Teaching Hindi to Korean and Polish students. A Contrastive ...

ISSN: 2373-7921 (print) 2373-793X (online)

January 2015Volume 2, Number 1Pages 81-115

‘Teaching Hindi to Korean and Polish Students.A Contrasve Analysis and Survey Data’

Krzysztof Iwanek

Internaonal Journal of

Teaching, Educaon and Language Learning

(IJTELL)

81 International Journal of Teaching, Education and Language Learning ISSN: 2373-7921 (print) January, 2015, Volume 2, Number 1, pp.81-115 2373-793X (online)

Teaching Hindi to Korean and Polish students. A Contrastive

Analysis and Survey Data

Krzysztof Iwanek *

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of teaching the Hindi language to Polish and Korean

students. Using surveys, the author compares the common difficulties faced by some Polish and

Korean students in learning Hindi, in terms of both phonetics and grammar. The survey also

compares the preferred teaching and learning methods of the respondents and their expectations

towards learning Hindi. The review of survey data is accompanied by suggestions on the

adaptation of teaching techniques.

Keywords: Hindi language teaching, Korean learners, Polish learners

Acknowledgments This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research

Fund of 2014. The author would like to thank Piotr Borek, Vijaya Sati and Angelika Lanckamer

for their help in conducting surveys.

*Assistant Professor, Dept. of Hindi, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea, Email:

[email protected]

82 International Journal of Teaching, Education and Language Learning (IJTELL) January 2015, Vol.2, No.1, pp.81-115

Introduction

This article deals with the issue of teaching the Hindi language to Polish and Korean

students. Using surveys, I compared the common difficulties faced by some Polish and Korean

students in learning Hindi, their preferred instruction methods, and their expectations towards

learning Hindi.

Let me start by admitting that the idea of this article came at first from professional

experience rather than research interest. After teaching Hindi for several years in Poland, I

received an opportunity to teach the same language to Koreans. This new situation opened up

new possibilities, provided fresh experiences, but also new challenges. Currently, my process of

teaching involves four languages: the one in which I think (Polish), the one which I teach

(Hindi), the medium of instruction (English), and the language in which my students think and

communicate with each other (Korean). Crucially, this situation also involves two education

systems – mine and the students’ – and two mentalities shaped by them. It also directly involves

two cultures, and two other ones indirectly – the culture(s) to which the Hindi language belongs,

which influences both the language itself and what I should teach together with the language, and

to some, lesser degree even the culture(s) to which the English language belongs, as much as it

influences the structures and vocabulary through which I explain Hindi phrases. To analyze what

should be changed in my methods in these new circumstances, I decided to survey both my

Korean students as well as my past Polish students and to use these comparative data both for

teaching purposes and to describe in this article. To be sure, the text does not pretend to offer any

new methods of teaching or any new methodology of teaching research. It is rather a review of

K. Iwanek “Teaching Hindi to Korean and Polish students. A Contrastive Analysis and Survey Data”

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student surveys accompanied by some experiences and suggestions on the adaptation of teaching

techniques.

Both my professional situation and the concept of writing this text have serious

limitations. Firstly, my background is philology, rather than education. In another words, I

studied the language, not the means to teach it. Secondly, I did not study about Korean culture,

education system or language prior to coming to the Republic of Korea. These aspects, it must be

admitted, are considered very important to the general process of learning. It has been often

pointed out that the cultural factors play a major role in the interaction between Korean students

and their foreign teachers as well as others aspects of learning a language. Another issue, which I

will not be addressing here, is that a teacher, especially a teacher of another culture than that of

the students whom they happen to teach, is perceived in a particular way, which may be even a

stereotype, and the expectations of students and their parents towards the teacher might be

influenced by this view (Cross, 2006). I would argue that the same process works the other way

round – a teacher of another culture, who is not particularly versed in the culture of the students

he is about to teach – presumably comes with the baggage of general assumptions about their

students and this too could influence his classroom behavior and techniques. Thirdly, while the

issue of English teaching, including teaching Korean learners, has been and is researched in may

aspects, the issue of teaching Hindi to Koreans, as far as I know, is not. In this regard I relied

mostly on publications dealing with teaching English to Korean students to look at some general

aspects of the process of second language acquisition by Koreans.

This article is divided into three parts. The first one describes the main similarities and

differences between Hindi, Polish, English and Korean, with reference to my particular situation


as a teacher. The second part describes the idea of the survey that I conducted among Korean and

Polish students, presents its aims and results (in a form of a table), as well as admits its

limitations. The third section deals with some of the issues addressed in the survey in greater

detail and tries to look at them from the perspective of my teaching experiences (and in some

cases the experience of others).

Comparison of Some General Features of Hindi, Polish, Korean and English Languages

The difficulty of learning any language as L2 should be considered from the perspective

of users of a particular L1, by using a contrastive analysis. This point had been long ago

advocated by Lado (Knight, 2008), though the fact that I am mentioning Lado does not mean that

I endorse the Audio-Lingualism method. While both Hindi and Polish are Indo-European

languages, this fact should be neither glossed over nor overestimated, since, as we shall see

below, contemporary Hindi in fact shares some similarities with Korean, while being historically

unrelated to it. At this point one can also refer to Baker (2003) for a Universal Grammar-based

criticism of how the study on the evolution of languages is separated from the study of universal

patters of grammar. The criticism, I would add, could work both ways.

In the case of my Polish students, we shared a mother tongue, but it is not the case with

my Korean students. While using English as a medium of instruction might be helpful in some

cases, it poses additional problems in other ones. English is considered by some as one of the

most difficult languages to learn for Koreans in terms of ‘syntax, phonetics and phonology,

sociolinguistics, and discourse structure’ (Robinson, 2003). On the other hand, it must be

mentioned that some recent research suggests that L1 does not influence the acquisition of L2 as

much as it is commonly imagined. Here one can refer to Stringer (2013) for a Universal


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Grammar-based research which included the comparative study of how a certain element of

English syntax was learned by Korean learners and native speakers of other languages. In my

particular situation, however, not only the differences between L1 and L2 should be considered,

but also the position of English as the medium of instruction (should we call it L1.5?). As we

face a layer of three languages it is not only the language transfer that may be taken into

consideration here, but a translation via English. How much, and in what ways is the language

transfer important can be left for others to debate, but it would be safe to assume that everybody

agrees that the form of translation does matter. This is why, in this section of the article, we shall

have a look at some important affinities and similarities between Polish, Hindi, English and

Korean.

