Korean reading — TOPIK II · Learning

While working at a company, I entered an online “cyber university” at the age of thirty-five.

My major is social welfare; I had long wanted to properly learn how to help neighbors in need.

But to watch lectures and even do assignments after work, I couldn't waste a single hour.

One day my coworker at the next desk asked why I was leaving so early these days, so I honestly told him about my studies.

I had been hiding it, worried it would make things awkward, but he actually said it was great and cheered me on.

After that, when my exam period came, my teammates sometimes split my urgent work among themselves.

I thought studying was something you do alone, but I learned that you need the understanding of those around you to keep going for a long time.

My daughter, a second-year middle school student, had been attending a neighborhood math academy for over a year.

Her grades didn't rise much, but I just assumed she was attending the academy properly.

But last month, the academy contacted me to say my daughter had been absent for two weeks.

Holding back my shock and listening to her, I found out she had been studying alone at the district library all that time.

She said the academy moved so fast that she had no time to go back over the parts she didn't understand.

She carefully said she was sorry for lying, but that she wanted to study at her own pace.

We agreed that she would study on her own for three months and that we would then talk again based on the results.

That was when I first realized that sending her to an academy no matter what is not the answer.

In high school, our homeroom teacher was famous for giving lots of homework.

She constantly gave us homework, telling us to keep a diary every day or to read newspaper editorials and summarize them.

Already overwhelmed by exam prep alone, we used to complain that such homework was pointless.

But after entering university and writing reports, I realized how much that training helped me.

Understanding other people's writing quickly and organizing my own thoughts was much easier for me than for my friends.

On Teachers' Day this past year, I sent her a thank-you letter for the first time in ten years.

In her reply she wrote, “I'm grateful that you remember that homework.”

Now I believe that even studying that seems useless at the moment becomes a foundation for life someday.

Seven years after I started working at my company, I applied to a graduate program in education.

I passed the document screening, but the thought of the interview made me so nervous I couldn't sleep.

So I asked for advice from a senior who had graduated from the same program.

He said that if the interviewers told me to briefly explain my research plan, I shouldn't try to say too much and should talk about just one key question.

Sure enough, in the interview a professor asked me to explain my research topic within one minute.

As my senior had advised, I calmly explained just one question I had formed while training new employees at work.

The professors nodded, saying they liked that the question came from real work experience.

When I heard I'd been accepted a month later, the first thing I did was call my senior.

After retiring and moving to an unfamiliar city, I was very lonely for a while because I had no one to talk to.

When I went to the community center to register my move, the staff member told me to try a course at the lifelong learning center, so I brought home a brochure.

What caught my eye was a local history course about our area.

The course consisted of classroom lectures plus field trips walking through old temple sites and fortress walls.

Walking together every week, I naturally became close to the other students, and we started having tea after class.

These days I'm simply amazed that every alley in this neighborhood has a hidden story.

Next semester, I plan to volunteer as a field-trip helper for children, based on what I've learned.

The first course in my major after entering university was run in a rather unusual way.

Since the professor told us we must watch a video lecture before class, at first I grumbled that we had one more piece of homework.

But when I actually got to the classroom, instead of lecturing, the professor had us solve problems in groups.

Having only skimmed the video, I couldn't add a single word to the discussion and just listened to my group members.

From that day on, I began writing down my questions in a notebook while watching the videos.

Then, during discussions, my questions sometimes helped broaden my group members' thinking.

In this class I learned for the first time that learning only becomes your own when you prepare for it yourself.

I'm a fourth-grade homeroom teacher at an elementary school in a small seaside town.

Last summer, on news that a big typhoon was approaching, the teachers stayed gathered in the staff room instead of going home.

Around evening, the vice principal told us, “The education office says every school should hold remote classes tomorrow.”

We hurried to contact the parents and uploaded learning materials the children could view.

The next morning, the children's faces on the screen were much brighter than I had expected.

Some children showed the wind and rain outside their windows and wondered how typhoons form.

So I changed my plan and turned that day's class into a time to learn about typhoons together.

It was a day on which the children taught me again that things outside the textbook can also be good learning.

These days you often have to use self-service kiosks even at restaurants and train stations.

