Six Korean students traveled to Baton Rouge on Monday to study English for eight weeks in the University English Language and Orientation Program.
ELOP gives international students an opportunity to learn English in a short period of time. The students take what they learn here back to their homes, or they stay at the University and continue their educations.
The students are from the Chonnam National University in Korea and were awarded a summer term of study in the ELOP because of their outstanding performance as 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates in mechanical engineering. The annual trip to the University is funded by BK-21, Brain Korea of the 21st century.
Margaret Jo Borland, programs and marketing coordinator and teacher for ELOP, said the reason the program has a strong connection with Chonnam National University is because of the Southern hospitality shown here, ELOP’s good international reputation and the University’s engineering program.
A large number of international students study engineering, Borland said, and the program here allows the students to visit engineering labs even though they are primarily here to learn the language.
Jun Gyoung Cho, a Korean student studying mechanical engineering in Gwang-Ju, Korea, is in the United States for the first time. He said he likes it here, and he hopes to finish school and become a graphic programmer after returning to Korea in two months.
He has been learning English for six years.
Cho has a busy schedule this summer. Classes begin at 8:30 a.m. every day and last until 1:30 p.m. Everyone in the program follows the same schedule.
“The program is highly intensive,” Borland said, “and the approach is skills-based and interdisciplinary.”
The classes are an intimate size consisting of 7 to 9 students, Borland said. The five classes the students attend daily are taught by English-speaking professors. Only English is permitted during class.
Established in 1946, ELOP is a full-time, non-credit program receiving the majority of its students from Korea, Japan, Venezuela, Colombia and Turkey, Borland said.
Students enroll in ELOP for a variety of reasons, Borland said. They need to learn English for admittance into different universities, graduate schools and for job promotions.
One advantage of ELOP, Borland said, is the University recruits future students while they are learning English.
Ayse Gider, a Turkish graduate student in textile engineering, library & information science and computer science, successfully finished ELOP three years ago.
Gider said she initially did not plan to stay here. But once she got here, she was surprised at how nice the teachers and students were and by how culturally diverse the University’s international community was.
“It was a nice experience because of all the internationals here from places like Latin America, Japan, China, Africa and Arabic countries,” Gider said. “We learned about our different cultures by practicing English with each other.”
Another way students learn about other cultures is through a pot luck dinner put on by the International Cultural Center, ELOP and the International Services Office twice a semester. Gider enjoyed the lunch because students bring food native to their own country. “We got to have food I had never heard of before,” Gider said.
Gider said that once here, most Turkish students decide to stay at the University to continue their studies.