First, contrary to all other languages concerned here, Korean is an agglutinative language

(Sohn, 2013). This makes it obviously easier for Polish students to learn Hindi, and harder for

Korean ones, especially since both Polish and Hindi are fusional, and contemporary English is

analytic. On the other hand, while early Indo-European languages had the SOV sentence

structure (Beekers, 2011), Polish and English currently follow SVO. Both Hindi and Korea

follow SOV (Sohn, 2013; Baker, 2001). This means that grasping the main word sequence in

Hindi should be in fact easier for a Korean student than a Polish one, especially if a Korean

student is learning it directly, without the medium of English.

The case-based declension of nouns, adjectives or participles is an important part of both

Hindi and Polish grammar. However, it is not existent in contemporary Korean where it is the

postpositions that serve the role fulfilled by case endings in Polish (Sohn, 2013). On the other

hand, since SOV languages usually use postpositions, not only with Korean, but also Hindi uses


them, and does so virtually in the same way as Korean (Sohn, 2013). As far as this aspect is

considered, Hindi is in a way between Polish and Korean in that it has noun (and adjective,

participle and pronoun) declension like the former language, and postpositions like the latter.

Polish students typically grasp the system of declension in Hindi quicker than Korean students.

On the other hand, Korean students easily learn the position of the postpositions in Hindi

sentences, while Polish students may at first have a tendency to use postpositions as prepositions

(i.e. say ‘on table’, as they would in Polish, rather than ‘table on’, as one should in Hindi). The

relative position of the English structure in this respect is peculiar. Postpositions do occur in

English, but their role is different than in Hindi or Korean. Contemporary English virtually does

not use cases. The only relic of the case system in English is the Saxon genitive. Because of all

this, explaining based declension in Hindi to Korean learners remains a challenge, and doing so

via English might even create further confusion.

The case of articles is one of many other example of how communicating via English

might cause additional problems while teaching using English. English is the only language of

the four concerned to use articles (Robinson, 2003). I observed that some Korean students, while

translating from English to Hindi, feel a need to somehow include an article in the Hindi

structure, and use the Hindi pronouns yah and vah in place of the article (yah means ‘he/she/it’ or

‘this’ and vah means ‘he/she/it’ or that’.

None of the four languages in question is a tonal one, although Middle Korean did have

tones (Sohn, 2013). Vowel length does not appear in Polish, while it does appear in the

remaining three languages, but to a various degree. It is an essential part of Hindi phonetic

system and can certainly be considered an important part of proper English pronunciation. In


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Korean, however, vowel length is reportedly less known nowadays among the younger, and even

middle-aged generation (Sohn, 2013) and my students tend to typically be between the age of 20

and 30. In Hindi, Polish and English one finds complex consonant clusters, all of which are

difficult to Korean students, whose language avoids such combinations (Cho, 2004). Some other,

more specific phonetic differences and some ways to deal with them will be addressed in the

third section of the article, after the results of the survey are presented. For a much more detailed

comparison of Hindi and Korean phonetics, see Pandey (2010).

Certain cultural factors tend to make Polish closer to English and Hindi closer to Korean.

For example, the system of kinship terms is much more complex in Hindi and Korean than in the

remaining two languages. This means that a number of kinship terms, such as ‘maternal/paternal

grandfather/grandmother’ or ‘father’s older/younger brother’ can be translated in one word from

Hindi to Korean, while they need to be translated in a more descriptive way into Polish and

English (Sohn, 2013). Korean and Hindi honorific speech, and generally the levels, aspects and

circumstances of people relations as expressed through the language are more complex in Hindi

and Korean (Sohn, 2013) than they are in English and Polish. This does not mean that Korean

and Hindi structures are very similar in this regard. However, according to my experience,

Korean students do grasp some aspects of Hindi honorific speech quicker than Polish learners.

This includes the proper usage of honorific particles and second person forms. For example,

neither English nor Polish have honorific particles attached after the name or the title of the

person in question, while they are used in such a way in Korean and Hindi. In Hindi, in fact,

some particles are used after the name and some before it. Hindi has three second person forms

which symbolize three different kinds of relations. All of these forms have to be translated into

English as ‘you’. The situation is slightly better in Polish, where we find two forms - ‘ty’ and


‘Pan/Pani’ - which can be considered the equivalents of two Hindi second person plural forms -

‘tum’ and ‘āp’ - respectively (‘Pan/Pani’, however, takes the forms of the third person singular,

but is used in the sense of the second person). To sum up this paragraph, a gradation of language

in terms of honorific speech and other forms illustrating human relationships would possibly

look like this, with the first one being the most complex one: Korean>Hindi>Polish>English.

This unfortunately means that, at least in this regard, English is not particularly useful when

translating between Hindi and Korean.

The Idea of the Survey and its Results

The survey was divided into two main parts. The first one dealt students’ perception of

Hindi learning. This part consisted of three sections in which the respondent rated the difficulties

in (1) pronouncing sounds (2) telling the differences between sounds which they might have

found similar and (3) some elements of Hindi grammar. The second part dealt with students’

preferred methods of learning and being taught as well as with their expectations regarding

learning Hindi.

The organization of the survey as well as its particular questions can be criticized on at

least a few points. First of all, five categories of sounds (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and

labial) have been inserted in the survey as entire categories, not divided into sounds judged by

the students separately. For example, the respondents rated the difficulty of five retroflex dental

sounds as a group (though retroflex ra and rha were separate categories). It could be argued here

that, for example, ठ is even more difficult to pronounce than, say, ड and that the same would be

true for both Korean and Polish students. Indeed, one of the Polish respondents did point out, in

a note written on the survey form, that pronouncing an aspirated consonant is more difficult than


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pronouncing the same consonant without aspiration (and this difference was not illustrated in the

survey). Also, some sounds, such as ‘la’, ‘va’ or ‘ya’ have been omitted from the survey

altogether. The same is true about grammar. Eleven elements of Hindi grammar have been

included, which obviously left out many more. However, including all major rules of Hindi

grammar and all phonemes separately would make the survey too long and complex. As it is, the

survey focuses on the elements of Hindi grammar that the students encounter in the beginner-to-

early-intermediate phase of learning (the definition of ‘intermediate’ would depend on a

particular course; in some cases all of these elements would be defined as falling in the

‘beginner’ category).

