OP7:what would you like to implement and achieve as a teacher of English in the Korean public school context?

Kanghoon Jang Fri May 23 2008, 18:53

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?

Based on my own experiences to learn and study English, We should change our English education system in a way to be able to speak properly. My generation who was born in early 1980s studied English for at least 10 years in school. Definitely, we can read, write and understand Basic English materials but we do not speak English well compared to what I mentioned before. The worst thing is that we have xenophobia, which means that we are scared at everything involved with English for some reasons. However, it is a good thing that new government announced that they are going to teach English in English in class and to recruit native teachers more than now to concentrate on speaking skills. As we can see, these days, there are many efforts, patience and firmed-will being struggle with altering English system in Korea. Therefore, I would like to achieve my three goals; teaching different cultures together, providing clear pronunciations, keeping a diary in English every day.

First of all, in classroom, we only learn four English skills such as reading, listening, writing, speaking without knowing how different between Korean and people living in English area are. Based on my experiences to go abroad and meet foreign friends, the reason why we are not same is different cultures. However, it would be hard to notice unless you have experiences to realize about that. Plus, people learning English in Korea just concentrate on speaking skills so they cannot image that in classroom. Therefore, English teachers have to be able to talk about that in classroom with teaching English. Moreover, if it is possible, teachers bring the movies or dramas that can simply understand what teachers talk about for students.

Secondly, teachers should focus on clear pronunciation more than now. When I learned English in high school, we thought that the most essential parts of English is reading and listening because of University’s entry-examinations. That is why we did not know how to exactly pronounce. Especially, it is difficult to distinguish between “R” and “L”, plus, between “th” and “s”. Some foreigners do not understand what Korean people say those sounds due to pronunciation problems. We should clearly learn where our tongue places when we take English lessons in class. Otherwise, there are many misunderstandings when we talk with foreigners.

Lastly, writing something in English every day is going to make us be a good writer. When I was in high school, I did not learn how to write English essays. I have never heard categorization essays before going abroad that I got chances to write reports using categorization essays. At that time, my writing grades were really terrible and my friends who already learned how to organize it always teased to me. If I had learned it in class, I would have written nicely and organized logically essays. Therefore, teachers should teach how to write something in English and students have to practice what they learn using to keep a diary every day. Definitely, if we start writing that in first time, there would be many obstacles but as time goes by, we would get through successfully. After that, we would not worry about writing skills.

In conclusion, when I studied English in middle/high school, my generation concentrated on reading and listening skills because of university’s examination. The most of Korean students are clumsy at speaking and writing skills. Therefore, I would like to achieve something involved with those two skills if I have aims in English. Learning different cultures make us interested and motivated in English more and brushing up clear pronunciation would help for speaking skills, also keeping a diary would useful for writing skills. It is not easy to reach these targets but if we can put our energies and efforts as much as we can to master English, we will finally attain our dreams to dominate English.