Intermediate Conversation

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Intermediate English Conversation / Intermediate Conversation 1 (Spring 2025)


Prof. Kent Lee

Dept. English Language & Literature, Pukyong National University

Time: Tue/Thu 1st (and maybe 2nd) period

Mailbox: Room 1027

Office & office hours: by appointment

Temporary, provisional syllabus: See the LMS

This website will go along with my syllabus and materials in our LMS for this course, as well as materials that supplement my course book.

The older version of [LIEC (2020-2024)], Lower Intermediate English Conversation (2020-2024) is archived here.


1 Weekly lessons

Click on the 'Expand' applet on the right to see or collapse past assignments and materials.

1.1 Weeks 01-04

About English
Personality
Emotional intelligence

Try a free online EQ test such as this one. Then think about and share about the results.

  1. Psychology Today: A free test of 150 questions. The results are fairly general (unless you want to pay for a more detailed analysis, which you do not need to do for this assignment). https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/tests/personality/emotional-intelligence-test
Optional extra video

This video discusses specific behaviors that constitute social awkwardness, which can be corrected: Unnatural eye contact (excessive or avoidant eye contact); not maintaining or respecting normal interpersonal space; poor personal hygience or oral hygiene (compared to social / cultural norms); lack of a "filter" regarding things you say (regarding relevance or appropriatenes to a conversation); not respecting others' sense of "face" (체면, 體面); inappropriate self-disclosure about oneself (too much, or overly reserved); lacking a sense of relevance in discourse; not gracefully entering or leaving conversations; not using backchannel or feedback cues (cues that indicate that you are listening and understanding what others are saying); and lacking empathy for and emotional awareness of others.

Money personality

Please check the following links.

  1. Money personalities (Investopedia)
  2. Seven money personality types
  3. Klontz Money Script Inventory
  4. Money personality quiz


1.2 Other assignments

1.3 Short video #1: Job search videos (May/June)

2 Midterm project: Scholarship application

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Click on the 'Expand/Collapse' applet on the right to see or collapse past assignments and materials.

Imagine that you are applying for a scholarship. Your answers should be honest, but should also persuade a scholarship committee about how you are good student who deserves a scholarship. You can use some of the contents from your previous assignments for this assignment. So far we have discussed your personality, your future goals and hopes, your major, possible careers, and academic and personal motivation. These topics are designed to prepare you for this midterm assignment, and our discussions and minor assignments about these topics are relevant and useful to the midterm.

Scholarships often fall into these general categories, on which the options below are based.

  • Merit based: Scholarships based on academic or other merit, such as academic achievement and excellence.
  • Need based: Scholarships based on financial need or other need, for students with potential but with limited financial means.
  • Project based: Scholarships based on a research project or other project that has good merit and potential.


2.1 Overview & requirements

The assignment

The project involves a recorded interview of 4-6 minutes. This is a mock (pretend) interview for a scholarship application. You will record an oral interview for a scholarship application. For the interview, you will upload a video in the LMS of about 4-6 minutes. Your video will consist of the following two components.

  1. An opening statement (about 30 seconds): A general personal statement, explaining why you are applying for the scholarship. Your statement can address points like these.
    • Tell us about yourself (brief, basic info, e.g., major, year in school, likely or desired career path)
    • Which scholarship you are applying for, and why
    • Your plans for the rest of your university studies (for some, this may include master's / Ph.D. studies)
    • Your plans after college - career plans, as well as future goals / objectives / hopes / motivation / vision for your future
  2. Answers to specific questions: In this segment, you will answering specific questions about your application. The questions are provided below, which include:
    • Required questions that each person should answer
    • Some optional questions -- you can choose to answer those that are relevant to your situation.


General tips

For your opening statement and other responses, you can include any necessary background information, and relevant information based on our previous assignments and discussion topics in class: your personality, how you would describe yourself, motivation, future plans and goals, your academic and career plans, why you chose your major, and any other information about yourself that is relevant to your scholarship application. If you are a first-year or second-year student, you can imagine that this is 1-2 years in the future, and you can project yourself into the future for this assignment, as long as your details about yourself and your accomplishments are realistic.

