Standing TALL With English
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Koh teaches English to Yumi Kato and Eunchong An
Like a diplomat scurrying between countries, Janis Koh is on a mission to bring people together, and all of her work is bearing its first fruit this spring - in South Korea and on Oahu.
She’s the champion of Technology Assisted Language Learning (TALL), a system that gave fluency to Mormon missionaries, was developed further by Brigham Young University and is now being offered to international students at BYU-Hawaii and at Intercultural Communications College in Honolulu.
“We want to take over the world,” declares Koh, warming to her vision of putting Hawaii at the center of a revolution in ESL (English as a Second Language). Also under way is changing the Islands from a short-term visitor mecca to a hub for immersion activities - enrichment for foreign students taking ESL classes back home.
In the past three years, Koh has burned serious flight miles and held dozens of meetings in Japan and her native South Korea to set up training centers with computers and teachers qualified for TALL. She’s so convinced it works that she’s raised $1 million for it and bought a half-interest in the ICC school here to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Mastering the English language is an urgent concern of job-seeking Asians, the Honolulu businesswoman explains, so they need the best tools, and they need them right now.
“The world is coming closer together, and English is very relevant,” she says, noting the Korean market for it is worth billions of dollars. “Parents sacrifice everything to send their children overseas to learn English. It’s a cultural phenomenon, also in China and Japan.” Yet what they get for their travel and tuition money, along with the trauma of family separation, seldom lasts.
“It’s a waste of their time. There is a national outcry that they are not improving. When they should be learning subjects like history and science, they are memorizing words. Then they lose confidence, drop out of classes and have to start again.” There are “thousands” of these kinds of schools, she says. TALL, however, is a carefully structured partnership between countries, and it offers help to those who cannot afford private tutoring.
“TALL helps them apply and retain what they learn. The results are phenomenal, and the timing is right.”
The system uses CD and web-based technology, allowing students to learn English with real-time native English tutoring online and progressive testing that monitors and evaluates them as they learn. It also addresses specific pronunciation difficulties with R, L, J and G.
Last November, Koh launched partnerships with Yonsei University and Changwon National University to certify TALL teachers. In January 2007, the classes began at the two Korea colleges as well as a middle school there and at ICC in Honolulu - all earning high marks from the students, Koh says. In March the Fulbright Commission-Korea Office approved a TALL pilot program at its headquarters, bringing the program’s total users in Korea to 600. (They have also outgrown their office there.) Next month Koh will initiate the Japan program, and also be at the U.S. embassy in Korea for a joint opening reception. China, she says, is still testing TALL at its universities.
Janis Koh, using the TALL program, works with Dong Hoon
Kwak and Yong Hyun Kwon
Plans call for bringing Korean English teachers to Hawaii for immersion camps in July and August. About 50 teachers from Korea came to BYU-Hawaii earlier this month to train in the method and take it back to Korea classrooms. Also this month, the Laie college officially launched its Korea-Japan-Hawaii out-reach with Koh as its exclusive TALL representative.
“Janis is our ambassador,” explains BYU-Hawaii professor Robert Hayden, dean of the Center for Instructional Technology and Outreach. “We wouldn’t be at this point if it weren’t for her personality, tenacity and understanding of both governments. She has that intuitive nature to bring people together.
“Right or wrong,” he adds, “English is a universal language. It opens doors in education, business and government. TALL is not a panacea, but it assists us. There are many products out there, but we want to prepare our students better so they can go back to their countries and help them develop.”
Koh has made America her home country since settling with her parents in California in 1980 at age 22. As part of the second, or bridging, generation she chooses to give back by promoting TALL from Hawaii to people in Asia. “I am an odd person, in a way,” she admits. “I have found my niche. I know how to serve and I am happy to work hard.
“My strength is to see needs and demonstrate issues.”
Over the past 27 years, including the last 15 in Hawaii, Koh has thrived in many jobs, all having to do with language. “Words are fun for me to learn,” she says. “The structure came later. Otherwise you get stuck.”
A single mother, she has two teenagers at Moanalua High School, doing well in their studies and speaking “a little Korean.” An active member of the Korean Chamber of Commerce and the Hawaii/Pacific District Export Council, she has worn many and varied hats: media relations for the 1998 Miss Universe contest, missionary to Korea, anchor for KBFD-TV News, Asian trade mission co-chair, translator, adviser to Tiger Woods, and coordinator of disaster prevention and mitigation among Korean government agencies.
Adviser to Tiger Woods? “We lived next door to the Woods family in our first house in Cypress, Calif.,” she recalls. “Mr. Woods cut our grass, and his 7-year-old son was very shy. I told him, “Don’t play golf, study.”
Good thing she gets better advice from her Hawaii friend and professional colleague, Bernice Bowers, who has been the idea person behind many of Koh’s projects.
“Janis turns ideas into reality,” says Bowers, who is currently writing a book about Koh and her family’s split between the two Koreas. “She’s like a bulldog, she’s unstoppable.
“Next, we’re looking at something to help Americans learn Asian languages.”
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