English, Korean departments to offer new service-learning courses
By Kendal Mitchell
Aug. 18, 2014 4:49 a.m.
Two new courses that weave together service learning and traditional lectures will be open to UCLA students in the fall.
The UCLA Center for Community Learning created the new courses – Korean 106SL: Superior Korean with Service Learning, and English 119SL: Literary Cities with Service Learning – to increase students’ engagement with the course material through community service outside of UCLA, said Dr. Elizabeth Goodhue, an assistant director for the Center for Community Learning.
“You get to experience the diversity of the city (through the courses), something you don’t get sitting in a lecture hall,” Goodhue said.
Students enrolled in the Center for Community Learning service-learning courses can volunteer in various off-campus community organizations for up to 20 hours a week in addition to attending lecture, Goodhue said. UCLA has offered service-learning opportunities since the 1980s.
After teaching Korean 106: Superior Korean for five years at UCLA, Sung-Ock Sohn, a professor of Korean language, said she wanted to help develop a service-learning course so her students can practice the Korean they learn in class while integrating themselves in Korean culture. She said she thinks the traditional classroom setting did not allow her students to immerse themselves in the larger Korean community.
She said she hopes Korean 106SL will give students with limited job experience a chance to explore potential career opportunities with the community groups that partner with the class. Students in this class will be able to volunteer at the Korean Culture Center, Cahuenga Elementary School and the Wilshire Cardiology Group in Koreatown.
The English 119SL course, on the other hand, will combine literature about the urban spaces of Los Angeles with visits to see the L.A. urban sprawl that will be discussed in lecture.
The English department has designed several courses with service-learning aspects in past years, including English 4WS: Introduction to Critical Reading and Writing, and English Composition 3SL: English Composition, Rhetoric and Language, which will be offered this fall.
Taylor Walle, a graduate student in the English department and a former teaching assistant for English 4WS, said she thinks some people dismiss the importance of the humanities and their applications to “the real world,” and hopes the new course will help change that perception.
Students can enroll in the classes through MyUCLA until Oct. 24.