In general, you will want to address a couple of the following points (depending on which ones are relevant to your situation).

  1. Explain how you as a student have overcome difficulties or challenges, e.g., in your own studies or major.
  2. Explain your best strengths as a student.
  3. Explain why you have good potential as a student in your field or major (even if your grades are not perfect).
  4. Explain why you have good potential after graduating with your degree, e.g., as a future graduate student, worker, teacher, or professional in your field.

Also...

  • This is an individual assignment. (It is possible to record this as a group, as if you were doing a group interview and taking turns answering questions; each person's speaking time should still be 4-6 minutes.
  • See the following Youtube video that I made for the course a couple of years ago for tips (note that a few details, like references to details of that semester and year, will differ).
  • Note: For the scholarship interview, you can project yourself into the future - imagine that you are doing this 1-2 years in the future, as an older student.


2.2 Scholarship information

2.2.1 Background

The Li Kai-an Scholarship Foundation (LKSF) is an agency that has granted awards to deserving students at several prestigious universities[1], and now plans to offer scholarships to undergraduate students at PKNU. This is a one-year scholarship to cover college tuition costs, and is available to students of any grade level or age.

To qualify, you must demonstrate (1) academic or personal excellence merit; (2) personal or financial need; (3) current or future potential, such as academic, scientific, practical, leadership, business or entrepreneurial[2] potential; or (4) educational or administrative talent, for example, in proposing improvements to academic programs, policies, departments, or curricula[3].

You need to provide specific, unique, and persuasive reasons for why you deserve the scholarship. The scholarship committee receives hundreds of applications per year, and can only give out a limited number of scholarships, so they have to be rather skeptical and picky, in order to decide who deserves one of their scholarships.[4]


2.2.2 Scholarship types

There are several scholarship options available, which are described below. Each scholarship will fund one year of studies (and maybe an extra semester or summer semester) so you can focus on your studies or your project.

# Name Abbr. Description
1 Scholastic Excellence Scholarship SES Merit based.
This is for those who love studying, have clear ideas of why they are studying in their majors, know what they want to do in their major, and are likely to succeed after college. You should show that you have specific objectives and interest in your first major, second major, and/or minor; you have real potential and ability; and you have specific plans for success after college. (If your post-college plans seem different from your major, that may be okay, if you can justify your plans convincingly.) It may also help to show that you are a well-rounded person with skills other than being a super-geek who lives in the library.


2 Financial Need Scholarship FNS Need based.
This is for those who are good students or have strong potential, but are hindered by your own and/or your family's economic limitations (or other similar needs). Applicants must show that they have financial needs, but also need to show convincingly that they also deserve it due to their skills, abilities or potential, both in school and after college. This can include personal, academic, intellectual, career-related, or other strengths, and clear goals or objectives for your studies and life after college.


3 Senior Project Scholarship SPS Project / research based.
This is for those who want to undertake a senior-year research project in any major. Your application should include a specific study or research proposal, with specific rationale, objectives, expected outcomes or results, and the likely benefits or value of your project. You should show that you know your topic well, and that you have the skills and abilities to do it well.

This could also be used to fund a one-year study-abroad program (as an exchange student) at a foreign university (after returning, you should submit a research paper in which you analyze some aspect of the culture or country).

4 Self-Improvement Scholarship SIS Merit based.
This is for those awesome people who have overcome challenges in life (in the past few years), or have greatly improved from a mediocre student to an excellent student (academic improvement). Your story should be unique, genuine, interesting and convincing, and you also need to show that you have clear ideas and plans for your major and for life after college. (If your post-college plans seem different from your major, that may be okay, if you can justify your plans convincingly.)
4 Future Success Scholarship FSS Merit / career based.
This is for those who have clear goals and potential for success, not only in college, but especially in their future careers. You need to be able to show that you are not only a good student, but that you will likely succeed in your career. You will need to argue convincingly that you have strong academic, career, leadership, and/or personal skills; specific and realistic plans and goals; and clear potential for career success. (If your post-college plans seem different from your major, that may be okay, if you can justify your plans convincingly.)