Lastly, it might be observed that asking the respondents about their ratings of certain

phonetic and grammatical aspects of the language might not point out the elements which really

are most difficult for them. It might just be establishing which teaching method they prefer and

not the method that will really yield the best results. One’s feelings are of course not easily

measured, but every language teacher does have concrete means to assess such issues in the form

of homework and test materials confronted with what, how, and for how long was being taught

in the class (all the quality of the teaching is again difficult to measure, especially by teaching in

question). Such data might not be easily presented and while I will not present this kind of

homework and test mistakes summary, I will later in some cases compare students’ ratings of

certain issues with my teaching experiences. At any rate, recurrent opinions and huge

differences in rating a given element between Polish and Korean respondents should point out to

certain trends or at least their attitudes which, whether the teacher agrees with them or not,

should be certainly taken into consideration.


All in all, 20 Korean students and 28 Polish students were surveyed, although not every

respondent filled every section of the survey. Also, some respondents could not answer some

questions as they, being beginners, have not yet encountered certain elements of grammar and

could not rate them. Such cases were appropriately marked in the table below. In the case of

Korean respondents, all were students of my department, which means that their experience with

learning Hindi has been quite uniform till the time of the survey. Few of them – the number

cannot be specified as the survey was anonymous – visited India and stayed there for a longer or

shorter period. All were in the age span of approximately 21 to 28 years old. Within this group, 2

were beginner students (first grade, second semester), 7 were advanced (fourth grade, second

semester) and the remaining 11 were intermediate level (second grade, second semester). Polish

respondents were of a very mixed background, as a considerable number of them attended

various private Hindi courses. Their age span was also wider (covering both students in their 20s

as well as 30s) and their level of Hindi, time of exposure to it, experiences linked to it (including

travels to India) varied substantially from case to case. In the Polish group, 14 were roughly on

the beginners’ level, 9 on the intermediate level and 5 were advanced. Thirteen respondents were

my past students at various courses, three were students of the Department of South Asian

Studies at Warsaw University and 12 were students of the Embassy of the Republic of India-

sponsored Hindi course at Dom Kultury Podgórze (The Podgórze Culture Centre) in Cracow. In

the case of the Korean students, all but 2 were my students.

It was originally planned that the survey would illustrate differences in opinions of

beginner, intermediate and advanced students, but as their respective numbers were too low (see

data above), I decided to only present the generalized opinions of two learners’ groups.

Whenever the number of answers to a particular question was lower than to other questions it


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was marked in square brackets. For example, ‘[- 2 r]’ means that 2 respondents in a given group

did not answer the question.

Table 1. Learning Hindi Survey

1. Phonetics. How difficult for you is a particular type of sound to pronounce? Rate the

difficulty of each sound or group of sounds on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the easiest

and 10 most difficult.

Polish Respondents Korean Respondents

1.1 Velar consonants 2.54 3.80

1.2 Palatal consonants 2.88 3.65

1.3 Retroflex dental consonants 6.04 6.29

1.4 Dental consonants 2.04 4.35

1.5 Labial consonants 1.95 3.94

1.6 ra 1.45 4.21

1.7 śa 1.63 4.29

1.8 sa 2.04 5.18

1.9 sa 1.20 3.55

1.10 ha 1.36 3.05

1.11 za 1.75 4.25

1.12 ra - retroflex ra 4.54 6.15

1.13 rha - retroflex rha 5.13 6.05

1.14 fa 2.38 4.35

1.15 r - sonorant r 4.54 5.85

How difficult for you is it to tell the differences between the sounds below?

1.16 Telling the difference between long and

short vowels (अ [a] and आ [ā], etc.)

5.41 3.85


1.17 Telling the difference between retroflex and

dental sounds (त [ta] and ट, etc.)

5.67 6.55

1.18 Telling the difference between aspirated an

unaspirated consonants (त [ta] and थ [tha] , etc.)

4.30 4.04

1.19 Telling the difference between sibilants 3.26 6.86

1.20 Telling the difference between a vowel

pronounced with nasalization and without

4.26 3.33

2. Grammar. Rate the difficulty of elements of Hindi grammar on a scale of 1 to 10,

where 1 is the easiest and 10 most difficult.

2.1 Oblique case 2.47 3.20

2.2 The का [kā] postposition 3.25 [-1 r] 3.90

2.3 Imperfect forms 3.19 [-2 r] 3.40

2.4 Continuous forms 3.46 [-3 r] 2.45

2.5 Future forms 3.00 [-3 r] 4.00

2.6 Subjunctive forms 4.04 [-4 r] 5.60 [-1 r]

2.7 Past participles and the ergative structure 5.18 [-4 r] 4.74 [-1 r]

2.8 Passive voice 5.12 [-4 r] 6.26 [-1 r]

2.9 Model verb structures 3.62 [–3 r] 5.42 [-1 r]

2.10 Imperative 2.30 [-2 r] 4.42 [- 1 r]

2.11 Compound verbs 4.58 [- 3 r] 6.58 [-1 r]

In the case of questions 3.1.1 and 3.1.5, the respondents were to rate the replies from 1 to

3, one being their most preferred option and 5 the least. Due to their same format, these two

questions were assembled in the same table below. In the table below, POL1 means the percent

of Polish respondents who chose this reply as their first preference, POL3 means the percent of

those who chose this reply as their fifth and last preference, etc. The same is true about columns


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KOR1 to KOR5 regarding Korean respondents. Ciphers in bold marked the most preferred reply

(i.e. the one most preferred in the first place, in the second, etc.).

