Not many people are willing to take risky paths that veer off the seemingly natural course of evolution in their career. Unlike most of my undergraduate colleagues who usually started their career in home management related jobs for private companies or home management-bound graduate programs, my path has taken an interesting, atypical, and somewhat unexpected, direction: from home management to business management, and finally to education of English as a foreign language (EFL) for children. Nonetheless, I know that I was not without direction: I have always been eager to be inspired by new stimuli and be inspiring others, especially children. Once again, my life pushes me towards being inspired by the more systematical study of young English language learners (ELLs).

 

       I am proudly sure that I have strong preparation to realize both my personal and professional goals. Since embarking on my education career as a classroom teacher at an English program for young learners at one of the most renowned commercial institutes named YBM in Korea 9 years ago, I have taught English as a foreign language (EFL) to students in various age groups ranging from kindergarteners to adults. I also earned a Master’s degree in Teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) at University at Buffalo in 2010.This considerable field experience and academic knowledge, eventually, led me to have a great opportunity of working as one of co-directors at a college-bound training program for pre-service teachers of EFL during a semester in Korea. In this vein, I would like to address three major influences on my career direction, and how they subsequently affected the formation of my academic interests:

 

       First, my early years as an English teacher for kindergarteners were a big challenge. However, I, as a strong proponent of the benefit of well-organized reading instruction to ELLs with the low target language proficiency, did not hesitate to get a certification of English Reading Instructor before trying to facilitate their mastery of both written language and oral skills by providing them with many opportunities to engage in a variety of reading tasks using children’s books. It was also a great academic pleasure that this valuable discovery was affirmed once again by my willing participation in a research project on early second language reading comprehension directed by Dr. Riazantseva at University at Buffalo.

 

        Second, the period when I worked as an English instructor at KT&G Summer Camp was one of the most enlightening experiences I have ever had in my career as a teacher of EFL. The Camp was an intensive outreach program designed to provide children from low- income language minority families with EFL support. It was an intellectual eye-opener to find how young children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds behaved in different ways from monolingual natives within the foreign language classroom dynamics, and how teachers had to deal with whole new challenges interacting with them.

   

       Finally, as a co-director of a YL-TESOL (TESOL for Young Learners) program in Daegu University, I not only participated in developing the curricula and teaching materials, but also gave a lecture to prepare college students who wanted to prepare themselves for EFL education for children. This teacher education experience led me to an ultimate realization: giving one child wonderful English lessons can benefit only one pupil while fostering one properly trained EFL teacher may benefit numerous students.  

 

       These three enlightening professional epiphanies made me search for graduate programs where I can not only get access to abundant up-to-date academia resources, but also have lots of practical experiences for teaching or teacher training. The efforts naturally led me to ask for an opportunity to pursue the Ph.D course of Early Childhood Education here at George Mason University. I am deeply impressed that the department offers both a wide range of faculty perspectives and a significant number of faculty members whose research interests seem to coincide with mine. Especially, I look forward studying with Prof. Susan Burns, whose emphasis on language learning of young children as well as young children’s approaches to learning and language is encouraging to me, and Prof. Julie Kidd, whose interest in the professional development of pre/in-service teachers working with children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds is equally intriguing.

 

        In addition, it will be also greatly beneficial for my deepening the academic and professional expertise on teacher training to take other relevant courses provided by the department of Teaching and Teacher Education in your university. I am highly certain that all their ample scholarly knowledge and resources could satisfy my ultimate academic and career goal: to be a richly-informed teacher educator who is able to properly arm pre/in-service practitioners with scholarly and practical resources on early childhood education and young children’s language learning, and to prepare them to support the development of literacy and language of young socioeconomically disadvantaged Korean ELLs from multicultural backgrounds.

 

       The purpose of the future study will put emphasis on investigating how young ELLs from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds learn literacy and language, and how teachers should be prepared to work with them and help them excel by the adequate teacher education. Thus, I wish my research focuses on following four main themes: 1) how language minority young children’s linguistic, cognitive, affective and home/community- related factors and are related to their literacy and language development,2) how young learners from multicultural backgrounds interact psycholinguistically with peers and teachers in the literacy classroom, and how this interaction affects their literacy and language development, 3) how L1 oral proficiency and L1 literacy of young bilingual children are related to their additional language literacy development in the foreign language learning context, and 4) how teachers should be properly prepared to promote literacy acquisition of young children from multicultural backgrounds in the theoretical and practical terms including curriculum design, material development and various theory/research-based classroom intervention skills.

 

        Therefore, the best opportunity to pursue my Ph.D. degree would be at George Mason University. The faculty, facilities, scholarship, and traditions of the university make me confident that I will be motivated by the program. It would be a great honor to be admitted to the graduate program but more so as a high responsibility and obligation of hard work.