[OP4] Improving English Education in Korea

In Korea, there are so many English textbooks covering four aspects of using English(reading, listening, speaking, writing). However, teachers and students tend to skip speaking and writing parts. This is not because it is hard to teach or learn them, but it is hard to focus on the subject that will never be on the test. On that point, I believe a new type of assessment will definitely improve English education in Korea. If the assessment system is modified to evaluate each students' whole language proficiency, students will get motivated in developing well-balanced language skills, and learn English in a lot more effective way.

First of all, my suggestion is based on the fact that students only want to study a subject which will be asked in the examination. If they are convinced that a certain part would not be on the exam, they neglect it. In public education, curriculum of English is designed to teach both receptive skills and productive skills. Nonetheless, English tests do not include productive skills. Therefore it is no wonder the students are indifferent to speaking and writing parts. This leads the students develop their language skills limitedly, and makes them to spend extra periods to compensate the lack of their linguistic ability later on. Suppose that the English exam involves problem sets about productive skills. The students will never want to lose their point by ignoring those skills, and spend a reasonable amount of time to polish their overall linguistic ability. By introducing integrated assessment system, English learners will recognize the importance of balanced language proficiency and make every possible efforts to achieve it.

Moreover, integrated assessment system enables students to learn English effectively, if they wanted it or not. English is a language. In other words, it is a means of communication. Communication involves both productive skills and receptive skills at once. In any communication process, all the skills work reciprocally. Therefore, a person's ability to communicate grows better when he/she tries to improve each of the skills altogether. Compared to this, a person who only focuses on receptive skills is less likely to be successful in communication. We found that English learners will try to maintain the proper balance in improving their language proficiency because of the integrated assessment. Also, it is easy to infer that they will discover a more efficient way to learn English by developing their linguistic skills proportionately.

To sum up, an integrated assessment will make it possible to bring positive progress in English education in Korea. English learners will benefit from the assessment system, though they might think it difficult at first. In conclusion, English learners will acquire balanced language skills, and the way they do it will be one of the most effective way to improve their English thoroughly, owing to the newly designed assessment.

Finally, I found what my problem was: I spend too much time on introduction, and I write so many things in it, compared to other paragraphs. Can you imagine that an introduction is longer than the longest one of the body paragraphs? To be honest, I spent extra time to remove all the redundancies in the introduction. I will never ever make lengthy introductions, if I can't make other paragraphs longer than that.

Despite your complaining about your time-consuming writing style, It seems to me that was helpful to make very organized peices of writing to some extent. I really agree on your opinion and Jason's as well claiming that changing assessment system will improve our English education system. Looking back to my school days, there was almost no chances to practice speaking or writing. I even clearly remember that my tongue was physically getting hardened. It's so regretful that people from my generation including me were not able to be exposed to plenty of spoken language, so that had to devote such time, effort and money to acquire certain level of speaking and writing proficiency.
I hope education policy makers open their ears to listen to our ideas and thinking for future generation.