GKS-G 2021 Personal Statement Draft

Hi, I would like some feedback on my personal statement draft for gks-g 2021 please. Thank you.

Family, for a long time I did not feel like I belonged to one. I spent the first half of my life in foster care before moving to live with my aunt, her husband and my cousins before the start of high school. Though we do not always agree, she has become a great source of motivation to me. I knew she wanted me to seek employment after high school instead of applying for university. We could not afford it, but I was determined to pursue my tertiary education even if it meant handling the expenses on my own. Since then, she has been my support system that continuously encourages me to do my best despite whatever hurdles life has and will continue to throw at me. “Do what you can with all you have, wherever you are.” said by Theodore Roosevelt and “Do not let where you come from define you, but never forget the values you learned from your close community.” said by Anthony Carmona are two quotes that inspire my outlook on life. I do not have the best social background but my determination to do better, to be better than the stereotypes placed before me would not be there had I not experienced life in the manner that I did. My interest in language and education stemmed from the heavy emphasis that was placed on those areas during my time in foster care. In high school, I studied in the field of Modern Studies where English, Spanish, Social Studies and Food and Nutrition were my favorite subjects. Upon the implementation of Awards Day, I received the General Proficiency Award for two consecutive years before graduating. After high school, my interests in language learning and education piqued when I began working part-time at a Chinese supermarket. Here, I learned about Asian history and culture as well as the difficulties that non-native speakers experience when learning English. My aim is to one day is to lessen the stresses of second language acquisition especially in the field of English Foreign Language teaching.

I am expected to complete my studies at The University of the West Indies in May 2021, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics with a Minor in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. During my studies, courses such as Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology and Language Situations in the Modern World further ignited my interests in Asian languages and culture and the field of language learning, teaching and acquisition. My need for a more in-depth understanding on the processes and approaches to teaching and education drove me to apply for Graduate School programs in the division of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Konkuk University and Keimyung University. Chinese and Japanese were the main East Asian languages available at the school’s language learning center and so any knowledge I had gained about South Korea stemmed from my knowledge of Hallyu and researching on my own. In 2019, I began learning and practicing Korean with Dr.Soo Jin Shim at the Centre for Language Learning where I obtained a Certificate of Proficiency upon my completion of Korean Level 1A and 1B in 2020.

The South Korean education system is also one of the highest ranked in the world and apart from having one of the highest literacy rates in the world due the phonetic nature of their writing system, the country has managed to integrate multimedia assisted language learning in the classroom which I believe is a major technological advancement especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when the rest of the world was not ready for the shift to online learning. Obtaining a master’s degree in South Korea with the Global Korean Scholarship will help me acquire not only a higher proficiency and understanding of the Korean language and culture but also to achieve my career goals of teaching English to non-native speakers in an environment where English education is rapidly growing. I wish to study in South Korea because the program I am interested in has not been available since January 2019 and there is no certainty as to when it will be available again. Studying in South Korea provides an environment for improvement and growth in a society that supports the importance of family and tradition.