3.1.1 If you would have to

drive a tank, would you prefer

to:

POL 1 POL 2 POL 3 KOR 1 KOR 2 KOR 3

A) first listen to somebody

telling you how it is to drive a

tank;

10.71% 46.43% 39.29% 5% 45% 40 %

B) first see somebody

explaining how to drive a tank

through drawings, etc.;

39.29% 35.71% 32.14% 45% 35% 35%

C) first sit in the tank and see

how it feels; 50% 17.86% 28.57% 50% 20% 25%

3.1.5 Which methods help you

best in learning to speak

correctly (other than the

obvious repeating after the

teacher or any kind recording)?

POL 1 POL 2 POL 3 KOR 1 KOR 2 KOR 3

A)listening to explanations

about how to use one’s lips,

tongue, etc., watching

articulation charts and pictures;

14.29% 42.86% 7.15% 25% 50% 25%

B) finding comparisons to

sounds in other languages (like

your language or English, e.g.

‘ई sounds like the English ee in

feet’);

78.57% 14.29% 42.86% 65% 25% 10%

C) learning short rhymes and

tongue twisters in which the

sound which you have to learn

occurs often (e.g. ‘She sells

sea shells by the sea shore.’).

7.14% 42.86% 50% 10% 25% 65%

The same was done in the case of questions 3.1.1 and 3.1.3, in which the respondents were to

rate the replies from 1 to 5, one being their most preferred option and 5 the least. Questions and

answers have been made shorter to fit in the table. Their full versions together with glosses will

be quoted later in the text of the article.


3.1.2 How do you prefer to learn words at

home?

POL 1 POL 2 POL 3 POL 4 POL 5 KOR1 KOR2 KOR3 KOR4 KOR5

A) read the words; 28.57% 33.33% 3.57% 14.29% 14.29% 20% 15% 30% 20% 15%

B)repeat the words aloud; 22.22% 33.33% 17.86% 25% 3.57% 35% 15% 30% 10% 10%

C) listen to the words (e.g. to a tape) 11.11% 11.11% 28.57% 17.86% 28.57% 5% 15% 5% 20% 50%

D) practice through exercises, translations,

etc.; 14.29% 11.11% 22.22% 35.71% 17.86% 5% 25%

5%

50% 15%

E) write down the words many times. 22.22% 7.14% 22.22% 7.14% 35.71% 35% 30% 30% 0% 5%

3.1.3 Which method suits you best in

learning a grammatical rule, e.g. the

gender of a noun? POL 1 POL 2 POL 3 POL 4 POL 5 KOR1 KOR2 KOR3 KOR4 KOR5

A) just memorizing the gender; 14.29% 28.56% 3.56% 35.70% 17.86% 30% 25% 15% 10% 20%

B) memorizing the noun in a context; 57.13% 32.13% 10.70% 0% 0% 30% 30% 15% 20% 5%

C) write down the words picking a color

for each gender; 14.29% 25% 42.86% 10.70% 7.14% 20% 15% 30% 10% 25%

D) draw a picture showing the

grammatical rules regarding gender; 0% 10.70% 28.56% 17.86% 42.86% 5% 20% 15% 40% 20%

E) draw a picture which would help you to

associate the nouns with other nouns; 14.29% 3.57% 14.29% 35.71% 32.15% 15% 10% 25% 20% 30%


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3.1.4 If you could choose the sequence of

learning a grammar of a language, which would

you prefer? POL

KOR

A) listening and speaking first, rules later; 17.86% 37.5%

B) rules first, listening and speaking later. 82.14% 62.5%

3.1.6 Does competition in the classroom

stimulate your process of studying?

POL KOR

A) [no competition]; 53.57% 35%

B) [token competition]; 14.29% 10%

C) [considerable competition]; 28.57% 20%

D) [maximum competition]. 3.57% 35%

3.2.2 If you could divide the total time of your

language classes (not of one class) between

specific elements of learning, how would you

do it? Divide 20 points between the elements

below:

POL

KOR

A) speaking; 37.86% 30.76%

B) writing; 13.75% 22%

C) grammar; 20.71% 21.06%

D) listening; 18.04% 17.76%

E) additional information. 10.18% 8.42%

3.2.3 How would rank the preference of your

goals when learning Hindi (that is, which

elements you like to master more than the other

one by the end of your studies of this

language?) Divide 20 points between the

elements below.

POL KOR

A) pronunciation; 22.86% 22.86%

B) vocabulary; 27.86% 23.57%

C) grammar; 20.54% 17.86%

D) writing skills; 17.14% 22.14%

E) knowledge about the language (cultural

context, history, literature, etc.)

10.71% 13.57%


Comments on Survey Results

Phonetics

The first part of the survey clearly indicates that Korean respondents generally found

Hindi phonetics to be more difficult than the Polish ones. In only three cases did Polish

respondents considered an element of Hindi phonetic system on average more difficult than

Korean respondents: telling the difference between long and short vowels, between a vowel

pronounced with nasalization and without and between an aspirated and an unaspirated

consonant (in the last case, the difference was slight). I find these three results – based, as they

all are, on limited groups of respondents – to be less obvious than they seem. Nasalization

occurs in all three languages, but in each case its forms are different. Both Korean and Hindi do

have aspirated nouns, while aspiration in Polish is very weak (Ruszkiewicz, 1990). Also,

aspiration in Korea is realized quite differently and not as strong in Hindi, and I do not feel that

many of Hindi aspirated consonants are actually easier for Korea learners then they are for Polish

learners. The combination of a voiced consonant with an aspiration is exceptionally difficult for

some members of both groups. In such cases, it was found useful to first teach the students to

first practice speaking by keeping a gap between a consonant and an ‘h’ sound (which is fully or

nearly fully audible in Hindi aspiration) and then gradually narrowing the gap down until its

disappearing (e.g. d..ha>d.ha>dha).

As mentioned before, while vowel length does occur in Korean, it is not graphically

marked and seldom recognized nowadays (Sohn, 2013). My experience points out that Korean

students find it as difficult to master the length of Hindi vowels as Polish ones. The survey


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question, however, focused on ‘telling the difference’ rather than ‘pronouncing’ which could

indicate that young Korean learners claim to find it easier to hear the difference between a short

and a long vowel in Hindi than Polish. It does not have to mean that they find it easy to master

these differences when speaking. What is important here is that the (past) existence of vowel

lengths in Korean should open up the possibility of comparing it to the relevant Hindi process.

