Question (Q)
: Please introduce you
rself.
Nicolas (N): My name is Nicolas Le Roux.
I'm
from South Africa. So I lived in
K
orea
for about... I ac
t
ually arrived
10years ago with my family- my two children and my wife. Right now, my children left Korea. My daughte
r is in New York at the moment and my son in Cape Town.
Q: Then, why did you come to Korea 10 years ago?
N: When I was a student, the first Korean student arrived in my country to study at our university. And then w
e became very good friends. And so they came back to Korea and invited us to visit them and when I came her
e and I, you know,
met Korean people and I saw your country and I was really excited to stay here to start teaching here. Ha... it's a long story.
Q: What do you do in CUK?
N: I work for ILEC, Int
ernational
Lang
uage Education Center, and I'
m teaching English. I'm also a part of the GEO program so I'm developi
ng the program and helpin
g all the other team members of the GEO
program
and I also teach CAP.
GEO, ILEC and GEO logos
Q: I saw your picture on the CUK
homepage (see ht
tp:
//www.catholic.ac.kr/) . So you must be an important person.
N: Ha, ha, ha yeah, I see they have my pictures everywhere.
Q: You said you are a part of GEO. Can you introduce the GEO program briefly?
N: In Korea, normally in the academies, they focus on sentence construction, grammar and things like that. So, by the time the students come to university, they still don't have enough confidence to speak English, you know. So what we try to do is we want to improve the confidence of our students. So we give them a lot of opportunity to speak English and to really have fun with second language. We would like to help our students to think on their feet to use English everyday in their everyday life. And we actually want to help the parents. Because in many cases students go abroad and they live abroad. And it is so expensive nowadays. So what we want to do is we want to give our students opportunity to improve their English right here in Korea. So they don't have to go abroad to study. I want you to travel. I really want you to travel to go abroad but it should not be necessary to live in America or Canada for 1 year or 2 years. It’s just too expensive. It cannot be afforded by just anybody. And I think our program is very successful at this stage. I think the students really gain a lot of confidence. So it's going much better.
Q: I think GEO’s history is not that long.
N: This is GEO 8th. It’s a very new program but it is already one of the best programs in Korea.
Q: Maybe, you were there when CUK started GEO program
N: Yes. GEO 1; we helped to develop the program.
From left to right: 1. The GEO Global Lounge, where students can freely converse with English Clinic Teaching Assistants about topics of their choice, borrow English books and movies, enjoy OBF staff's company, and simply conduct activities in an English speaking environment; 2. GEO Global Lounge Korean staff - Philip (Dong Joo), Hye Sung and Julia (Joo-yeon); 3. OBF English Cafe at the Global Lounge
Q: I think you are very satisfied with GEO program. Do you think GEO program has a long vision?
N: Yes. We have a very long vision in GEO. Actually, we took part in a national competition between all the universities in Korea and we won. GEO program won the competition. So we won a very good price from the government and I think we can be proud of this program, a fantastic opportunity to improve your second language skills to improve your chances to getting a good job and to give you confidence to go abroad to speak to foreigners, to study in English. So this is really a good opportunity.
I would like to plan an ''open day'' so we can invite all the students in the campus to come to GEO so that they can see what we're doing. It’s very important that the other students should know about this. And I also think we should have a campus radio, not only global lounge radio. We should have a campus radio where all the students can listen to our program and activities and so on. And they can come and join us here. It’s important for us to make everybody aware of what we're doing.
We have so many foreign students on the campus for example, the graduate students from the Philippines. I think it’s a great opportunity for you to communicate with them, to make friends with them, to live with them. It’s kind of unique. This is the only university in Korea where we have so many foreigners living in the dormitory.
Make mistakes, make mistakes. That’s ok. You can do that. We allow students to make mistakes in GEO. Because if you make mistakes we can help you, but if you don't make mistakes, we cannot help you if you don't want to talk and don't want to speak because you are shy and you’re feeling embarrassed about grammar. So we really encourage our students to feel free to make mistakes. Just speak. Have fun.
Korean students with English Clinic Teaching Assistants at the GEO Global Lounge.
Visit GEO Global Lounge and take advantage of this wonderful opportunity that CUK is offering its students. Just as what Director Nicolas said, "Make mistakes. Don't be shy. Just speak. Have fun."
Q: Thank you.
N: No, you're welcome and thank you very much for coming in.
