By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Primary and secondary schools nationwide will have roughly 2,700 English-only classrooms under a policy to strengthen public English language education.
More than 400 English classrooms will be set up at elementary schools this year, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology Tuesday.
The classrooms will allow children to study English speaking and listening or read English books during or after their regular classes. Five elementary schools operated pilot English-only classrooms last year, and the Lee Myung-bak administration aims to expand such English-only classrooms to all schools by 2011. Due to the lack of budget, the ministry expects to initially build about 440 classrooms this year.
For middle and high schools, the government plans to establish some 2,300 classrooms for English education this year, with the aim to make all 5,200 middle and high schools have at least one classroom each in the near future.
``We'll develop a manual for the design of the classrooms through discussions with teachers who have operated similar classes before, so that the rooms can be used for various programs, including small-group discussions or plays in which all students participate,'' a ministry official said.
``We'll collect good examples of English classroom operation and encourage other schools to adopt the models, so that more students can learn English through more enjoyable programs,'' he said.