Final thoughts on English policy and education

This study abroad has been an opportunity for me to step out of my comfort zone and grow personally and professionally. Here are some reflections on what I've learned and experienced.

English Language Policy in Korea

Korea is determined to continue to be a major player in the global economy and the country needs citizens who can effectively use English as an international language.  For this reason, English language education is an academic subject in Korea’s national curriculum. Korea’s extreme, high-stakes testing culture has driven parents to spend substantial sums of money to send children to English tutoring and/or study abroad experiences. Many elementary and middle school students spend hours outside class studying one or more subjects (English, math, science, dance, art and others) in hagwons. High school students’ school days start around 7 and end as late a midnight. My home-stay parent and our host at CNUE both said they believe students work too hard. Both were also somewhat resigned to the fact that it’s necessary for success in Korea.

Although fluency in English as a foreign language opens doors and access to information, there are negative affects to its spread in foreign countries. It has the potential to result in a loss of cultural identity and can serve as a way to stratify society by setting the English speakers apart as a cultural elite (McKay, 2002).

Potential impacts on cultural identity

Before coming to Korea, I wondered how the country’s English language policy impacted student life and family life. Was it so competitive that students had a hard time making friends? Did students who were sent abroad to study and encouraged to only speak with English speakers abroad (Park & Abelmann, 2004) feel out of place when they returned to Korea? Did learning English take away from their Korean identity?  I imagined a rigid, serious classroom dynamic and pictured overbearing parents interacting with submissive children. That’s not at all what I found. The classrooms we visited oozed with enthusiasm. The students we encountered were extremely poised, articulate and funny. The brief interactions between mother and child I observed showed nurturing (not overbearing) mothers who were focused on getting their children the best education they could afford. To me, these students and families seemed to be acquiring English for pragmatic reasons – for access to the best educational and career opportunities. They appeared to me to be Koreans who knew how to speak English. 

Social stratification

Not unlike the situation in the U.S., where you live and the amount of financial resources you have impacts the quality of one’s education. In Korea, parents tend to spend as much as they can afford to help their children compete for the best exam scores and get into the best high schools and universities.

It’s important to note, the students with whom I had extended contact in Korea (our English instructor, Chunee’s college-age children and my home-stay daughter) all had opportunities to study abroad. Their families had resources to provide English instruction beyond what they would get at school. They were proficient in English and were shining examples of how the competitive nature of education in Korea can develop well-educated students. What about students who don't have additional opportunities for learning or students who don't get high test scores in spite of all their effort? I imagine they'd provide a different image of what Korean's competitive society produces.

English Language Pedagogy

The focus of English language instruction in Korea is shifting from a curriculum that places emphasis on grammar and translation to a more communicative approach that develops oral fluency. In spite of having English as an academic subject beginning in elementary school, rigorous teacher training and the high number of students who get additional English instruction outside school, Korea’s students’ TOEFL scores ranked 93 of 147 countries in 2004 and 2005 (Park, 2009).

Many Korean teachers do not feel qualified to teach English oral communicative skills. These teacher perceptions can have a negative influence the teacher’s confidence, teaching skills, student motivation and student success (Butler, 2004). Our conversations at the schools we visited and my conversation with my home-stay mom confirmed this. Before coming to Korea, I wondered why so many teachers didn’t have the language proficiency they felt they needed. I now understand how much practice is needed to acquire and maintain language fluency. The few adults I spoke with don’t have many opportunities to practice conversational English. Many of the home-stay parents for our group relied, at least partially, on their children for translating. Since the shift toward more conversational English didn’t happen until the 1990’s (Park, 2004), these parents and many practicing teachers were likely to have received English training that was grammar/translation based when they were in school.

The native-English-speaker teacher program is a way to help bridge the gap between the Korean teacher’s conversational skills and those needed to provide the instruction necessary to develop oral fluency. It could create an ideal situation where instruction can be taught in English, with support in Korean as needed. This would be especially effective if both the Korean teacher and the NES teacher were trained teachers. Based on the English of the younger generation of students we met, I imagine the next generation of teachers will have stronger oral fluency and won’t have to rely as much on NES teachers to teach conversational English. I’d love to have the expertise of a native speaker for all the languages in my classroom. How wonderful for students to be able to learn English language and culture with support in their home language as needed. I don’t have that luxury, but I do have access to parents and a family literacy program that I could leverage to create rich language and cultural connections in my classroom.

Language Learning

My experience attempting to learn Korean had a profound impact on me. It gave me an authentic opportunity to experience the impact good teaching strategies (comprehensible input, visuals, corrective feedback, creating a safe learning environment, connecting to one’s cultural background, and using a variety of instructional theories and styles) have on language learning. I knew it would be challenging, but I honestly expected to be able to say more than two words after spending two weeks here. As a tourist, I knew people weren’t expecting me to speak the language, but I wanted to be respectful make a good impression. I was surprised by my apprehension to speak in Korean to the people we met.

One of the many things that impressed me about Korea was the kindness of the people we encountered. They appreciated our meager attempts to communicate and used gestures and phrases to help us. Sometimes they would offer help before we even asked – I’m certain I looked quite confused a good portion of the time. 

Friday at lunch we played a real-life game of telephone. We wanted to have Korean food one last time before we left. The restaurant we chose did not have a menu with pictures but we thought we knew the names of enough Korean foods to be able to order something. Unfortunately, we exhausted or Korean food word bank very quickly. They did not serve kimbap, bibimbap, or bulgogi. Just when I thought we were going to have to point to a word and hope for the best, the hostess came and handed her cell phone to Ted. The bilingual (or multilingual) speaker on the other end of the phone helped us order our food. Ted would speak to the person in English on the phone, then hand the phone to our hostess so the person on the phone could explain our order to her in Korean. I’m not sure the name of the beef noodle soup we had, but it was delicious.

Implications for practice

I am by no means an expert on Korean English education or culture after a two-week visit. However, first- hand, authentic experience attempting to understand and be understood in a foreign culture/language helped me comprehend what my students and their families’ experience. It also deepened my awareness of my own cultural lens. The articles we read prior to coming to Korea have a different meaning for me as I reread them because I have more background knowledge from which to construct meaning.

I know I’ll continue to process this experience and consider ways to improve my practice. Here are my thoughts at this point for where to begin:

• Include more ways for ELL students to learn about and maintain their cultural identity as they learn English through partnerships with parents and our family literacy program.

• Be more deliberate about planning which multicultural books to include during shared reading and for independent reading. The LPS media has excellent resources for this.

• Continue to use reciprocal teaching strategies during shared reading and guided reading so students have authentic opportunities for academic conversations.

• Incorporate more frequent use of formative assessments (like exit tickets, white boards and performance-based activities) to inform instruction and provide effective feedback for students. No more, "You understand it, right?"

• Share effective practices for language acquisition and vocabulary instruction with classroom teachers.