Cultural Understanding, Open Mind Key to Upgrading English Proficiency

By Jon Huer
Korea Times columnist

Korea's English failure is one of the great puzzles of our time and still the puzzle goes largely unresolved.

Watching Korea make so little headway in English learning, despite its feverish attempts and activities to master the language, is indeed an agonizing experience.

As in all things, still, resistance is fierce when even a hint of radical rethinking is suggested and inertia reigns on this matter as no progress is made in our understanding.

This assessment prompts me to devote another column to the issue of English failure in Korea.

Those who believe English learning is no worse in Korea than in any other country or time and repetition would eventually improve Korea's English mastery can safely skip this one.

The world recognizes the Korean genius in importing and mastering basically alien systems of machine industry, technology and science, among other things.

Especially in information technology, the most un-Korean, most alien of all imports from the West, Korea's excellence is unquestioned. Why, then, can't these brilliant Koreans also master the English language, another simple import from another culture?

At the core of Korea's ineptitude in English learning is the assumption that most Korean learners share: that they can master English without learning anything about the larger cultural context in which the language resides.

This assumption is the main source of Korea's English grief. This approach to English as a purely technical task is what explodes in the face of most Korean learners of English.

It ignores the cardinal rule that one can master English only when one learns to think in English. One cannot think in English unless one stops thinking like a Korean while the learning takes place.

Learning English is not like learning anything else. Learning English to world-level competence is a whole process, thinking, feeling, comprehending, living, and being in that language. Virtually everyone who knows Korea and who has taught Koreans is aware of this maxim.

It is more than the popular technique of ``immersion,'' which refers to concentrated, intensive sessions in English, such as speaking only English during a particular period or experiencing the everyday lifestyles of Americans, and so on.

Immersion, as it is understood today, is largely technical and superficial, never touching on the core of the issue.

The core issue is not in English so much as it is in the Korean mind. English or English-based culture can never be grasped unless the Korean mind accepts it at the deepest level or, at least, does not resist its cultural matrix.

Learning English on any level of aptitude requires that one learn the cultural foundations of the language one is learning. Thus, the learning process moves from the technical to the cultural, including the realization that English is so different from Korean, as English-based culture is so different from Korean culture itself. Given the huge gulf between two cultures, a mechanical-technical approach alone, no matter how ferociously carried out, will not produce results.

Just now, English learning in Korea is merely a rote process, a series of experiments in this theory or that method, and the learner never truly masters the language in spite of his frenzied effort.

As a general principle, Koreans cannot, indeed no one can, learn another language without also learning its cultural meanings.

Koreans consistently fail to master English because their mind fails to grasp the basic cultural components of the language that they are trying to master.

In other words, Koreans try to learn English while stubbornly remaining ``Korean'' in their basic cultural orientation.

The result is that their learning remains highly superficial, lifeless and ineffective, and nearly at the bottom among non-native English speakers of the world.

A Korean ESL authority at Seoul National University once said: ``We have offered a course entitled 'Understanding American Culture and Its Bearing on Learning English' but the interest in the course was minimal.''

The reason so many Koreans learn so little English even after an extended stay in America is because these Koreans show so little interest in learning about American culture, in which the language is its living embodiment."

Thus, most Korean students of English feel, as part of their cultural heritage, that they can learn English without having to change their unique ``Korean'' attitudes and habits of mind.

On the other hand, the few Korean students who successfully master English are those who have the aptitude for ``switching'' or ``converting'' to the American, or ``Western,'' frame of mind. That is the technical, precise, rational and egalitarian. These successful learners are therefore also successful in understanding and mastering American culture and society and maintain a positive, non-resistant attitude toward the West.

Naturally, those who are incorrigibly ``Korean'' are also those who are absolutely hopeless in learning English.

Even among children, those who are stubbornly ``Korean'' have a relatively tougher time learning English. On the other hand, even those senior citizens who are open-minded and curious toward American culture and the West tend to enjoy and learn English much faster and better.

In short, Korea's worst enemy of English learning, its weapon of English mass destruction, is its own culture or the Korean mind itself.

Hence Korea's own cultural frame of mind ― pre-modern, non-rational, proudly nationalist ― is the first and worst obstacle to mastering English.

To most foreigners, Korea appears, as a whole, very tight, closed and touchy toward their English-learning enterprise.

Hence Koreans' English uses tend to be overly cautious, stilted and rigidly un-English-like, trying to learn English with a decidedly ``Korean'' turn of mind.

By contrast, one sees openness, relaxedness and friendliness in successful English-using countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.

It is reported that the president of Asia's No. 1-ranked university in Hong Kong recommended, when asked how Korea could improve its universities: ``Start lecturing in English!'' Korea's refusal or reluctance to do this has nothing to do with its abilities or facilities of English lectures ― it is its mindset that refuses this possibility.

Without realizing this simple truth, as has been said by different voices in the past, no amount of increased investment in English, or no development in teaching technique, is ever likely to improve English in Korea. Korea must ``un-Koreanize'' itself first to tackle the issue.

Jon Huer can be contacted at jonhuer@hotmail.com.
``The opinions expressed and the observations described in these articles are strictly the writer's own and do not represent any official position of the University of Maryland University College or the USFK.''