Meet Sujin: a Korean student taking online courses to improve her English and career prospects
Sujin is studying at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. But, for the last year, she’s been supplementing her degree with free online courses. Here, as part of a series of posts about FutureLearners to celebrate our first birthday, we find out why.
“Currently, I’m preparing to graduate with a BA in Music Composition and Music Education from Sookmyung Women’s University,” says Sujin.
“In this job seeking season, most of my colleagues are busy writing resumés to get a respectable career. I am no exception, but I spend most of my time watching MOOC video lectures, doing assignments, sharing information online and joining study groups on campus.”
Sujin’s interest in MOOCs – or massive open online courses – started last year. So far, she’s completed ten of them, in humanities, music, programming and English-related subjects. This includes two courses from FutureLearn: “Study Skills for International Students” and “Talk the Talk: How to Give a Great Presentation.”
Sujin’s also been blogging about her experiences, discussing her two main motivations for taking online courses: improving her career prospects and developing her English abilities.
On the latter subject, she says: “One of the bucket list of university students in Korea is to become a fluent conversationalist in English… English is an insuperable obstacle for students living in non-English-speaking country as like me.”
Sujin’s approach to overcoming this obstacle is to take as many online courses in English as possible, with videos helping her listen, articles helping her read, and comments and assignments helping her write. Our “Talk the Talk” course also gave her the opportunity to practice her English speaking skills.
“This course was the greatest guideline and tips for those who prepare a presentation as beginners,” says Sujin. “Taking this course, one of my friends created a Facebook group to share their speaking videos and practice daily. There are about 10 members from Australia, Taiwan, Pakistan, Korea and US. We encourage each other with the compliments, tips and feedback.”
So what’s next for Sujin after graduation?
“I will continue my study with MOOCs to deepen my knowledge on music, education and programming, not only for lifelong education but also my career,” she concludes. “One of my dreams is to make a local learning community hub where MOOC students can learn and teach each other in future.”
Do you have a great story about your experience of FutureLearn? Send it to us at yourstories@futurelearn.com. We’d love to hear from you!