My grandfather, who is over seventy, used to stand in front of those machines, feel pressured by the people behind him, and simply walk away.

So I recommended a digital class for seniors held at the welfare center.

Grandpa waved his hand, saying, “You're telling me to learn how to use machines at my age?”

But when a friend of his suggested they go together, he went to the first class, pretending he couldn't say no.

I heard the instructor went over things slowly again and again on a practice machine just like the real ones.

A month later, Grandpa bought a ticket himself at the train station and even sent me a photo.

Watching my grandfather, I truly felt the saying that it's never too late to learn.

Just before the winter break of my first year of high school, the school sent home a notice.

It said that from second year on, we had to choose and sign up for the subjects we wanted to take ourselves.

Having always studied according to a fixed timetable, I had no idea what to choose.

Most of my friends tried to pick subjects that were easy to score well in, or popular ones.

After a lot of thought, I went to see the career counselor and started by talking about what I was interested in.

When he heard I love animals, the counselor suggested we look at life science and environment-related subjects together.

In the end, I made a different timetable from my friends, but it was the first time I had looked forward to classes.

I think choosing subjects was really a way of thinking about my own future for myself.

Junseo, a third-year middle school student, had lately been spending every evening in his room staring at his phone.

One day, his father, who was checking the notices from school, called him over.

His father said, “Your teacher says you have to hand in your career hope form by this week.”

Junseo confessed that he didn't know what he wanted to do yet and had no idea how to fill in the blank.

His father told him that it wasn't that he had no dream; he simply hadn't experienced many things yet.

That weekend, the two of them went to a youth career experience center and tried being a broadcast reporter and a chef.

Saying his heart raced when he read the news in front of the camera, Junseo wrote something on the form for the first time.

His father smiled and said it was fine if that answer changed, and that they should keep looking together.

I'm fifty-two and have worked in sales at the same company for over twenty years.

Last spring, my department head sighed, “Headquarters says everyone has to take a data analysis course this month.”

I had always hated numbers, so from the very first lecture it took me ages just to make one table.

Then a new employee from the team next to ours offered to explain the parts I didn't understand every lunchtime.

In return, I taught him tips for talking with clients.

As we taught each other like this, before we knew it, five people were coming to our lunch meetings.

Now I analyze sales records myself and plan the next month's sales strategy.

It was a year in which I realized that learning is something we exchange regardless of age or rank.

I didn't get the result I wanted on the university entrance exam, so I decided to study for one more year.

Thinking I absolutely had to succeed this time, I worked through practice books sleeping only four hours a night.

Even though my parents begged me to rest, I didn't leave my desk until dawn.

Then around autumn I came down with a bad fever and aches and couldn't do anything for a week.

While lying in bed, I looked back over my mock exam scores and saw they had actually been falling since summer.

After I recovered, I went to bed before midnight and took a thirty-minute walk every evening.

Surprisingly, my study hours went down but my concentration got much better.

That winter I was accepted into the department I wanted, and I learned that resting is part of studying too.

I'm an international student from Mexico, studying business administration at a Korean university.

I was confident in everyday conversation, but writing long reports in Korean was a completely different matter.

At the end of the semester, the teaching assistant told me, “The professor says the final report is due by next Friday.”

When I reread my draft, the sentences were just long, and it was hard to see what my argument was.

Worried, I signed up for a consultation at the writing center on campus.

The tutor didn't fix my writing for me; instead, she asked me what the main sentence of each paragraph was.

As I answered her questions, my thoughts became organized, and my report became much shorter and clearer.

Now I encourage my friends too to ask for help instead of struggling alone.

This spring, my son, who had just started first grade, brought home an application form for after-school classes.

When I saw there was a coding class among them, my first reaction was worry: “Telling an eight-year-old to learn coding!”

But when my son heard he could make robots move, he begged to take it.

On open class day, I saw the children laying out cards instead of using screens to plan the robot's route.

When the robot bumped into a wall, the children talked it over and changed the order of the cards.

The teacher said the goal of the class was less about technology and more about building the ability to break problems down step by step.

These days, even when cleaning his room, my son suggests we decide the order of what to do first.

