By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
The head of an English teachers’ group has called for educational authorities to launch a campaign against all kinds of racial and ethnic discrimination.
Marilyn Plumlee, president of the Korea Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (KOTESOL), stressed that Koreans have to root out their preference for white English teachers while discriminating against those of color in an interview with The Korea Times.
``Korea has been emphasizing globalization in terms of industry and commerce, but it seems to me it is now time to begin emphasizing globalization and tolerance for multi-ethnic backgrounds in the human relations domain,’’ Plumlee said.
``Teaching students not only to tolerate diversity, but to embrace it, would be a valuable educational lesson, and this lesson could start quite naturally in the English classrooms across Korea,’’ she added.
Still many English language institutes and schools in Korea are reluctant to work with English teachers of color. However, the KOTESOL president said institutes and schools that hire teachers of color could promote themselves as being in the educational vanguard, providing unique opportunities to children not offered by other institutions.
``The problem is a general one and is not limited to the `hagwon’ (private cram school) domain. When a national campaign is launched to encourage Korean citizens to `do the right thing,’ my observation is that the Korean public shows a very high degree of willingness to adapt to new norms.’’
Plumlee joined KOTESOL as a member in 2000 and has headed the English teachers’ group since last year. KOTESOL is an organization to help foreign and local English teachers to improve their professional development.
Regarding unqualified English teachers from overseas, Plumlee sees there is not much the government can do on the problem. ``I have heard that the government is thinking of asking all foreigners who will be teaching to provide proof of their valid degrees to a ministry office, but the sheer numbers are going to overwhelm the office and I doubt that a governmental office will be in a position to do reference checks and degree checks for the thousands of people that would be involved,’’ she said.
Lastly, the KOTESOL president pointed out two critical problems of Korean English teachers. The first one is ``lack of self-confidence’’ in their own English-speaking abilities.
``I would say to them that most English teachers around the world are not native speakers, yet this does not handicap them in fully assuming their roles as teachers and facilitators of learning for their students.’’
``Korean teachers of English need to assume the mantle of role models of perpetual English language learners and show their students that it is perfectly acceptable for a teacher not to know all the answers. Teachers should cast themselves as model learners, albeit advanced learners. It is unrealistic for them or their students to expect them to have the accent or command of the language that a native speaker has,’’ she said.
The other problem is the expectation of society and the educational system that teaching English or other foreign languages is the same as teaching other academic subjects.
``English cannot be learned through lectures on the linguistic structures of English. English or any foreign language has to be learned through use in communicative situations, through the learners' trial and error. Making errors and receiving feedback in some form is essential to a learner’s progress.’’
``Until the students, their parents, and the educational authorities understand that the framework for teaching English must shift from passive lectures to active usage, the English students of Korea will not be able to make the progress they hope for,’’ she said.