There are a number of subcategories, where you can make a case for your potential in your career, and in contributing to society.

  1. Future Professionals: for those entering professional careers (e.g., business, medicine, law, government, non-governmental organizations, education administration)
  2. Future Teachers: for those who want to become teachers or professors; this can include teachers in primary, secondary, or private education.
  3. Education Leadership: for those who want to make a difference by advocating for changes in the education system of your country; this can include primary education (elementary school), secondary education (middle school or high school), tertiary education (college / university), or private education. Your ideas should involve a specific area of improvement and specific ideas for improvements, as well as how you would implement your ideas and overcome resistance to change.
5 Innovator / Inventor Scholarship IIS Project / merit based.
This is for those who dream of undertaking a major creative project after college, and there are several different subcategories. This is for those who have serious plans, a great idea, and genuine potential for success. It may be okay if the project may not seem directly related to his/her major, if you can justify this, e.g., if you can explain how your college skills might help with your creative project. You should show that you have a clear, unique, original, and interesting idea; specific, realistic plans for your project; specific, realizable objectives; some relevant experience or background; your ability to carry out such a project; and why you expect to be successful. This scholarship will fund your senior year of university studies, so you will need to explain how you will use that year to prepare for your future project.
  1. Creative Project for those who wish to undertake a creative project, such as making an independent movie, or writing and publishing a book.
  2. Business Entrepreneur Project for those who want to start a new company or business, e.g., to exploit a new niche, to offer a new product or service, or to develop a new and creative business idea or business model.
  3. Inventor Project for a person who wants to research, invent, develop, and maybe even market a new invention, such as a new device, a new material, or some kind of novel idea. This can overlap with the Business Entrepreneur Project, if the invention also involves starting a new company to develop and market the invention.


2.2.3 Interview questions

In your interview responses, you should address some of the questions below that are relevant to your situation and your scholarship type. However, don't pick too many, as your responses should be persuasive, fairly complete, and coherent.


Required for all scholarships
  • Out of the many people applying for this scholarship, why do you think you should be given this scholarship?
  • What are your future plans? (Note: You can combine or replace this question with optional questions below about your future.)


Optional questions for various scholarships
  • Have you done anything that shows your potential for growth, improvement, or future success?
  • What obstacles do you foresee in your future plans, and how can you overcome them? (Or: What will you do if your project or plans do not succeed or turn out like you expected?)
  • What are you currently doing to achieve your goals?
  • In addition to paying for tuition, how will you use this scholarship money?
  • If you become successful in life, what will you do with your wealth?
  • What would you say are your greatest strengths?
  • What are your greatest weaknesses? How can you (or have you) overcome these weaknesses?
  • Have you been influenced by any role models, teachers, or other persons in your life?
  • How might you be a good role model for others in your future?
  • Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about yourself?
  • How do you think you will make an impact on others or on society?


Optional questions for merit based scholarships
  • What are your specific goals for your studies and your future career? What are you doing to achieve those goals?
  • What is your motivation or vision for your future? What will you be doing in 10, 20, 30 or 40 years?


Optional questions for career-related scholarships
  • What is your vision for your business career? As a business person, what do you want to accomplish, and how will you contribute to society? How realistic and feasible are your goals?
  • If you are likely to succeed in business, why do you need this scholarship?
  • What would count as success for you?
  • What is the source of your inspiration or motivation?
  • If you do become successful financially, what will you do with your wealth?


Optional questions for need-based scholarships
  • Do you think that overcoming financial difficulties has made (or will make) you a better person?
  • How do you maintain a positive attitude in your situation? Do you think you have good reasons to complain about life being unfair?


Optional questions for project based and innovator scholarships
  • What do you expect to find out or learn? What specific value will your project have (e.g., academic, social, cultural, artistic, or intellectual value)? Or what benefits, implications, or results do you expect?
  • How will this project help you with your future plans after college?
  • What kind of creative vision do you have?
  • How can we be sure that your project will be successful?
  • To what do you attribute your talent or creativity? What is the source of your inspiration? How can creativity be nurtured and developed further (for example, your creative skills)?


