Korean Speech Competition: Enthusiasm prize awarded to Cooper

Annyeonghaseyo! (Hello!)

My name is Cooper and I’m 11 years old. I’m homeschooled and this year I’ve been taking a Korean class through VLN Primary. Sunny is my seonsaengnim (teacher).

This year we’ve learned lots of cool things. Sunny has made it fun by including activities like pretending to order pizza from Korean Pizza Hutt, Quizlet games and Youtube videos to help extend our learning.

We also got the option to enter a speech competition. The topic of the speech was “My Hero”. I decided to give the competition a go and entered the beginners division. I chose my hero to be Master Callum - who is the leader of my Hapkido (martial arts) training gym.

I talked about how Master Callum had been learning about Hapkido since 1982 and that I thought he was awesome for keeping his training up even when he had his hip surgery this year. I also said I wanted to travel with him to South Korea in 2022 to compete at the Hapkido World Champs.

I knew some of the words, but some were very hard, so Sunny helped me with the words and sentences I didn’t know. I practised a lot and tried my best. Sunny helped correct my pronunciation. I recorded my entry (they changed it to an online competition due to COVID) and sent it away in October.

We got notice recently that I didn’t place, but that I had received an Enthusiasm Award for my efforts. I was surprised that I got that. They sent me a certificate and a small prize in the mail.

I like my VLN class with Sunny. She’s a great teacher and I am very lucky to have found an online class that I can learn a language that I’m interested in.