Also, carefully chosen examples from English can illustrate the idea of vowel length in Hindi.

The five dental retroflex consonants were considered the most difficult among all rated

elements of speech by the Polish respondents and the third most difficult by Korean respondents.

Their rating among the two groups was also quite similar (6.04/10 among Polish respondents,

6.29/10 among Korean respondents). This is hardly surprising as these sounds do not occur both

in Polish and Korean, since they were introduced into Indo-Aryan languages from other, earlier

South Asian languages (Beekes, 2011). It is only a little bit puzzling that Polish respondents

found the other two retroflex consonants, ra and rha, to be slightly easier than the five dental

retroflex consonants, although the former two do not appear in Polish as well (the discrepancy in

rating in case of Korean students in this regard was negligible). The seven retroflex consonants

were also the only ones that received a total rating below 5 on a scale of 10 in Polish

respondents’ rating. The survey results also indicated the preference of both groups to find

comparison between the sounds in the language they are learning and the sounds in their

language, in possible. While this is hardly possible in case of retroflex dental sounds, in case of

my Polish students and the teaching I used to tell them to form their mouth as they do when

speaking the Polish cz sound (ʈ ʂ, voiceless retroflex affricate), but try to say a d sound instead.

Such an exercise might be helpful in learning to speak the retroflex d. Finding a similar

comparison in Korean is, however, impossible.


In case of Korean respondents, it was ‘telling the difference between the sibilants’ that

was rated as most difficult. The pronunciation of ‘sa’ and ‘śa’ was also rated as one of the more

difficult ones by Korean respondents. While both Polish and Hindi have three sibilants – ‘sa’,

‘sa’ and ‘śa’ - in Korean, there is no hard ‘s’ sound, but the ‘s’ (ㅅ) is palatalized before ‘i’

(Pandey, 2010). The problem may also partially arise from phonetic rules and regional

differentiation of the Hindi language itself. First, the actual difference between ‘s’ and ‘ś’ is

narrower than in Polish. One of the Korean respondents added a note on his/her survey which

explained that it is only the difference between ‘s’ and ‘ś’ that he/she found difficult. Another

one wrote a question on the survey asking about the difference between the two sounds, as if

he/she understood them to be one. Second, some of Hindi speakers are unable to say ‘s’ or ‘ś’

and pronounce an ‘s’ instead. Third, ‘sa’ as a character is less widely used nowadays in Hindi, as

all foreign words, whether containing a sound closer to a ‘ś’ or a ‘s’ are written down as ‘śa’ (श).

The English ‘shoe’ becomes ‘śū’ (श) in Hindi, even if ‘sū’ would be a more correct rendering.

All of these aspects certainly add up to the confusion of learners. This tendency is result

of palatalization, a process typical both to Korean and Polish. In case of consonant-vowel

combinations such as ‘ci’, ‘zi’ or ‘si’, palatalization must occur in Polish, save for clearly foreign

own words, such as Sindbad. The same kind of palatalization occurs in Korean in case of ‘si’

(ㅅᅵ). Therefore, Hindi words such as sir (‘head’) are often pronounced by Korean students as

śir and the same applies to some Polish students at the early stage of their learning. However, as

both my experiences as a teacher and survey results would suggest, in time Polish students find it

somewhat easier to overcome the tendency to palatalize. Moreover, in Hindi a reverse process


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occurs – ‘s’ makes the preceding ‘i’ harder (as in sir). In case of Polish students, this may be

explained by comparing the resulting sound to the Polish ‘y’ (as in syn, ‘son’). In Korean, the

nearest similar sound to compare with, albeit obviously different, would be eu (ㅡ, as in

seu,ㅅㅡ).

In Korean, ‘r’ and ‘l’ are separate allophones of one phoneme, rather than two phonemes,

as in Polish (Robinson, 2003; Sohn, 2013). Moreover, in Hindi, one can speak of three r’s, the

first one being alvular, the second being retroflex and the third a sonorant (Pandey, 2010). To

make matters worse, the pronunciation of the English ‘r’ is yet different from its nearest

approximate in the remaining three languages. While certain rules determine the switching

between ‘r’ and ‘l’ in Korean (Robinson, 2003; Sohn, 2013), I do not get the impression that they

are directly transferred by students to Hindi phonetics.

One element of Hindi phonetics which is particularly difficult for Korean learners and

was not included in the survey are consonant clusters. In case they appear at the end of the noun,

I found it useful to first tell the students to add a vowel after such a compound, which is what

happens in Korean phonetics when a new loanword with a difficult consonant ending appears.

For example, they would start pronouncing arth (‘goal’) as artha (which is how it used to be

pronounced in Sanskrit) and then gradually try to remove the added vowel at the end.

Grammar

In case of elements of grammar, the average assessment of their difficulty was nearly

always higher in case of Korean students. The only exception were past participles and the


ergative structure, but here the difference was slight (5.18 in case of Polish respondents, 4.74 in

case of Korean ones). It should also be added that few respondents marked past tense as such as

easier than the ergative structure, while it is in fact one of the two structures used in it. The

respondents were not really supposed to rate the past tense and the ergative structure separately,

but the survey layout might have been confusing in that matter. One Polish respondent marked

past tense as such as 4 at the level of difficulty and ergative structure as 7, another as 1 and 4,

and yet other as 2 and 3, respectively. At any rate, the past participles and the ergative structure

were considered the most difficult by Polish respondents, followed by the passive voice (5.12).

These two were the only elements with an overall rating above 5, with compound verbs closely

following them (4.58). In the case of Korean students, compound verbs were considered the most

difficult (6.58), followed by the passive voice (6.26), the subjunctive (5.60) and modal verb

structures (5.42). The imperative was given the lowest rating by Polish respondents (2.30) and

the second position was taken by the oblique case (2.47). In case of Korean students, the

continuous forms were given the lowest rating (2.45) and the only below 3, the next one being

the oblique case (3.20). Such data might suggest which elements the teacher should focus on

somewhat more extensively and that some of these elements differ when comparing the needs of

Polish and Korean learners. The data would also imply that compound verbs and passive voice

are elements of Hindi grammar that call for special attention both in the case of Polish and

Korean respondents.

