Oral Language In English Has Bought About 'intense Desire To Speak Native-like English

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Other driving forces in the English boom were the process of globalization in the late 1980s and the economic crisis in the late 1990s. The 1986 Asian Games and the Seoul Olympic Games made South Korea aware of globalization, and the Korean financial crisis of 1997 made Koreans realize how much English was valued in the process of globalization (Demick, 2002), all of which drove Koreans to focus more on oral proficiency in English. Both experts and laymen in South Korea attributed the failures of English education to the traditional grammar/translation method, and experts argued for the communicative language teaching method to Merrell Shoes improve communicative competence or, more precisely, oral language fluency. As a result, this new focus on oral language proficiency in English has bought about an 'intense desire to speak native-like English' (S. Shin, 2005:66).

The increasing influence of communicative language teaching methods was another source of the current English boom in South Korea. The Korean government's policy emphasizing oral competence in English came from this ...
... increasing power of the communicative approach in language teaching in South Korean academia. Experts in the area of language education expressed their opinions in favor of English-only instruction, hushing those voices who were concerned about the influence of English on young children's Korean language development, as well as psychosocial development. Universities began giving lectures in English to help students improve English competence (Donga Ilbo, 1990), and elementary school teachers were recommended to teach students English in only English, even though there were few teachers who could lead the class in English (R. Oh, 1996). Colleges and universities preferred to hire professors who could teach courses in English. Most surprisingly, it was reported that a university in South Korea planned to hire a professor who could teach Korean language and literature in English.

As expected, unprepared English-only instruction has caused various side effects such as students' lack of interest in the content, increased stress on teachers, communication problems and, most important of all, limited understanding of the content. However, despite such problems, more and more institutions have promoted English-only instruction policies. At the same time, Koreans have come to think that native speakers of English are the best teachers of English. More and more native speakers of English have been hired regardless of their educational backgrounds. As reported in a newspaper article, not only primary and Merrell Sandal secondary schools but colleges and universities have also had difficulty in finding native speakers of English who could meet minimum requirements. Even the Korean government has difficulty recruiting qualified native speakers of English to schools, although, at present, the government has been trying to hire at least one native speaker of English for each primary and secondary school in South Korea. In order to achieve this goal, the government would need to hire at least 10,000 native speakers of English, but in 2006 only 1,950 native speakers of English were employed.

Local governments in South Korea have tried hard to open 'English villages,' or English-only towns. Since August, 2004, when the first English village opened near Seoul, a number of English villages have been built and more are planned to be built soon. A huge amount of money has been poured into the villages and a great number of native speakers of English have been hired as villagers of the English-immersion towns.