Wei's World

As people of America might already know, K-pop songs sometimes has English lyrics to it. Nowadays, K-pop songs don't only have English lyrics but even lyrics in other languages like Spanish or Portuguese. For example, a popular girl group called GFriend released their debut song Me Gustas Tu which is Spanish for I like you. Other older K-pop groups are following that trend as well like Super Junior with Mamacita, and Lo Siento, IU with Havana, and U-Kiss with Te Amo or even KARD with Hola Hola. From OG groups like Super Junior to the latest hot group like KARD, K-pop is slowly globalizing to accommodate their fans world-wide. Here's Lo Siento by Super Junior with color-coded lyrics. Here's Me Gustas Tu by GFriend. Do you like how they have infused Spanish into their K-pop song? What other languages would you like to hear from K-pop in the future? Do you think this is a trend that will continue for a couple more years or is this is? That's all K-pop ...

It is amazing how much music can travel across cultures to spread between nations speaking different languages and sometimes not even familiar with the anything the song says.  Back in the fall of 2018 I took the literacy class in the MTSL program. Part of our course was to help middle school students at Shaw to improve their literacy skills. I have noticed how much K-Pop was popular among the students there. Within my interaction with the students, I got to learn that a lot of them are fans of K-Pop bands. Many of these students are originally from the Marshall Islands and many of them are not familiar with Korean at all. Music is a language of its own. even without lyrics, we can move our body to the beat.  From a language perspective, it is interesting to analyze the impact that music in general have on the world. Then look closely at how it can positively ‘light up’ a person’s life. It is true that they might never have thought about learning Korean but they must have...

I'm back! The reason why the first post is about K-pop and that it sounds informal is because I want this blog to be a place where I can connect with my students outside the classroom. K-pop can be a very controversial topic for our students. Not only does this topic bring out conversation between students, it can also be a topic that helps us understand the difference between the language we use for particular topics. We tend to talk informally whenever we're not in a formal setting so I want my students to feel and understand this aspect about our culture. People on the internet talk using net language that is surely affecting the literacy of our next generation. People who "text", sends text messages, want to convey their message in a meaningful but efficient way so they use their own language in a way. For example, 4 instead of for, 2 instead of to or too, c instead of see and u instead of you because it is easier to type and faster. I remember a time when I used...

Hi, everyone. I can't believe I'm starting a blog! Let's talk about K-pop! Have you heard about K-pop? Which popular groups have you heard about? There are plenty from different entertainment companies. I'm sure America has heard of BTS. There are a lot of groups that have amazing sound as well like EXO, MonstaX, Got7 etc. Who do you listen to?