Hindi compound verbs are difficult for Polish learners for at least two reasons. The first

one is that they do not have the equivalent in Polish language. According to me the second main

reason – and this refers possibly to most of L2 learners of Hindi – is that compound verbs are

(perhaps inevitably) taught at a certain, quite late stage of acquiring grammar. Hindi L1 learners,


101

however, learn them from the very first moment. For L2 learners, compound verbs are a new

addition that forces one to add new information to his knowledge of Hindi sentence order

(accepting the new reality that a second verb might be added) and of grammar (in case of the

ergative structure). For L1 learners, it is rather the matter of style. It will be not be debated here

whether one should try to teach compound verbs at a much earlier stage. In the case of Korean

learners, however, we can try to compare compound verbs in Hindi to the addition of emphatic

morphemes in Korean (Sohn, 2013).

However, my experience as a teacher could suggest that some of these elements were

underrated. While it is hardly surprising that Polish learners find the Hindi oblique case easier

than the Korean ones (which does not mean they do not need time to master it), it might seem

puzzling why it has been given a relatively low rating by Korean respondents. In this paragraph I

will try to find reasons for that. Given the structure of Korean language, it is very common for

Korean speakers to use the direct case in place of the oblique case when communicating in

Hindi. For example, they would often say or write merā deś me, which means ‘In my country’

(My-DC country-OC in). The proper form would be mere deś me (My-OC country-OC in).

My experience would suggest that pointing out to the Saxon genitive as the example of a

case, while explaining the idea of declension to Korean students, does not help much. First, in

Hindi (as in Polish), nouns change their ending while the Saxon genitive does not really affect

the ending, but might be rather perceived as an addition to it. Second, the genitive illustrates one

type of relation (possession) and it might not be easy for students to understand that it is meant

here to illustrate an idea of any case as such.


I feel that constantly reminding the students of a general rule – that whatever precedes the

postposition must be in the oblique case – can be helpful here, given that situating the

postposition in a Hindi sentence is hardly a problem for Korean learners. There are, however,

more aspects to this case. In the example above, merā, ‘my’, a possessive pronoun, changes

because it is in agreement with the following noun, deś, while this noun, in turn, is influenced by

the following postposition. Such a process does not occur in Korean. My conclusion here is that

it is not the oblique case which is the only difficulty. It is the agreement of adjectives, pronouns,

participles (and one postposition and sometimes numerals) with the noun that causes additional

problems for Korean learners (and this element was not rated in the test). Moreover, both oblique

case as well as agreement cannot be properly illustrated in English. To teach the oblique case in a

proper way, it seems therefore essential to explain the rules of grammatical agreement to Korean

learners in much greater detail then we would explain them to learners that speak a language

where declensions are common. These rules of agreement have to be taught prior to the oblique

case and then one again together with it, to show how entire word clusters change.

Additional problems, this time both for Korean and Polish learners, lie within Hindi

grammar itself. The oblique case as such is not the only difficulty: the additional problem is that

often nouns and adjectives in Hindi do not really change their form in the oblique case. Let us

once again come back to the example above. When merā deś, ‘my country’, changed into mere

deś me ,‘In my country’, the postposition influences the noun which in turn influenced the

adjective. However, we do not see any change in the noun form. This is because of four noun

categories in Hindi, three do not change their form in the oblique case when in singular (this two

categories of feminine nouns as well as masculine nouns not ending with –ā, such as deś).

Moreover, in case of masculine nouns not ending with –ā, their form is the same in both in


103

singular (direct and oblique case) and in plural (direct case). To makes matters worse, the

masculine nouns ending with –ā have the same form in singular, oblique case and plural, direct

case. The adjectives are also either of changing or unchanging type. This must be puzzling both

for Korea and Polish students. On one hand, they are taught that a noun or adjective must change

into direct case, but very often its form does not suggest any change or the form itself does not

tell them what kind of change occurred (was into singular, oblique case, or plural, direct case?).

It is then much more difficult to remember that an adjective that agrees with a noun must change

its ending, even when the noun form does not remind us that we switched to oblique case. In

Polish, most cases force nouns to change their endings. While this, together with the number of

cases and declension types, means that there are much more case endings to be memorized in

learning Polish than in Hindi, it also means that the noun form often clearly signalizes that the

words that agree with it should also change. This aspects would point out to a conclusion that

both in case of Korean as well as Polish students, the key to the oblique case lies partially in

getting the learners used to recognize the agreement of words first but then to change each word

into oblique case (if necessary) separately, regardless whether other words in a sequence changed

their form.

A postposition particularly difficult for Polish learners, and not an easy one for Korean

ones, is kā, used primarily in the structures denoting possession. It also another case in which

translating through English causes additional difficulties. Let us start with looking at the four

common possession structures in concerned languages:

Polish < < < < Hindi > > > English > > > Korean


As we can see, the structure sequence in Polish is reverse to that in Hindi. While in the

latter language one would say ‘boy+OC kā toy’ for ‘boy’s toy’ in the former one would say ‘toy

boy+GEN’. In English the sequence is the same as in Hindi and Korean, but, as mentioned

earlier, the Saxon genitive does not really indicate a change in the preceding word’s structure.

The original Hindi sequence itself is thus easier to grasp for Korean students than it is to Polish

ones. However, contrary to Hindi, the relevant postposition in Korean is optional and the

possessor does not change its case and there is no declension of the postposition (which in Hindi

agrees with the possessee). The last rule, I feel, is as difficult for Korean learners as it is to their

Polish counterparts. Students of both nationalities tend to set the agreement of the postposition

with the possessor rather than with the owned object. The kā postposition in fact takes adjective

endings and it even ‘behaves’ in a similar way, since it precedes a noun or a participle.

Comparing kā to an adjective may be more useful for Polish students, since in Korean there is no

adjective conjugation, but it is a technique certainly worth trying out, especially if the students

would learn adjective conjugation earlier. At any rate, while the kā postposition was not rated

particularly high by both groups, it certainly needs a lot of attention from the teacher.

