What Do You Think of Korean English Education

Song-hui Yang (2009012940)
Prof. Dr Christelle Davis
Advanced English Composition
15 April 2013

What Do You Think of Korean English Education?

Since the development of transportation and communication made the whole world a global village, English has become a compulsory subject. Most countries focus on English education to maintain friendly relations between the other countries. Again Korea also has focused on English education. In Korea ministry of education there are some of the goals for English curriculum. The 7th national English curriculum provides information of useful functional expressions regarding saying the right thing at the right time. According to the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST), there are Korean government’s goals for English-language teaching. The Korean government’s goals are to improve the skills of understanding English in daily lives and basic communication skill. Also it makes the background to grow our culture by taking other country’s culture and improve skills to introduce our culture. Then let’s look at the situation of Secondary School’s English education.
We have been educated English for a decade in public schools. However according to a recent study one in ten people in our country couldn’t speak English. This is the current situation of Korea's English education. This is the actual is often contradictory to the ideal. Why have these things happened? The reason is that in our school classes all of our English education programs have focused on national college entrance exam. So we had no choice but to do it. One of my interviewee mentioned these problems like “When I was in the high school, every English class’s lectures were concentrated how student would improve their reading skill to get a nice point in the entrance exam. Normally teacher use the reading book or an exercise book. Our school’s specific goal I think is about getting a good score in the exam. So, every class just focused on the exam.” The interviewee often referred about the Korean Education’s problems.
In Sweden, there have a lot of difference of English education then Korea. Even though they concentrate English just in school, most Swedish could speak English like their mother tongue. What is different between Sweden and our country? The education methods are totally different. Our country just concentrates on improving reading skills. On the other hand Sweden focused on a practical speaking and reading knowledge of English. The Swedish schools also help students learn practical English, so they can use it in their everyday lives. I think it is the secret ingredient. Whenever I refer this situation to my interviewee, the results of the analysis about interviewee’s reactions were quite interesting. One of my interviewee has been studied in English Education. She attended an English language program in the Canada for a year. She tells her story about difference between Korea and Canada. “Many difference in there. In summary, Korean English Educations has focused on reading and listing, especially for grammar. They concentrate this answer is correct or not. However in Canada there are focused on speaking and accent, especially for conversation. Most Canada English lectures attract voluntary participation from students in an atmosphere of freedom. On the contrary Korean English lecture go off teacher-centered learning in the classroom.”
I believe there is only one way to do it. It could change the way method of national college entrance exam in English. Our schools have been affected by the College Scholastic Ability Test. Too bad, but it's just one of those things. I believe we should be going the other way. One interviewee reference like that “If our education curriculums were not focused on exam, the ability of community in English could be higher I think. So, I though how about change the English exam method like TOFLE. It can check the student’s real English ability.” The TOEFL iBT test measures student’s ability to use and understand English at the university level. And it evaluates how well student combine their listening, reading, speaking and writing skills to perform academic tasks. It could be the solution to get over Korean English Education problem.
In conclusion there is more than one inconsistency in the Korea English Education. We have to find out the problem and have to solve it rapidly. There is an urgent need for change to get one of the single most commonly used tools in today’s global village society. It could be the solution that Change the type of the way of exam method similarly the TOEFL iBT test.