The English Boom In South Korea

By Author: Nancy
Total Articles: 9
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What, then, has brought about the current boom of English-related social practices including 'early study-abroad' historically, there are three main sources for this current emphasis on oral language competence in English and associated 'early study-abroad': government policy changes, social and economic changes, and increasing influence of communicative teaching methods in academia. Most important of all, the Korean government has played a critical role in creating Five Fingers Shoes the current English boom. In the late 1990s, experts argued for the introduction of English listening tests in the entrance examinations. This was also closely related to the English-only trend in academia, which will be discussed below. In January 1991, the Korean government decided to include English listening tests into the national college entrance examinations (Donga Ilbo, 1991), which moved Korean parents to start pushing their children to improve their listening skills in preparation for these new tests.

Another innovation was the 1994 revision of university entrance examinations away ...
... from grammatical items towards a more communicative approach. Parents had to change their focus of English towards communicative competence, instead of grammatical knowledge. As a result of this, a great number of exam-related books were published in order to meet these new needs. All this, however, was just the prelude to a bigger explosion in the English boom. The relentless competition for learning English increased greatly in the summer of 1991, when the government announced the plan to teach English in all elementary school grades by 1995 (Segye Ilbo, 1991). The news swept the whole country into the 'English fever' which still rages today. A new industry called 'English education industry7 (yeongeokyoyuk sanup) has been exploding year after year, even surviving the economic crisis of 1997. Hundreds of English-only private institutions, English learning materials for kids, and English conversation services are among the best-known examples of services and products in this new industry.

In fact, 'early English education first became an issue in the 1980s, at the time of the Asian Games of 1986 and the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Parents then began sending their children to English-speaking countries to gain an advantage over other students. Until then, this movement had not been as big a social issue because only a privileged few with wealth and power had been able to afford such services for their children.

The rather extreme practices of Korean parents in securing early English education for their children have been reported not only in Korea, but also abroad. For example, Korean parents gained notoriety for an extreme Vibram KSO practice known as 'linguistic surgery'. In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Demick (2002) reported examples of Korean parents forcing their children to undergo a frenectomy, a surgical procedure to correct a condition popularly known as 'tonguetiedness'. These Korean parents believed that the longer and more flexible tongue produced by the surgery could better produce English sounds such as the V in 'rice,' which is often pronounced by Koreans as 'lice.'