I also feel that the ergative structure could have been underrated by Korean respondents.

My experience points out that at an early stage of learning the past simple tense causes same

problems to learners of both nationalities. In Hindi, whenever a verb is transitive a past simple

(as well as past perfect, present perfect and future perfect) structure must change into the ergative

structure, resulting in a sentence like ‘By me coffee was drunk’. A typical mistake of both Polish

Possesse+possess

or IN GENITIVE

CASE

Possessor IN OBLIQUE

CASE

+postposition+possessee

Possessor+SAXON

GENITIVE+possess

ee

Possessor [no case

change]+postposition[o

ptional]+possessee


105

and Korean learners is not to switch to the ergative structure when needed, dropping the ne (‘by’)

postposition and not establishing the agreement between the verb and the grammatical subject.

While there are ways to properly describe the idea of the ergative structure both in English and in

Polish (Snell, 2003), English again is at a slight disadvantage here as in Polish the past participle

conjugates, like in Hindi, and this cannot be properly illustrated in English. Regardless of this,

explaining the very idea of the ergative structure is possible in all three concerned languages, as

the concepts of transitivity and passive voice are to be found in them (Sohn, 2013). A good

method, following the one proposed by Snell, is to first teach the students to establish whether a

verb is transitive by trying to reverse the roles of the grammatical subject and the object (‘Coffee

was drunk by me’). On the basis of such examples, students are able to construct a sentence in an

ergative structure in Hindi.

Preferred Methods of Learning and Teaching

Question 3.1.1 was included in the test to establish whether the respondent is more of a

auditory (A), visual (B) or kinesthetic (C). The question was taken from a test available on the

Internet in Polish (http://www.maximus.edu.pl/maxipedia/testy.html) and translated into English

. I must admit, however, that the question was taken out of the context and its choice might have

been misleading to the respondents. I chose a question about driving a tank, an activity

substantially different from learning a language, and while learning as such should have its

common patterns, the fact that most respondents in both groups chose the option of ‘first sitting

in the tank and seeing how it feels’ does not have to mean that all of them were kinesthetic

learners. Regardless of this, in both groups listening to explanations was the next preference,

being chosen somewhat more often than watching somebody drive a tank. At any rate, it must be


admitted that this question was supposed to be analyzed in comparison with the next ones, when

the tact of being one of the types of a learners would be seen in correlation with one’s preferred

methods of learning and being taught. It is possibly due to the choice of the ‘tank’ question that

these correlations were not established in the survey.

Both questions 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 focused on some very specific teaching and learning

techniques, but the goal was to treat the chosen techniques as a symptom of more general

preferences. In question 3.1.2, the learners were to rate their preferred version of memorizing

vocabulary at home, and in case of Polish respondents it would seem that the results were quite

unambiguous: reading the words emerged the most preferred activity, followed by repeating

them aloud, then writing them down many times, followed by listening, and practicing through

translations and finally writing them down many times. However, it should be added that, again,

the way the question was formulated could have been confusing to respondents. It might be that

the phrase ‘read the words’ (czytać wyrazy) could have been understood by the Polish

respondents to mean reading them aloud which was a separate category where the first one was

supposed to mean reading them silently, to oneself. If so, then the result of Korean and Polish

respondents could have been more similar in this regard. As for other options, Korean learners

preferred ‘writing the word many times’ more often (in per cent) than Polish learners, while the

former preferred practicing through listening and exercises more often than their Korean

counterparts.

When asked about the methods to memorize the gender of a noun (question 3.1.3), more than

a half of Polish respondents preferred to memorize it within a particular context. As for Korean

respondents, that option was also often chosen (by 30%), but on par with ‘just memorizing the

gender’. Gender of a noun as a subject was chosen with deliberation, as the rules governing are


107

often confusing for students. A particular example chosen in the question were two nouns:

makān (मकान, ‘building’) and dukān (दकान, ‘shop’). Though both have the same ending and

logically describe similar objects, the first is masculine and the other feminine. Because of this

recurring problem, I suggested other techniques of memorizing the gender that were briefly

described in the questions. Answers E suggested assembling together nouns that share the same

gender on one picture, such as a girl holding a book and standing near a shop and a car (all of

these are feminine nouns in Hindi, and the image girl would be a key to memorizing this), a

method akin to what was referred to as true narrative representations (Oller, 1997). Solution C

had been practiced by me with some of the Korean students a few weeks before the survey.

Although, one Korean respondent, while rating C as the lowest in preference, added a note

which said that this solution ‘seems nice’, generally both Korean and Polish respondents

preferred the more traditional methods in answers A-B to more experimental methods of answers

C-E. To conclude, in case of these two questions the preferences of both groups were to a degree

similar, although it might be observed that among less preferred options Korean students showed

a tendency to prefer a less contextualized method of learning (memorizing the gender of the

noun, writing the word many times) while Polish learners showed a tendency to a more

contextualized method of learning (memorizing the gender of the noun in a context, memorizing

the word through exercises and listening).

In the next question, the students were being asked whether they prefer to first learn the

rules of the language and then practice by listening and speaking, or first study some examples

and search for rules through listening and then strengthen these assumptions by learning the

grammatical theory. While the first option was more preferred in case of both groups, it was

more overwhelmingly preferred in case of Polish respondents (82.14%) than Korean ones


(62.5%). In the former group, one person responded that both options were equally acceptable to

his, hence the 5% of the total group opinion represented by them was split equally to both

answers.

In question 3.1.6, the influence of competition in the classroom has been divided into 4

general levels. The first one (A) envisaged no competition at all. On the second level (B), results

of tests of homework would not be announced to other students but a token competition would

take place I the class: without points, but with some token rewards that would point out to a

winner. On the third one (C), competition in the classroom would take a more concrete shape:

points or some other system would be used to establish a winner. On the fourth level (D),

competition in the classroom would look the same way, but results of tests and homework would

also be revealed to other students. In this case, the opinions of Korean and Polish respondents

varied substantially. Polish learners mostly preferred lower degrees of competition. A significant

number of Korean respondents opted for the highest level ad one of them this as his/her most

preferred solution, added a note which stated that ‘visible competition motivates, stimulates

students’. Since Korean society is regarded as a highly competitive one, especially in the field of

education and professional life (Kim, 2010), does this mean that one should opt for a higher level

of visible competition when teaching a language to Korean students? This remains far from

obvious as actually in this survey the opinions very highly polarized: the same number of

respondents (35%) voted for the minimum and maximum competition and both answers were

jointly the most preferred ones. Obviously, the number of respondents does not allow for more

general conclusions.

