, communications go on under such a powerful hegemony of English since students of Anderson High School and those of Hawkesdale tried to leave their comments to my students’ blogs and guess what my students mean by their English comments with a number of ungrammatical errors.

I have struggled for my students’ successful communication over three blocks. First, Korean SAT took away almost all the time from my students who might try to invest their time for culture exchange project. Their preparation for college entrance narrows students' focus into only studying for tests provided by private academy and Korean government.
Second, Korean students use diverse portal sites such as cyworld, naver, and daum rather than google. Therefore, it is hard for me to let my students to create a new g-mail account and blog account, giving up their resources in their websites in other portal sites. Korean portal sites usually set up strong user-friendly systems when it comes to Korean students' personal website management.
Third, Korean students are too busy with utilizing a barrage of electric equipments such as MP3, PMP, cell-phones, computer games, various web sites of academic materials and cable TV programs. It is hard for me to persuade my students to find time for blogging with foreign friends communicating with new way, namely, using blogs, in foreign language.

Finally, I felt rewarded because the culture exchange raised Korean students’ cultural consciousness and sensitivity on various peoples. Korean students are homogenous when compared to students of the Anderson High School. Therefore, they are not aware of the existence of various immigrants in the United States. In addition, Korean students find opportunities to make as many friends through utksa1.blogspot.com. The site seems to work as the portal site for students who are looking for foreign students' blog with critical perspectives on diverse issues about peoples' diversity in the world.

I slightly change my argument now. Korean students can communicate with foreign students only when the counterparts are ready to communicate with Korean students. Students’ understanding on each others’ culture absolutely facilitate their communication.