Screen English Replacing Native English Speaker

By Park Chan-woo

I am running a small English academy in a small city. Even though the city isn't large, more and more English academies are opening here.

We face a need to make our academy competitive and meet parent's strong demand for native English speakers. In addition to this, the government's policy on English education focuses on helping students improve their speaking ability. This is why more hagwon or private cram schools as well as public schools have hired a growing number of native English speakers.

While working for other hagwon, I witnessed many native English speakers who were not responsible for their classes. They did not show up after sending a text message saying that they were sick. Later, I often found some of them had been drinking late into the night leaving them unable to work. Also, I received a lot of complaints from parents and students that they did not prepare for their classes.

Despite this, I hired some native English speakers after opening my hagwon.

As my institute is too small to have full-time native speakers, I tried to hire part- time workers. However, it was very hard and most of them prefer to work in big cities. Although I offered them high salaries, they didn't want to work in this small county.

My suggestions were rejected by many native speakers in spite of offering a very high hourly rate. While I experienced hard times looking for native English speakers, I saw an advertisement for "Screen English" a few months ago and took some sample classes.

I was not convinced with the online programs as the lecturers were Filipinos and I thought that they could not teach English as well as those from Western countries.

However, I found that our students were satisfied with the online classes and the teachers are well qualified as they are elementary and secondary school teachers back in their countries.

Although there are some worries about technical problems with online classes, I have yet to find any so far. Moreover, there are so many companies that specialize in Screen English nowadays.

If you have difficulties in securing native English speakers for your institutes, I strongly recommend Screen English.

Park Chan-woo runs a private English hagwon in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. He can be reached at pcw305@hanmail.net.