By Lee Chang-sup
In recent years, it has become common for college students in Korea to delay graduation by one or two years. These “professional students” — a colloquial term for college students who decide to stay in school for many years rather than to begin their careers —have become a headache to their parents, the universities, and even to themselves.
Faced with the tough job market, these college students put off graduation for as long as they could. During this period, many students also decide to pursue English language training overseas.
According to the Bank of Korea, one in 10 college students and one in two from prestigious Seoul universities went overseas for language training last year. This brings the total to approximately 125,000 college students; this is the first time the number of such students exceeded the 100,000 mark. The students’ destinations include English-speaking countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as countries in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, especially China.
Overseas language training is not limited to college students. For instance, 50,000, 90,000, and 30,000 students at the primary, middle, and high school levels, respectively also went overseas last year for short-term language training, mostly in English-speaking countries.
Most college students pursue language training overseas in order to improve their job-related credentials. However, recruiters may not necessarily equate overseas language-training certificates and high TOEIC, TOEFL, and TEPS scores to higher job-related skills.
Moreover, the effectiveness of overseas language training is still unclear. For instance, while overseas, some students reportedly hire friends to attend classes in their place. Moreover, many Korean students room together at the dorms, and thus end up communicating mostly in Korean than in the foreign language they intended to learn. Without using the foreign language daily, it would be difficult to gain fluency.
Parents must therefore take these considerations in mind when deciding whether to send their children to study language overseas. Even if such overseas training programs are effective, it is an expensive endeavor, with many parents borrowing money to pay for the training.
The Bank of Korea estimated that Korean families spent a total of ₩5 trillion (US$4.5 billion) last year for their children’s overseas studies. It costs about ₩45 million (US$40,000) for a student to undergo one-year language training overseas, which is twice the per-capita income of Koreans.
What many parents and students do not realize is that mastering a foreign language does not have to be expensive; there are many other cheaper but equally effective ways to do.
In this era of mobile technology and hyper-connectivity, the only investments parents and students need are the curiosity and patience to learn another language. For instance, parents with a high English proficiency may teach the language to their children themselves.
Another useful way to master English is to read a local English daily regularly. The Korea Times, for example, uses 10,000 vocabularies that are also found in English proficiency tests such as the TOEIC, TOEFL, and TEPS.
Thus, reading an English daily may be an effective alternative to studying for and taking the above tests. For beginners, a local English daily, rather than foreign dailies such as The New York Times and USA Today, may be a good place to start learning English because it uses the English language to chronicle Korean news, events, and issues that are relevant and familiar to the student.
Dr. Park Myung-seok, a professor emeritus of the English Language Department of Dankook University, is an ardent advocate of this method of learning English. He has advised college deans and presidents on the issue of helping students learn English through reading local English dailies. He lamented that even English-language professors seldom appreciate the usefulness of local English dailies for helping students develop their language proficiency.
This writer agrees with Park that English dailies can be an effective tool for mastering English, and I am not just saying this out of self promotion. I speak based on my own experience; having been an avid reader of local English dailies since college, I consider myself a role model for students struggling to learn English. Other shining examples of people who have taught themselves English by reading local English dailies include the late President Kim Dae-jung, the late fashion designer Andre Kim, and Korea International Cooperation Agency President Park Dae-won.
Another important point that many English learners sometimes forget is that developing one’s fluency in the Korean language is also important in mastering English, as a limited knowledge of the Korean language can also limit one’s potential for learning a foreign language. Just as native English speakers do not automatically mean they speak and write English well, native Korean speakers do not necessarily have a mastery of their native language.
The growing exodus of students pursuing language training overseas is also a wake-up call for colleges, whose curricula focus too much on academic English vocabulary, which is seldom used in daily life.
This is also a call for the Education Ministry to review its policy of excluding current English in official tests.
Seoul, in particular, needs an educational policy to help parents teach their children English rather than sending them to expensive overseas programs. Sending children to such programs is like giving them fish; on the other hand, by helping their children learn English using tools such as local English dailies, parents are teaching them how to catch fish.
Lee Chang-sup is the executive managing director of The Korea Times. Contact him at editorial@koreatimes.co.kr.