It made me think that rather than just worrying about new kinds of education, I should see them for myself and then judge.

As a child, Grandma Oksun couldn't even properly finish elementary school because of her family's circumstances.

After raising all her children, she passed the equivalency exam at sixty-five, and at seventy she was finally about to graduate from university.

Before the graduation ceremony, a local TV station contacted her, wanting to do a story about her.

She declined several times, saying, “You want me to go on TV?”

But she changed her mind when the reporter told her she could give courage to people who want to learn, even late in life.

In the interview, she calmly described the excitement of the day she opened a textbook again after decades.

After the broadcast, the school kept getting inquiries from older people who wanted to start studying again.

She said that she now wants to go on to graduate school and research education for older adults.

I've been learning Spanish since last autumn because I want to travel to South America next year.

My teacher told us to read aloud even just ten minutes a day, but after work I didn't have the energy.

So for a while I comforted myself that I had studied just by skimming my vocabulary notebook.

But in my first speaking test, not a single word came out of my mouth, even though I knew the words.

From that day on, every morning while drinking coffee, I read exactly one page of my textbook aloud.

At first I was embarrassed because my pronunciation sounded awkward, but after about a month my mouth gradually loosened up.

Last month I was able to keep a conversation going with my teacher for five minutes without stopping.

I think I now understand what people mean when they say that with a language, your mouth has to learn it before your head.

At seventy-eight, Grandma Geumsun signed up for the first time for a Hangul class for seniors run by the district office.

She never had the chance to learn to read and write when she was young, so she had to ask others for help every time she went to a bank or hospital.

The classes were fun, but the problem was that she forgot what the teacher said after just a day.

So before every class, she would ask the friend sitting next to her, “When did the teacher say to hand in our dictation notebooks?”

Her friend's memory was just as hazy, so the two of them decided to write their homework on a calendar in big letters.

After a year like that, for the first time in her life she handed her grandson a birthday card she had written herself.

The handwriting was wobbly, but her grandson stuck the card up by his desk and showed it off.

These days she even fills out forms at the bank herself and has gained a new confidence.

Thirty-year-old Haeun quit the company she had worked at for five years and enrolled in a baking course at a vocational training school.

She had loved bread since childhood, but this was the first time she had decided to learn it properly and make it her career.

Her goal was to earn a baking certificate within six months and get a job at a small neighborhood bakery.

Even when her friends suggested going out for some fresh air on the weekend or getting a drink together after a long time, Haeun headed to the practice kitchen.

On frustrating days when her dough kept failing to rise, the instructor checked the fermentation temperature with her.

She failed the first practical exam, but thanks to that failure she could pinpoint her weak spots.

Having passed on her second attempt, Haeun now kneads dough at a bakery every morning before dawn.

I hear that now her friends come to that bakery on weekends to buy the bread she bakes.

After finishing my third year of university, I took a leave of absence to go to Canada for six months of language study.

The night before I left, my older sister, who had done the same program a few years before, came to my room.

My sister urged me that if local friends suggested eating together, I should definitely go along, even if I was busy.

Her reason was that conversations shared at the table stay in your memory much longer than expressions learned in class.

Once I actually arrived, even keeping up with classes was overwhelming, so for the first few weeks I shut myself up in the dorm.

Then, when a classmate asked me to have dinner together, I remembered my sister's words and found the courage.

After that day, I spent time with friends from many countries and came to enjoy speaking itself.

Looking back after I returned, what built up my skills the most wasn't textbooks but people.

In my school days, I was the kind of student who looked down at her desk whenever English class came around.

But whenever my elementary-school daughter asked me about her English homework, I couldn't answer, and I always felt sorry inside.

One day my daughter said I could just study with her, and suggested we give each other vocabulary quizzes every evening.

After that, I started finishing my work faster during the day so I could cut down on overtime.

When my coworkers try to keep me, I leave with a smile, saying, “I'm heading out. My daughter wants us to memorize words together.”

At first I lost to my daughter on many days, but after about three months there were days when I won, too.

My daughter collects the words I get wrong in a separate notebook and quizzes me on them again on weekends.

The studying I began to help my daughter has now become an enjoyable time for myself.