Teaching Children Music with English

Abstract

Language immersion programs have become popular in the field of English education in Korea. Language immersion is a method of second language teaching in which school subjects are learned through the second language (Chamot & El-dinary, 1999). The root of language immersion can be found in the elementary school programs established by English-speaking parents who were concerned about their children’s French proficiency in the 1960s in Canada (Cumming, 2000). In the program, the medium of instruction of school subjects was in French and the students’ first language was English. Although immersion programs have some drawbacks in terms of language teaching itself, many school systems around the world started language immersion programs in elementary schools. Korea is not an exception. Over the past few years, English has become an integral part of education in Korea and the average at which children begin studying English has gotten lower and lower. Even though public English education starts in the third grade, many parents are convinced that learning English at an earlier stage in a natural environment would highly benefit their children’s language acquisition. Therefore, a lot of English kindergartens have been established, and some have even started to change their pedagogic approach. Following this trend, this portfolio introduces a music textbook for teachers teaching children in immersion programs in Korea.