Optional questions for Self-Improvement Scholarship
  • What are you doing now to continually improve yourself? How will you improve yourself in the future?
  • How will you later contribute to society and help others improve?
  • What are your specific goals, vision, and motivation for your future career? How will you achieve those goals?
  • How do you define 'improvement'? How do you need to improve further? How would you define 'success' in your view -- in what way do you expect to succeed in life? How can we be sure that your plans will be successful? What will you do if your plans are not successful?


Optional questions for future educators
  • What is your vision for your future as an educator or as a professional?
  • How realistic and feasible are your goals? How will you accomplish your specific goals (e.g., in your workplace or in your career)?
  • What specific things do you want to change or do differently, and how exactly will you do this? For example, what specific changes would you like to make in a particular level or area of education here, and how can you convince others to make these changes?
  • How can we be sure that your plans will be successful? What will you do if your plans do not succeed or turn out like you expected?
  • Why are you interested in that particular profession or career -- why have you chosen it?


2.3 Assignment evaluation criteria

2.3.1 Oral interview / discussion sessions

For applicants
  • Persuasive explanation, details, and examples – enough to persuade a scholarship committee to at least seriously consider your application;
  • Clear goals for future studies and career; an understanding of what you are studying and what specifically you want to focus on; evidence of maturity, self-awareness, sense of purpose, and reasonable goals and plans
  • See the grading criteria below.
  • Your interview score will be an individual grade for your performance only, though you will interview with a group of applicants. This score is the major discussion / presentation grade for the course.
  • The grading criteria for the in-class interview / discussion task are as follows. Each person receives an individual score. A few categories like #3 and #4 may overlap, depending on your type of scholarship (I may average your score across both categories, depending on how relevant they are for your topic).


1. Rationale, goals, objectives Clear rationale & explanation for your application, e.g., specific objectives, goals, and personal potential; clear focus
2. Contents Sufficient overall contents & preparation; enough good contents for the interview
3. Support Sufficient details & explanations about your strengths, abilities, e.g., your personal and/or academic strengths, skills, accomplishments, and your future potential.
4. Details Sufficient details & explanations about your plans, objectives, e.g., your personal and/or academic strengths, skills, accomplishments; a persuasive explanation of your potential in carrying out your plans. For projects, this can also include, for example, details about your project, plans, rationale, feasibility, etc.
5. Clarity Clear explanations, easy to understand follow; clear wording & vocabulary
6. Organization Well-organized and structured, good flow; flow indicated by intro, transition words & expressions; clear intro and conclusion
7. Speaking & vocal delivery Clear, audible voices; clear speaking & delivery; good vocal volume & intonation; the presentation quality indicates adequate rehearsal and preparation; good pace
8. Interaction with audience Eye contact, body language, posture, etc.
9. Value Overall personal, social, artistic, academic, practical, commercial, and/or scientific value & benefit of your application and/or project and/or plans; creativity and originality; feasibility of your plans or project
10. Effectiveness How effective is your talk; its persuasiveness and informativeness to members of a potential scholarship committee. I will also consider (1) how well you answered questions from the audience or interviewers; and (2) how audience members evaluated your presentation.


Possibly useful links

These examples are from a course I taught at Korea University, where students also had to write written scholarship applications.


3 Final interview

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For your final project, you will participate in a mock job interview. You will pretend that you are interviewing for a job at a company or organization, and are answering questions, somewhat like what you did for the midterm project. You will have chosen a company or organization to apply for in one of your minor assignments. You should prepare for questions and be ready to convince the interviewers of your qualities, since they will probably be looking for qualities and information about following areas.

  • The candidate’s background, skills, qualifications, relevant educational background, training, character, personality (aspects that are relevant to the job), intellectual qualifications, goals, motivation, long-term commitment, future potential in the company, etc.
  • Ability to work independently and with others
  • Suitability for the particular job and for the particular company / organization
  • Ability to adapt and grow
  • Awareness of your strengths and weaknesses


3.1 Interview questions

Here are some sample interview questions to prepare for. For some question categories, you can choose the ones that are most relevant to your situation. You will take turns as interviewees and interviewers, so when you act as an interviewer, you can choose some relevant questions like these below, and/or you can make up your own questions to ask.

