In the past, most of the second foreign languages in local schools of South Korea were English. Children born in rich family would be sent to the United States or the United Kingdom to learn English in winter and summer vacation, so as to facilitate good development in the future. However, China is the second largest economy in the world nowadays, in which each move affects the world, and also affects the decision of Korean parents. Therefore, many Korean schools have taken Chinese as a second foreign language course. Many families send their children to China to learn Chinese when they are in junior high school, and continue to go to high school and university in China in the future.
Language environment is very important for learning a foreign language. They could pass the language barrier gradually when immersed in it. When looking for a job, they would have one more advantage to seize opportunities.
Main advantages of koreans in learning Chinese
Mostly due to geographical and historical reasons, the trade and economic exchanges between the two countries are more frequently, so there are naturally more opportunities for communication.
Chinese and Korean cultures are interlinked in many ways, and belong to the Confucian cultural circle, so that many Koreans learn Chinese more easily.
The recognition and reading of Chinese characters help Korean people to understand Chinese language to a great extent. Senior Korean students can write many Chinese characters. For a paragraph, they almost understand what it means. They even know the origin of some Chinese characters better than the Chinese. After all, they are in contact with traditional Chinese characters. For example, "wood" means tree in Korea, and "林" and "森" in Chinese have the same meaning in Korean. These root part of characters are very helpful for them to learn and understand the meaning of Chinese characters more easily.
Korean language has absorbed a large number of Loanwords in the process of development, of which many are from Chinese words. If learning Chinese, Koreans can guess the meaning of many words. Even the pronunciation of many words are almost the same. For example, “豆腐”(tofu), “主妇”(housewife), “手纸”(toilet paper), “河马”(hippo) and so on, which saves them a lot of time in memorizing new words.
Many people think that Asians are introverted and not very good at expressing, but the more Koreans they contact, the more they find out that their character is extroverted and good at expressing. Therefore, Koreans actually have a comparative advantage in speaking.
