'Learning foreign language is about changing yourself'

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Fri, December 8, 2023 | 12:31

Education

'Learning foreign language is about changing yourself'

Posted : 2021-01-20 13:06

Updated : 2021-01-20 17:17

Lee Ji-hyun, founder and CEO of Chinese language learning application Five Color Chinese / Courtesy of Five Color Chinese

By Jung Da-min

Many people learn foreign languages for different reasons ― for studying, traveling abroad or for business opportunities, to list just a few.

For Lee Ji-hyun, founder and CEO of Chinese language learning application Five Color Chinese, learning Chinese as a foreign language was about learning another way to view the world and express herself.

Lee said she learned English in elementary school, as she spent several years in New Zealand. She said she has since been able to access more information and hear different perspectives from people all over the world, even after she came back to Korea.

"I found that learning a foreign language is the very beginning of everything. By learning a language, you can learn about different cultures shared by those who speak the language and also various perspectives that are totally different from your own," Lee said during an interview with The Korea Times in her office in Seoul, Jan. 11. "Learning more information and different perspectives changes you and you can grow through the process."

Lee said she was more attracted to learning Chinese as a foreign language than English, as it was more challenging in that she was learning it in Korea, unlike her previous experience of learning English in New Zealand. She said she studied Chinese using various methods, including taking relevant courses not just at school but at private academies and taking private lessons from tutors.

"Learning Chinese here, I felt that people were feeling pressured to learn the language as they have to deal with advanced reading and grammar. I think it is true that learning Chinese is difficult. But at the same time, I felt that people have a prejudice that learning Chinese would be more difficult than it actually is," Lee said. "I believed that there would be an easier way to learn Chinese which people can enjoy and that was why I launched my own Chinese learning service with my Chinese friend Yu Xiaolin."

Lee and Yu have developed a unique way to learn Chinese, using five colors to mark the five different tones of Chinese characters and a formula helping learners infer the pronunciation of different Chinese characters from the Korean pronunciation of them. Lee said she thought there would be some rules in pronouncing Chinese characters both in Korean and Chinese as there are many Chinese characters used in the Korean language as well. The creators of Five Color Chinese have obtained patents for both of these language learning methods.

First launched in August 2016 as an offline language learning program, Five Color Chinese has now become an online language education service after the application was launched in November 2019.

"The basic goal of learning a foreign language is to express what we think in the language, and I want people to enjoy the process of learning more, rather than feeling pressured," Lee said. "The goal of Five Color Chinese is to help people to change and grow through the process of learning Chinese."

damin.jung@koreatimes.co.kr