About Ms. Shim

About Ms. Shim and her journey with Korean and other languages

Ms. Shim was 9 years old when she moved from Seoul, Korea to Cupertino in Northern California with her family. When she moved to the US, she was placed in an ESL (English as a Second Language) class to learn English with peers who also moved to the US from another country and did not speak English that well. She actually enjoyed being in the ESL class until she was moved to a "regular" class after one year. During elementary and middle school years, Ms. Shim attended Korean School on Saturdays. She remembers them as boring but enjoyed meeting other students who liked K-pop.

Right before starting high school, Ms. Shim and her family moved to Irvine. During her time in high school, she took Spanish for 3 years. She remembers not enjoying the Spanish classes and only took them because they were required. Nowadays, she is trying to re-learn Spanish for fun.  As a teenager, Ms. Shim spoke Korean with family and some friends, but never thought it was important to improve Korean. She even sometimes hid the fact that she was good at Korean because she wanted to be recognized more for her fluent English skills.  Thinking back to this now, that was not a great mindset to have. 

For college, she attended UC San Diego as an undergraduate and studied Communication and Linguistics. During her time at UCSD, she studied abroad for one semester in Paris, France, and appreciated the chance to learn about the language and the culture of France. She was also surprised that so many people in Europe spoke three languages or more! This made her want to improve her Korean more. 

After graduating from college, she started working at an Asian film festival and a Korean newspaper company. There, she realized how big of an asset her Korean language skill was. She realized the value of being fluent in another language, especially one's mother tongue. It was rewarding for her to use her Korean skills to help out people and organizations, and to share insights about the Korean culture to those who wanted to learn more about it. 

Realizing her passion in teaching people about Korean language and Korea's culture, she decided to obtain a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from San Diego State University, which was followed by obtaining a teaching credential to become eligible to teach at K-12 schools. During her time as a graduate student, she studied in Korea for 8 months on a research fellowship. Here, she met so many people from all around the world who did not have a Korean heritage background but were fluent in Korean and doing their doctorate studies in Korean. She learned that knowing a little bit of another person's native language can really help build friendship, which makes her always curious to learn a phrase or two in a new language.

Ms. Shim first started teaching full time at FSD in the fall of 2019. Before that, she taught at the Korean American Center in Irvine, worked as an online Korean teacher for International Korean Educators Network, and taught at San Diego State University as a graduate student. 

She hopes that her students will share her enthusiasm for exploring Korean language and culture and that she will be able to provide a fun learning experience for them.