Reply to 재홍: Learning by gathering bits (티끌모아 태산식 영어공부)

Dear Jae Hong: Thank you for being a good reader. I truly hope this can make a real difference in your English learning. One thing I would like to point out is this this method can start at any stage of learning, even for those who have no grammar at all. You don"t have to know grammar before using this method. But knowing more about grammar will help expedite the learning process. Let me tell you how I taught English to my 7-year old son. I gave him a simple sentence and explained its meaning in Korean, for instance, "I am hungry" means 배고파". Of course, I didn"t explain what is verb, what is noun, etc. Also, it"s hard to explain what "am" means. So I just explained whatever was easy to explain--"I" means 나 and "hungry" 배고파. Sometimes, in a meal, I made a happy face and said "It"s delicious!", and he knew it meant "맛있다". In daily conversations, I tried to speak to him in English as much as possible. I kept repeating similar sentences like "I am sick", "You are strong", "Are you hungry", "It"s great", etc. Then after a while, he figured out the grammatical pattern of these sentences and became able to form his own sentences of similar patterns. One day, I was running with him, and I was so pleasantly surprised when he said all of a sudden, "Do you like running?" He got this part of English through gathering these bits (티끌) of English and learned this grammar on his own. This can happen to anyone, and not just with simple structures as above but with structures of all levels of complexity. Grammar just helps reach the understanding a bit faster. But your message helped me realize that my columns leaves a room for misunderstanding--as separating the grammar stage and 티끌모아 stage, which in fact can never be separated. In fact, the entire learning process should be 티끌모아 태산, and grammar is just a helpful part of this process. So I will keep that in mind. Thank you very much. You got me. I don"t know if there is an English phrase corresponding to 티끌모아 태산. Perhaps I can use some help!