Sunday 1:15 - 2:05 PM
Bong Sun Hwa
Korea's English Teaching Innovations in the 1990's: A Review
Oryang Kwon
Seoul National University, Korea
For English teaching in Korea, the 1990's can be characterized as an
unprecedented decade of renovations and innovations. This paper reviews
major changes that were made in the teaching of English in Korea during
the 1990's. After briefly reviewing the historical, social, and educational
backgrounds of English teaching in Korea, the paper will discuss four innovative
changes in English teaching: Introduction of the English subject into elementary
schools, employment of native-speaker English teachers, development of
communicative syllabi, and introduction of the national common criterion-based
evaluation.
The paper then will review renovations in five areas: College English
teaching, secondary school teacher training and retraining, college entrance
examination, the seventh national English curriculum, and English textbooks.
Finally, the paper will make some projections for the first decade of the
new century.
Professor Oryang Kwon teaches undergraduate and graduate courses
in TEFL and applied linguistics in the Department of English Education,
Seoul National University. He received his Ph. D (in Foreign Language Education)
from the University of Texas at Austin. He published numerous articles
on English education and textbooks for elementary and secondary school
English. He has been actively involved in a variety of national projects
on English education.. His areas of interest include language acquisition,
materials, and assessment. Dr. Kwon is a former president of Korea TESOL,
and a former vice-president of KATE (Korea Association of Teachers of English). |
