Andrew Morse

NAC000-147 Tesol Practicum

Dr. Cho & Dr Peter
7/8/15
Instructional Unit Narrative

Part 1:
South Korea has presented all of us in the practicum course with a very
interesting cultural climate to attempt to understand and adapt to as EFL
teachers. South Korea as a nation is simultaneously placing a huge emphasis
on english education for their students, and seemingly disregarding the
importance of actually being able to speak English proficiently. This is evident
by the fact that the KSAT primarily evaluate students on extremely difficult
reading and listening comprehension exams. This outlook has resulted in
parents superseding the state educational system en masse by sending their
children on early study abroad. In this neoliberal society, language is viewed
merely as a commodity that increases open individuals economic value, and
both the society at large and the parents continue to disregard the identity
changing experience that english education and study abroad certainly
imposes on the young students. When these students come back they are
not only expected to remain completely culturally Korean, but are faced with
the widely held opinion that they cannot enjoy the same purchase on the
English language that a native speaker could. This paper will explore all of

these issues and how they have been relevant and evident in my practicum
experience.
In the 1990s the South Korean government began to include English
comprehension tests as a requirement on college entrance exams. Feeling
that students could not truly master and become effective in English use
without being educated in a native English environment, parents began to
send their children abroad to study even after early study abroad was
outlawed in 2000. "According to a report from the ministry of education and
human resource development (2006), more than 35,000 elementary and
secondary school students went abroad in the school year 2005-2006"(Jinkyu park, pg 53). Being unwillingly displaced by the parents and an English
above all mentality, many of the students are made to feel insecure about
the value of their first language, and in turn their country. They are also left
with the sense that they do not have intrinsic value to their parents, rather
their value is determined by their academic success and future job prospects.
Some of these proposed effects have made themselves quite obvious at
Kyunghwa. When one class asked what they thought common Korean
stereotypes might be, one girl suggested "korean girls are ugly". When the
size of South Korea was compared to Texas during one lesson, I heard
students shout with disappointment "Korea is so small!". I've also heard a
number of students comment that their eyes or noses are too small, and that
Americans are more attractive than Koreans. In addition, many students have
been both surprised and ecstatic to learn that Americans are interested in

their country and language. This isn't only a result of the the emphasis
placed on English language acquisition, but also on 90's media policy
change. In the 90's a ban was lifted that previous prohibited foreign models
to be used in Korean marketing, and soon after that, the Asian financial crisis
introduced a sense of insecurity over the stability of the Korean economy.
With all of this in mind, some of the students seem to be experiencing a form
of reverse nationalism, or reverse ethnocentrism, and feel a general sense of
insecurity in their Korean identity.
Concurrent to this sense of insecurity in their identity, all of the
students are under an extreme amount of pressure to perform well
academically. Entrance into elite Korean universities is cut throat, and
academically driven students want desperately to achieve scores that will
allow them entrance. One major flaw that has emerged from this mentality is
a focus on standardized testing. Because an English section is present on the
KSAT, nearly all English education programs are catered only to doing well on
the KSAT. Strangely, the "KSAT does not include speaking and writing
components, thus leading to very little, if any, teaching of speaking and
writing in high school"(choi, pg 41). Without any focus on English production,
the English program falls into the general pattern observed in the Korean
education ideology whereby students are thought as vessels to be filled with
information, and not as humans who have their own contributions to make.
This results in many high school students who are able to accurately read
and fill in multiple choice over extremely complex material, yet are unable to

complete a writing assignment where they're asked to summarize an article.

At least not without our guidance, which was carefully doled out to those
students already confident enough in their English use to ask questions.
Many students were not comfortable enough to do this, and as such a huge
proportion of the class failed the assignment. Kyunghwa, by having a
conversation based class, does seem to be attempting to combat this
shortcoming observed throughout the country, but with the class being worth
10% of their overall English grade, it is still obvious where their priority lies.
It is my belief that the academic ideology that currently prevails in
Korean secondary school is creating a generation of citizens who have been
molded to be ideal consumers, with very little means of becoming producers
or asking the questions necessary to drive positive change. This trend is not
specific to South Korea, as under a neoliberal ideology where humans are
valued for their potential economic contribution as workers, countries the
world over place greater emphasis on standardized testing. Parents, under
the often veiled blanket of this ideology, treat English as a commodity, a
means to increase their children's or their own value. Early study abroad then
is not carried out with a concern for personal growth, but for "marking the
speaker as a valued individual in the global economy"(park and low, pg 157).
An outcome that for many is still impossible to achieve, as returning students
are not guaranteed job security, and are often viewed as "suspect
characters" who may threaten Korean cultural values (park and lo, pg 157).
These specific outcomes have been a little more elusive to my observation at

