Three Things to Implement and Achieve for Public English Education in Korea.

Young Tue May 13 2008, 11:35

Op7)

Think about your own experiences as an English language learner. Based on this experience, what would you like to implement and achieve as a teacher of English in the Korean public school context?

English Education has changed a lot compared with the time when I was a middle and high school student. I can say public English education has improved, but there are still things to be added and complemented. Despite of about 9-year-long public English education, most students are not proficient and fluent in English communication. The length of public English education gets longer, and the age of starting English education gets younger. However, the result is not successful enough. One of the reasons is related to the methods. Public English education that I took at middle and high school is almost same as the one that most students are taking now: grammar-oriented, education for an assessment, and unrealistic English. As an English teacher, I have three ideas to implement and achieve for Korean public English education.

To begin with, I think using various real materials is effective during the class. English is a language, so it is crucial to get real expressions. By using English movies, songs, dramas, news articles, and magazines, teachers can provide real English for the students. When I was a middle school student, I only learned grammar and reading. Sometimes an English teacher asked students to read passages in the text books one by one without any guidelines, demonstration, or recording tapes. That class was really terrifying to the students because most of us were poor at pronouncing and reading sentences in public. English dramas and movies help enhance listening as well as speaking. As technical things such as the Internet, computers, and power points are equipped in the public classes, I guess there is little difficulty to practice to use various materials for English educations. Plus, these kinds of materials interest students and help to increase students’ motivation.

Next, I would like to teach how to speak English. Because of big class size and poor teachers’ English speaking proficiency, I’d never learned how to speak English in public schools. To improve English speaking, I had to go to private English institutions. Nothing has changed in public English education now. Practicing speaking with tapes or CDs related with the text books can be asked as homework to the students. Then, based on the pre-studying, during the class, a teacher lets the students have speaking activities such as role plays, group presentations, surveys, and free talking with classmates. By having this kind of English class only two or three times a week, students can get more chances to speak English and be familiar with using English without hesitation or embarrassment.

Lastly, I guess using reading materials is a good way to improve grammar and vocabulary. From my experience, only learning grammar is not worthy. Grammar can be very useful when it is applied in proper time. Learning grammar which is not used discourages students and makes them misunderstand English complicated. However, teaching very basic, typical English grammar is enough, and then teachers can let the students acquire more grammar and vocabulary through reading. In addition, reading various kinds of English articles, stories, and passages helps students to broad their knowledge as well as to be aware of cultural differences. This way is certainly more effective rather than studying with grammar books solving lots of grammatical questions.

All in all, even though public English education has changed and provides students with longer period of English education than that did fifteen years ago, we need new methods to improve English speaking proficiency. Based on my experience, I have shown three things that I would like to achieve and apply in the public English education as a teacher: using various real materials, teaching how to speak English, and using reading materials for grammar and vocabulary. I believe teachers' new attempts will lead current insufficient public English education to the better one.