Twisty-Turny Story

Hi! It's the year 2015. I am a Korean student and I have jsut graduated from high school. I really have to say that I feel very proud of and confident in my English proficiency! I am not a special student. I'm average. But almost all "average" students in Korea these days like English and can use it well. That's because English education in korean public schools is very different now compared to 10 years ago.

Moon Nam-suk
Most of all, students don't need to be forced to use only English at school like 10 years ago, because they can use English everywhere over Korea. Over a decade, since Koreans have been educated with two languages(Korean, English), most Koreans don't feel uncomfortable about the fact that they need to be bilinguals all the time. This big change lessened students' big burden.

Kim Jin-young
With a lot of government grants, Korean government hires as many qualified foreigners as it can. Frankly, all the teachers in Korea can't provide 100% perfect English which is not totally like the standard English. However, taking foreigners to Korea could be a good way to fill in the lack of Korean teachers' proficiency.

Jeong Mi-jin
The government sent some excellent English teachers, natives as well as fluent non-native speakers to each high school in Korea. They made a law " speak in English only at school." At the first time, every teacher and student was against the law and had hard time even in staying at school. But because we had to keep the nation law, we all started to study English and practice speaking in English harder and harder. iIf anybody spoke in Korea at school, they had to be in jail for about 36 hours. Nobody wanted to be in jail. As a result, we've improved our English ability in all parts- speaking, writing, listening and so on.

Hyo-jin Kim
Also, every school has a connection with a foreign school in one of English-speaking countries. So, as far as a student shows a really good performance or a lot of improvementsin class, he or she can go to the foreign school as an exchange student for a year. In that case, the student is supported in everything by school, the government in fact. It brings a lot of students kind of motivation to study harder.

Jung Ji Eun
One more thing that we had to have is homestay in every vacations. During one month, one of the foreign friends who is in that connected school in English-speaking countries comes my home and stays with us. At the time, of course, I taught many Korean traditions to them but,of course, I could have a great time for learning real English! And I felt so comfortable with him and we could be friends, too. I have six close foreign friends in the world.

Kim Sun-young
Thanks to the enormous investment from the government, every school has at least one perfect English-only lab. In the lab, students can hear a variety of audio books. You can hear the audio book in various English accents such as British, American, Indian etc.