Kyunghwa. Kyunghwa, due to the personal life of its founder, conspicuously

fosters positive feelings and beliefs towards the United States. With this in
mind, it perhaps should have surprised me less when I learned that the
students had never heard of any of the numerous atrocities committed by
American soldiers during the Korean War. Students who have studied abroad
and wield a greater mastery of English at Kyunghwa seem to be respected
and envied by their peers, and as I am unfortunately unable to observe the
nature of their relationship with their Korean teachers, this is the only
impression I have of the social climate.
Part 2:
Kyunghwa is a private christian girls middle/highschool in Gwangju Gyeonggi
South Korea. Gwangju is a large suburb of Seoul, home to three hundred
thousand citizens, and Kyunghwa is a highly ranking private girls school that
attracts hard working and intelligent students from all over South Korea. As
such, only 30% of the schools students are from Gwangju The other 70% who
come from outside Gwangju live in the two girls dormitories. The discrepancy
in English competence between students at Gwangju is vast and apparent.
Most of the more proficient English speakers have studied abroad, but some
had surprising fluency only through their regular school and self study. Most
students though, even being high achievers still have great trouble with
English production. To attempt to remedy this shortcoming, the school has
chosen to employ native English speakers to take a class period from the non
native English teachers once a week in order to work on conversation. This

decision reflects some of the points made by Moussu & Llurda (2008). The
decision to employ native speaking teachers implies to Kyunghwa students
that the ability of native speakers should always be trusted over that of non
native speakers, and negates the possibility of NNS teachers becoming
Greatly admired by their students because they are successful role models
and are often very motivated... And also examples of people who have
become successful L2 users(Moussu & Llurda, pg 323). Instead, we were
brought in as foreign native speakers, simultaneously viewed as experts and
fun, well-behaved, and passive foreigners who's cultural differences could
potentially interfere with entrenched Korean ideology (Watson, pg 247). With
these discrepancies and factors in mind, one evident challenge in the
practicum was designing lessons that could both challenge low level English
speakers, and still engage the more proficient speakers. Another challenge
was designing lessons that would prevent the more advanced speakers from
simply completing the activity or classwork for the others. We wanted to give
the students a new perspective on foreigners, relieved of many previously
held stereotypes. And finally, a challenge that many of us felt should be
considered was how to make sure students feel pride in their culture and
their L1 while teaching the L2 required by their country.
My first lesson plan aimed to help students practice the format, and
acquire comfortability in asking English Wh questions. In Korea, English is
primarily learned through wrote memorization of KSAT examples, because of
this most students seemed uncomfortable with forming questions in English.

To me, asking questions, and knowing what questions to ask are both
extremely important parts of English proficiency and academic advancement.
By creating an activity that involves competition within groups of three I was
able to ensure that each student would have to produce with their own
questions, and could not rely on a stronger speaker. The poster game was
very effective in carrying out my language objective, as it not only required
each student to produce and ask a great number of questions, it encouraged
them to consider which questions would be the most effective when
considering each members knowledge of Korean and English movies. The
activity used approximately half English titles and half Korean titles with the
intention of not emphasizing the value of one cultures movies over another.
My second lesson on past, present, and future tense attempted to
engage students on both a cultural and moral level. I noticed that many
students in conversation struggled to produce past or future tense
sentences, and instead spoke all of their sentences in the present tense. To
approach this perceived shortcoming, and to engage the students with a
relate-able topic, I wrote a story about a homeless elderly Korean woman, in
a Korean context, and drew upon Kyunghwa's instilled moral values of Love,
Serve, Act. The attempt of this lesson was get students to rewrite present
tense sentences in the past tense, and then to produce original future tense
sentences with an umbrella theme of helping others, and finally to read these
sentences aloud to their classmates. Without a reward, convincing students
to volunteer proved highly difficult, but when stickers were offered as a

reward, most students were able to successfully complete the objectives.

Because of the openhandedness provided by free form writing, both
intermediate and advanced English speakers were able to complete the
object with varying complexity. Overall in my lessons I believe I was able to
accomplish my goals of engaging high and low level speakers, emphasizing
and reinforcing the value of Korean culture, focusing on dynamic English
production rather than English consumption, and addressing obvious
production shortcomings shown by many of the students. Having finished
this program I am honestly able to say that if nothing else was achieved,
many students that I met grew immensely in their confidence in using
English and approaching an English speaker. Many also explicitly expressed
their joy and appreciation of our groups interest in South Korean, and of the
great growth they feel they underwent in only six weeks.

Works Cited
Choi, I. (2008). The Impact Of EFL Testing On EFL Education In Korea. Language Testing, 25,
39-62. doi:10.1177/0265532207083744
Lucie Moussu and Enric Llurda (2008). Non-native English-speaking English language
teachers: History and research. Language Teaching, 41, pp 315-348. doi:10.1017/S0261444808005028.
Park, J. (2009). English Fever In South Korea: Its History And Symptoms. English Today,
25(01), pp 50-57. doi:10.1017/ S026607840900008X
Park, J., & Lo, A. (2012). Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of
globalization: Markets, timescales, neoliberalism1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16(2), 147-164.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00524.x
Watson, I. (2012), Paradoxical Multiculturalism in South Korea. Asian Politics & Policy,
4: 233258. doi: 10.1111/j.1943-0787.2012.01338.x