Some recent research may in fact point out that while in the Korean education system

competition is generally perceived to be a highly important factor, it does really have to yield


109

better learning results. Having surveyed more than 1000 Korean high school students Kim

(2010) reveals that ‘competitive motivation’ was one of the most important factors stated by

student. However, this notion had a more broad meaning in Kim’s study, being defined as

‘aspirations to occupy a superior position in life and to be positively evaluated by others’ (Kim,

2010). Being positively (or negatively) evaluated by others is definitely a part of peer-to-peer

contact, but ‘aspirations to occupy a superior position in life’ point out to a broader context (such

as one’s dream or plan to hold a specific profession; arguably, this is also a much important

factor in case of English learning, which Kim research, than in the case of Hindi learning). In this

regard, Kim also concludes that, "It is noteworthy that the Korean-specific motivational

construct, competitive motivation, turned out to be a nonsignificant variable for predicting

students’ English test scores (Kim, 2010)."

Let me also add that on the basis of their empiric material teachers of foreign languages

in Korea it is often being suggested that one mental obstacle that challenges Korean learners in

the classroom include Korea is the need not to ‘lose one’s face’. This causes the students to

hesitate to speak until they are confident that they do not make a mistake in the presence of their

peers (Stoakley, 2006). This, in turn, would lead to a form of vicious circle – one hesitates to

speak until he/she is not confident he/she speaks well, but the way to reach this level obviously

has to come through trying to speak more. Regardless of the cultural circumstances, it could be

argued that the entire situation is a form of a negative competition, negative in the sense that

more errors make a learner feel that he/she is worse from her peers. In case other and further

researches would point out that less competition is in fact more beneficent (even if it would be

least preferred by some), one can easily search for publications that focus on cooperative, rather

than competitive task-based English exercises that can be easily applied in Hindi teaching as


well, such as Lee (2003). Based on their experience, other teachers suggested how to somehow

relax the atmosphere of a Korean classroom and make students think less about the (imagined)

gravity of making a mistake (Lee, 2006).

The average results in the last two questions have been quite similar, when both groups

are compared. There were, however, some notable exceptions. The total time expected to be

devoted to teaching grammar, listening and additional language information was very similar in

case of both groups, but while the Polish respondents wanted much more time to be applied for

speaking than for writing, Korean students, while still giving their first preference to speaking,

wanted to save much more time for writing than their Polish counterparts. However, their finals

goals in mastering the elements of language did not differ so much. The focus on pronunciation

happened to be identical, but the Polish respondents favored vocabulary and grammar a little

more than Korean students, while they favored writing skills and additional knowledge about the

language a little more than their Polish counterparts. In both cases, however, speaking was

considered the most important element of classroom time and vocabulary the most important

goal in language acquisition (although in case of Korean respondents it was very closely

followed by pronunciation and grammar). While giving answers to these questions, two Polish

respondents pointed out that ‘being able to communicate’ was not included as a separate

category and another noted that he/she missed one more category: ‘the fluency/easiness of

expressing oneself’. These notes only reinforce the need of respondents to focus on speaking.

Summary

This article compared some basic features of the Polish, Hindi, English and Korean

languages in order to observe how certain grammatical and phonetic aspects of the Hindi


111

language can be illustrated in Polish and – via English – in Korean. I have surveyed 28 Polish

and 20 Korean Hindi learners in order to compare their rating of the easier and more difficult

elements of the Hindi language, as well as their preferred teaching and learning methods and

learning expectations. The obtained data suggests that Hindi phonetics is general is more difficult

to Korean students than it is to Polish ones. Among Polish learners, the past tense (including the

ergative structure), the passive voice and compound verbs were rated as most difficult, while

Korean students considered compound verbs, the passive voice, the subjunctive and modal verbs

structure as the hardest elements of Hindi grammar mentioned in the survey. Besides these,

based on my experience I advocated a focus on the oblique case (especially in case of Korean

students), and the kā postposition and the ergative structure in case of both groups. A contrastive

analysis of some basic grammatical features also suggests that certain elements of English

structures are unsuited to illustrate relevant structures in Hindi and in certain cases translating

directly to Korean seems to promise better results, Hindi and Korean share some similarities in

syntax and grammar. The comparison of preferred teaching and learning methods yielded similar

results in some aspects. Some of the major differences concerned: (1) the fact that most Polish

learners did not feel motivated by a high level of competition while in case of Korean students

the opinions were highly polarized, with the highest number of respondents choosing both the

lowest and highest level of competition and (2) the fact that Korean respondents would like to

devote a bigger part of the classroom time to writing than Polish respondents, and the latter

wanted to devote a larger share of the class time to speaking (but both groups agreed that

speaking was their priority and that (3) while both groups prioritized vocabulary as their final

goal, it was a higher priority for Polish respondents, while Korean respondents rated

pronunciation and writing skills nearly equally with vocabulary. Such priorities should of course


serve as guidelines and signs of certain opinions for the teacher, rather than imperatives. In the

same way, ratings do not have to prove that a particular rating is indeed so difficult or easy.

However, it is certainly being suggested here that while teaching Hindi to Korean students one

should follow a nuanced approach and - rather than copy everything from English-language

textbooks modify - certain elements of the syllabus and teaching methods, or at least change the

focus on some aspect to meet the needs of Korean students.


113

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Author Profile

Krzysztof Iwanek is an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, where he

teaches in the Department of Hindi. He received Master of Arts degrees in History and South

Asian Studies and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Warsaw University, Poland. He also

completed an advanced Hindi course at the Central Hindi Institute, New Delhi, India. His

principal research interests include the ideology of Hindu nationalism and, more broadly,

contemporary Indian history, politics and ideologies.

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