SOUTH Korean President Lee Myung-bak has turned his back on the English immersion education program his transition team previously advocated, due to a lack of preparation and public protests, The Chosun IIbo has reported.
The South Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology presented its annual task report to Lee on March 20. It didn’t directly announce the government had no immediate plan to implement English immersion education. Instead, Lee told education policymakers during the briefing session that a radical program for English immersion education, such as teaching all subjects including non-English classes only in English, was unrealistic. According to Lee, English immersion is a matter for the distant future. He instructed the ministry to formulate a policy to galvanize English-language education in schools, including increasing the number of English language classes. His remarks represented a dramatic change from his earlier position that stressed the importance of the immersion program.
The transition team floated the idea of English immersion in January, suggesting that most English classes be solely taught in English by 2010. Faced with strong opposition from teachers and parents, they took a step backward and unveiled a proposal to start the immersion program in 2012 or 2013. But now the Lee administration seems to have abandoned the program.
Professors of English language and literature from universities across South Korea slammed the plans by the government to improve the English-language communication skills of South Korean students. At a seminar at Ewha Womans University under the joint sponsorship of Scholars for English Studies in Korea and the Korean English Teachers Group, professors said any plan to enable high school graduates to talk freely with foreigners in English without additional private tutoring was pie in the sky. They suggested the government should implement a balanced education program, which focuses on speaking, listening, writing and reading, rather than putting excessive emphasis on “superficial” communication skills.
Lee stated that his vision had been misinterpreted. “What I meant was that public English education should be able to fill the gap between those who have been abroad and received expensive classes and those who haven’t. We need English to be competitive but I do not want people to run to cram schools to catch up.”
