Exploring the Possibilities: COIL and South Korea
Dr. Chongwon Park (Linguistics) recently began looking into setting up a COIL project with Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is a relatively new opportunity being developed at the University of Minnesota Duluth. It offers the unique opportunity for professors and students at UMD to collaborate and study with instructors and scholars abroad via technology while each group generally remains in their respective country.
In September 2017, Park traveled to Seoul, and while talking with Dean Jong-bok Kim at Kyung Hee University, Park and Kim observed that they both teach courses on syntax, with focuses on English and Korean, respectively. This realization led to discussion about the prospect of a COIL project between the two institutions, and Park credits Dean Maher’s leadership and support as a point of genesis for the venture. The collaboration would not only enrich students’ experience, but also bene t the two professors’ research on cross-linguistic generalizations in English and Korean.
Park and Kim envision the potential course as an online module. Students from each country would talk to one another and act as living textbooks to help each other understand the grammatical structures of the partner’s language. Park explained that writing and speaking do not always follow the same rules and structures, so the direct verbal discussion between the students in the two countries would be invaluable.
In considering the bene ts of the partnership, Park noted: “In order to systematically analyze a target language, one needs to be fully exposed to that language...the South Korean students and my students will be each other’s informants, which is often the most ideal structure of a linguistic analysis class.”