[OP8] How to incorporate a more even balance of skills?

[OP8]
To date, most of the English language instructions carried out in public schools has been oriented around reading and grammar skills. How do you think the next generation of teachers in Korea could ensure that teaching approaches incorporate a more even balance (and integration) of skills?

Korean Society has gone through dramatic changes since 1960s, which are unprecedented anywhere in the world. Education system is not an exception, either. However, the least changing field in it is probably English education. Although more and more people are leaving Korea to study English, and it is not difficult to find nativelike English speaking people, these changes have not come from English education in Korea but from studying abroad. Everyone consider it natural to enroll in language institutes in Canada or the USA to really study English.

Before rapid globalization, it wasn’t shame not to be able to speak a word in English, because most of people didn’t have a chance to speak with natives and it was mostly used for reading a textbook in English in college. However, nowadays most companies recruit those who can speak English because they need employers who can have a meeting with foreign counterparts and work with them. Thus, speaking English has become essential requisite in the real life.

Unfortunately, things in English class in Korea haven’t been changed a lot. In fact, English textbooks have evolved in many ways. They are trying to develop all the 4 skills in language ; There are a lot of listening, speaking, and writing activities in each chapter. Just doing all these activities can help students improve English in balanced ways. However, in reality, teachers are busy with explaining translating and explaining grammar rules. The problem is our evaluation system. The tests consists of only reading and grammar. Whether the student knows the correct usage of relative pronouns and particles is an important factor in their tests; it is not a joke that a student who lived in the US for 10 years and speaks English fluently gets a poor test score in English in Korea. As long as the current evaluation system exists, it would not be easy to teach English in a balanced way.

We also need to employ qualified teachers. In my opinion, most teachers on duty wouldn’t be able to perform CLT, because even teachers over 40s didn’t have a chance to speak English at college, and they were also educated only by GTM methods. They can’t be fluent speakers with several months of retrainng programs. The new government is trying to hire fluent English speaking teachers but this policy could not be implemented because of strong objection from teacher’s association. Only 10 years ago it was very difficult to hire fluent English speakers, but now things have changed and many people having studied abroad are looking for jobs in Korea. Teaching job in Korea would very attractive to them considering working conditions and social welfare here. By hiring them we could increase English conversation class in school and put more emphasis on speaking skills.

Diagnosing problems in English education as a learner or a teacher could be totally different. The different view could lead to different thought and result. The ideal situation the learners see could be unrealistic one, because there could be unvisible or unthinkable variables in a real world. Therefore, there will have to be constant discussion on the issues between learners and teachers and a trying to realize it.

How's your practicum going Minjung. it's almost the end of it and it's amazing you are devoting yourself both to students and here the class. For me, this topic was kind of difficult to deal with, since as you said it looks too obvious that I will not be able to implement whatever ideal plans for class unless the test evaluation method is modified. I hope to listen from you about your practicom when coming back to class, and discuss the way not to make our future students another 'dummies'. See you soon~

Thanks for your reply. I'm managing to stay alive. The practicum is almost over and I'm finding some time to write OPs at school. It's very kind of you to think of me. See you next week!

I can't say the reading skill is the most important skill of the four but even after being a university student, the skill is most ofen used among them. Integerating all skills well is the best option but in Korea with an EFL evironment, the other three skills don't seem to be used as often as the reading skill.
The current English education system should improve but I basically agree with the emphasis of reading skills.