Properly Balanced

If a language class is not properly balanced then a majority of the students will have the same native language. They no longer need to rely on the language being taught to communicate within class, but they instead reply on their native tongue. Our Korean class at Yonsei has changed the students daily in five days. We dropped two, added one, dropped that one, added two more, and got one of the first students back. The class was more balanced before with speakers of a number of different languages. But now a third of the students are Japanese and we still have no Chinese students (which I had heard there is a large number of).

I was disappointed by, in my opinion, the lack of balance in the class until a few days ago. The teacher was explaining a term and the German student did not understand. They attempted several times to no avail. Then the Japanese-born yet Korean-by-blood student turned to our German friend and started to explain this in Chinese.

And it got better when the German replied back in Chinese to clarify a detail. They went back and forth for a minute until "Okay, I understand now."

Turns out he has a degree in Chinese. Go figure. But I guess we have a more balanced classroom now~

Oh, and to clarify it turns out that the first morning classes have a ton of Japanese and the second afternoon classes have a large number of Chinese. Apparently it is like this every year.