kent lee's blog & ramble

Last Monday I got to give a talk at a public speaking event known as the 세바시, or 세상을 바꾸는 시간 15분 at the KT Hall in Mokdong. It is organized by CBS (the Korean Christian Broadcasting Service), and is one of their secular programs; it is modeled on the TED conferences. It will air on the CBS TV cable channel in three weeks [see http://www.change15min.com, facebook.com/cbs15min ], and immediately thereafter it will be posted on their Youtube channel [ youtube.com/cbs15min] . I don't want to brag about this (which is why I'm posting this on Google+, as I only know two people in the world who currently use Google+). Rather, I want to thank God for this opportunity, and hope that others may be blessed by the talk. That's because my talk is about 'Freedom from English'. I talked about how English has become such an obsession and a burden for Koreans, which is actually an emotional and spiritual bondage, which hinders them from learning English in any meaningful, ...

Well, it's been a while. More to come. My old Hanyang sites are down, since I moved to Korea University two years ago. All of my course materials and ESL materials have been moved to my main website, which actually runs off my Dropbox account, and is referenced by two URL shortcuts: www.tinyurl.com/kentlee7 or www.bit.ly/kentlee7 The above site contains ESL materials, writing materials, course materials, and education related materials. I have also opened a Youtube channel under the name kentlee7 [http://www.youtube.com/user/kentlee7]. I have a few of my KU materials there, mostly education related seminars. Hopefully I will create some ESL videos to help Koreans with English, maybe in the future. I still have my website for my old Bible study materials from my grad school days: www.tinyurl.com/enseoul

Sorry I haven't blogged for so long - been so busy. I'll fill you all in on what's been going on, and after this I won't have much time to post much more this very busy semester. I've been busy running lots of experiments, designing my new one (very tedious and time consuming) and getting it running. I'm not taking or auditing classes since I'm so busy. I'm also a TA for a discussion section of EdPsych 201 (Prof. Zola's Intro to EdPsych) for the first time. A few weeks ago I had to attend the campus-wide TA orientation (for TAs in the past I had only done dept. orientations). It was like an hour's worth of fun and information crammed into two whole days. Ugh, so boring and tired. Since then I've been super busy. I also have to start analyzing data, applying for jobs, and working on my next few dissertation chapters.

The essence of what I do and how I spend my life: I like linguistics & psychology, which I pursue empirically as a an experimental psycholinguist. I grew tired of armchair linguistics research, and found an area that meets my need for a real-world reference point to the otherwise very abstract study of language. I love theology, which I approach from multiple angles. The most helpful thing I've learned: Ponder God, don't try to reduce him to some sort of religious rationalism (as many evangelicals and skeptics sadly do). Rather, ponder him, and stand before him in total awe, wonder, and fear. We cannot begin to understand him or wrap our minds around him. But we can know him to the extent that he has revealed himself to us thru Christ, the Holy Spirit, and his word.

I just got awarded a grant that will cover my research expenses for my dissertation! Praise God! Lauda Deum! Gott sei hoch geehrt und gepreist! 讚美主!

In my websites I describe myself as a psycholinguist, so you may wonder what that means. Well, I study the processing of language in the brain, including how linguistic information is represented in the mind, cognitive processes behind language, and the psychology of reading. My dissertation project deals with Chinese character reading - how people make use of the linguistic information in characters in the process of reading. When you read a word in English (or other alphabetic languages), you translate the letters into sounds, and from the sounds you access the word in your mental lexicon, where words are stored in your brain. But at the same time you also are looking up words directly based on the spelling. Depending on how regular the spelling is and how frequent the word is, one of those routes - the phonological or orthographic - will end up retrieving the word from the mental lexicon. That's the standard dual route model of reading in psychology. But what about Chinese? That...

I wrote up my personal & research bio, which might come in handy later for job search & publication purposes. Here it is... Kent Lee was born many years ago in Denver, Colorado, but while young, moved to Amarillo, Texas, where he lived for 15 years. He was generally considered a strange child, and later in his youth was known to classmates for his unusual hobbies such as igloo building, self-contortion, and turning invisible. He later attended Amarillo College, a community college in Texas, and later moved to Indiana to study at Purdue University. He majored in German, a degree that he thereafter never used in any meaningful way. (When asked why he chose German, Kent reportredly explained that it "seemed similar to my native Klingon".) After much soul searching, he decided to apply to grad schools to study linguistics, under the mistaken notion that it had to do with linguini and Italian cooking. Due to this tragic error, he found himself studying the structure of hum...

Welcome to Kent's mind. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Just started this blog. Probably won't post here too consistely. I'm busy with research now, putting experiments together and all that. Also trying to exercise a bit. Exercise helped me thru my first qual. Interesting; hope I can continue it, not as some smarmy New Year's resolution that people make for the purpose of breaking. I want to keep it up as long as I don't encounter back problems again. I'm getting old and worried about my health. Don't want to end up like my relatives, who are seriously overweight, unhealthy, and out of shape. Our family reunions look like blimp conventions. Note: Most of my postings will be reposts from my former blog at the now-defunct klee7.com, as well as mirror posts of my Xanga blog, www.xanga.com/kentlee7 . Other websites: My research page: psycholinguistics & linguistics stuff; past pragmatics, SLA/ESL research Personal & academic page: ESL, langua...