General questions (for all applicants)

You should be able to answer questions like these.

  1. Please tell us about yourself. (A general intro question, that is, your self-introduction; this includes a brief statement of why you are appying for the particular job and company.)
  2. What relevant experience and qualifications do you have for this job? (This can include those that are not apparent from your résumé, and how you gained your experience or skills.)
  3. Why should we hire you (versus all the other job applicants)?


Skill & experiential questions
  1. Tell us about your ability to learn, adapt and grow.
  2. Tell us about your strengths and weaknesses.
  3. How well do you work with others?
  4. Tell me about a mistake you make and how you handled it.
  5. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with an irate or difficult customer / client.


Situational questions
  1. You know that a colleague has made a mistake at work, but as far as you’re aware, only you have spotted it. What do you do?
  2. Your company (or organization) is about to undertake a new program, policy, or product, and you are convinced that it will fail. Your supervisors are very much in favor of the change. What would you do?
  3. How would can you handle competing demands and tasks at the same time, for example, when you are facing multiple deadlines?
  4. How would you handle unreasonable customers / clients / students? (This will depend on your job type - e.g., service jobs, teaching jobs, marketing, etc.)


Hint: It will be helpful to follow the STAR model for some of these reponses. See also job interview question types and job search red flags.


3.2 Scoring

A major grade on a 100-point scale. Some of the grading criteria are as follows; for all the grading criteria, please refer to the grading criteria in the textbook.

  1. Objectives: Clear goals / objectives as a job applicant
  2. General contents: Sufficient answers; answers are sufficiently informative, of sufficient length to give satisfying answers to the questions; not too short (but not too long or unnecessarily wordy).
  3. Specific contents: Answers contain specific and sufficient details
  4. Clarity: Answers are clear, understandable, logical, logically organized, realistic, and relevant to the questions
  5. Speaking and vocal delivery: Clear, audible voice; good vocal intonation
  6. Audience interaction: Good poise / posture, confidence, eye contact, body language
  7. Effectiveness: Persuasive and informative answers
  8. Audience reception: Your answers and overall performance are well received by the committee members; your performance is sufficiently impressive to the committee members

(This criterion will not be used during pandemic semesters when assignments are submitted as videos in the LMS.)


References

These might be helpful for you.

  1. Guide to top interview questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHjMNZZvFo
  2. Some job interview vocabulary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPsbvkCfE9ecsT7pdForYIAkWMpEv1szyL7CxZjYWLs/edit?usp=sharing
  3. Possibly useful expressions: http://www.kentlee7.com/eap/lecture.expressions.pdf


4 Past assignments

These are assignments from past semesters, and are not applicable to Spring 2023. Click on the 'Expand' applet on the right to see or collapse past assignments and materials.

5 Spring 2020: Weekly lessons

The following contents were used in the 2020 version of this course. Click on the 'Expand' applet on the right to see or collapse past assignments and materials.


6 See also

6.1 Links


6.2 Notes

  1. ↑ Hundreds of scholarships have been awarded to students at Hogwarts, Gotham City University, Metropolis University, Monsters University, Mars University, Wossamotta University, and Starfleet Academy.
  2. ↑ Entre·pre·neur [ˌɑːntrəprəˈnɜː(r)] (특히 모험적인) 사업가[기업가; a person who starts a new business or company
  3. ↑ Cur·ricu·lum [kəˈrɪkjələm] 교육과정; the different courses of study in a school, department, or major, and the contents that are considered to be essential or required for all students, along with electives; plural: curricula / curriculums; adj.: curricular
  4. ↑ Scholarship committee members include:
    • Li Kai-an, the founder of the scholarship foundation, and the CEO of The Matrix, an innovative AI research company.
    • Li Da-pang, a linguistics professor from the University of Illinois, who specializes in extra-terrestrial linguistics.
    • Snively the Wonder Fish, Director of the Pentagon's Skynet Project
    • Antinostraticus Boink, starship captain
    • Oetken Len, Professor of Martian linguistics, Mars University.
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