Teachers teach the way they were taught. They pay more attention to receptive skills (listening and reading) than productive skills (speaking and writing). What most teachers do in class is reading and translating English, and they think they have done a fine job. They monopolize most of the class hour without letting students talk because they never learned how to reduce their teacher talk. How can a swimmer learn to swim by watching their coach swim in the pool most of the time? Depending on the classes, teachers need to learn to talk for less than 10 minutes in a 50-minute class.

Korean English teachers need to take an intensive teacher training course in which they learn to keep talking for over 24 hours in English. This is very easy to do, but no teacher training center offers such a unique program because they do not know what Korean English teachers need to be equipped with in order to have confidence in speaking and to excel like native speakers of English.

Our government can offer a better solution. It should give a second thought to the mistaken preconception that imported English teachers can teach English better than Korean English teachers. This is why more and more foreign English teachers are imported and at the same time more and more Korean English teachers are even sent to English-speaking countries to be trained. What counts is not the educational institution or facility, but an excellent program to achieve the goal.

English majors graduating from colleges in Korea find it hard to get teaching jobs nowadays. Why? Thousands of English teachers from the U.S., Canada, England, India and South Africa have already taken the jobs, and each costs more than 40 million won a year. As a result, the total expense is huge. By training Korean English teachers, we can offer more jobs to jobless Korean English teachers so that they can eventually teach English as well as or better than native speakers of English. This also helps our economy.

First we need to change our examination system a little, too. Schools in Korea use English textbooks authorized by the government. It sounds absurd for the government to have announced that 70 percent of college entrance exams will be from an EBS-TV English program. I wonder whose idea this was. My opinion is that 100 percent should be from school textbooks because millions of things to learn are included in the school textbooks. EBS should not have been mentioned at all.

Let’s take a look at our college entrance exam system. When students are required to choose the best answer out of the five possible answers, teachers as well as students are more engrossed in obtaining the skills to pick that one best answer rather than learning English. This kind of English education may ruin students’ lives because they will always try to choose only the one best answer in whatever they do. Actually, there is an indefinite number of answers to most problems in life. What’s the number lower than one? Most people say that the answer is zero. Yes, correct. But the number zero is merely one answer. Actually, there are countless numbers such as -1, -2, -3, 1/2, 1/3, and so on.

When it comes to studying English, the same applies. We need a small change in language teaching and learning in Korea. We need to break rules. One different way to improve English education and reap the greatest return on our investment of time and effort is to start a unique English teacher training program through which Korean English teachers can all benefit. Who can do it? Can you help? 

By Kim In-hwan

Kim In-hwan has taught English for the past 46 years. He holds a Ph.D. in the English language from Daegu University in Korea. He can be reached at likebosskim@daum.net. ― Ed.