40 Language Teaching
Curriculum-Building for Student Workshops
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
December 2021
TEACHING & LEARNING
An Inter view with Brennand Kennedy
G
wangju is seeing more of Brennand Kennedy around town these days, as he has moved from teaching in Naju to a university position in the city. Brennand completed his MA in applied linguistics (TESL) at Brock University in Canada. As part of his graduate program, he conducted research in the area of reflective practice under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Farrell. In his recent move to Chosun University, Brennand had the opportunity, or need, to do some interesting curriculumbuilding for his new courses, which he describes in this interview. Interviewer: Thank you for making time for this interview, Brennand. To begin with, could you tell us a little about yourself before you came to Korea? Brennand: Absolutely! But first, let me say how honored I am to be able to share my story with the Gwangju community! I was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. My mother was an elementary school teacher, and I think she really instilled in me the value of education, even if that did not always translate into good grades. I ▲ Brennand Kennedy remember being very fascinated by different languages from an early age, and I was enrolled in the French immersion program when I started school. Although not all my classmates were as enthusiastic about having to take all their subjects in a foreign language, it kind of became “my thing,” especially in high school when I took part in an exchange program and lived
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in Grenoble, France. That experience was a seminal one for me as it demonstrated that one may never feel truly “fluent” in a foreign language without plenty of opportunities for meaningful communication in the real world. It is a principle that stuck with me throughout my post-secondary education as I studied linguistics and anthropology, and it was a huge part of why I decided to begin teaching English in Korea. Interviewer: And next, please tell us about your life in Korea – what brought you here, what you have done, and so forth. Brennand: I first came to Korea in 2013 when I was hired by the EPIK program. I worked in the tiny village of Hwagae, in Hadong County, Gyeongsangnam-do, where I stayed for almost four years. At first, it was tough living by myself in the middle of the Jiri Mountains, but it really grew on me as I eventually made a lot of local friends and became immersed in the community. As Hadong is one of the major tea-growing regions in Korea, I even studied Korean tea ceremony for the purposes of competing! In addition to cutting my teeth as an English teacher, I also achieved a relatively high proficiency level in Korean due to all the opportunities for real-world communication, the best example of which was when I met my wife at a mutual friend’s wedding! Unfortunately, the Gyeongsang dialect remains a major challenge for me. Eventually, despite my wonderful students and my newfound love for rural life, I began to feel that my teaching practice had reached a plateau. I felt that my superiors were increasingly pushing me into a babysitter role while simultaneously stifling my attempts to experiment with new (to me) forms of pedagogy. It was KOTESOL, and especially KOTESOL’s magazine, The English Connection, that eventually showed me that there were many more opportunities available to teachers who really want to teach. Inspired by Tom Farrell’s work in reflective practice, I made the decision to go back to
2021-11-26 �� 2:47:38
