Why Koreans Fail to Learn English Despite Massive Resources Put Towards It
This editorial in the Korea Herald explains why Koreans have such a hard time speaking and understanding English despite the amount of time and money they spend to learn the language:
When I first went to the United States to study in the summer of 1998, every trip to fast food joints was full of stress. I managed to submit my order, but had difficulty understanding what the clerks said to me. Only after several repetitions and after my face had reddened did they make themselves understood. Spending almost 20 years studying English at that point including experience at an English-related workplace did not save me from embarrassment. Indeed, for many of us here, the struggle with the English language is a never-ending story. After conferences and meetings, we hear many of our colleagues saying “if only it had been done in Korean.”
Koreans spend a lot of time and money studying English, as the term “English-fever” would indicate. English is first taught at kindergarten. Tremendous efforts are then poured into learning the language through elementary, middle and high school. The efforts continue in college to get good scores on standardized English tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC, so as to impress potential employers in the job market. Even office workers flock to morning and evening sessions of private teaching institutions so as not to be left behind.
And yet, Koreans’ English proficiency does not match the resources mobilized. In terms of English ability, Korea’s global ranking falls roughly in the middle, basically in the same group as countries where English is not so relentlessly taught as in Seoul. If the so-called principle of “10,000 hours” holds true, by the time students graduate from elementary school in Seoul, English should not be a problem. And by the time they graduate from high school, they should speak like BBC anchors. What then explains this meager outcome after all the time and effort? [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link, but the editorial goes on to explain how the focus on written tests is why Koreans do not put any effort into listening and speaking. The Korean government has even recognized this folly and decided to make the standardized test’s English section easier so parents do not have to spend so much money on English classes for their kids.
Learning to correctly recognize unknown difficult, not so often used high level vocab on a multi-guess test is one skill, but learning how to function correctly in a spoken manner is an entirely different mindset and approach. 99.99%+ of the population cannot do both ways at the same time as it is obviously difficult to do so.
Obviously, if the current emphasis is on recognizing high level vocab on a test, the natural consequence is that the spoken ability is way under-developed. The drive to ace the written test leaves zero room for the Korea based youngster to develop any ability to function at any level in spoken English.
Until the “system” removes high performance on a written test for entry to Uni, we will have what we have and it will be more fierce each year.
The way many Korean kids do learn to function in English is to live at a young age in an English speaking nation while going to school, be it grade school or high school. For some, it is Uni.
On a different note of interest…
Even among Koreans who live oversees, some kids forget their own language and it is a serious problem for Koreans who were not heavy handed at home to uphold this. Often, they will dump them off at church on a Saturday for KSL – Korean as a Second Language training. You would be surprised at the number of Korean kids who have lived abroad since age 8-10 who by the time they finish high school cannot function in Korean well enough to avoid starving in a restaurant if they had to order in Korean. I am one of the one who have to try to train these kids on behalf of their parents and these kids have no desire to do homework to get the reps they need to succeed.
Personally, when I learned Korean full time, I knew I would end up in Korea some day soon and I had to make a quick choice – Do really well studying the words and ace the tests, get a high grade average, or take my knocks on the test and barely get by, but later, be able to function and even think in Korean.
Since the first way would only result in a shiny report card, I deemed it only worth bragging rights among peers at best. It wouldn’t help me get dates worth a lick, so I immediately scrapped the idea of going the first way and focused on learning how to function spoken way and damn the test grades.
I am glad I went that way and learned how to speak and function naturally, the first way would have gotten me nowhere.
That is pretty much what Korean kids are up against and even though they have a choice in the matter, with the way parents operate and the way tests work and the way the “system” uses these test to determine who gets in a Uni and the top ones… the kids really do not have much a choice and pay a huge mental price for it.
The British Imperial Comment Droid almost sounds human.
There’s only one way to teach children. If they fail to eat their meat, do not allow them any pudding.