Art and History for Students

Abstract

Korean high school English classes generally aim to help students achieve higher scores on the Suneung (Korean SAT). The majority of these classes, therefore, focus on teaching grammar and test-taking skills. In contrast, there are not enough speaking and writing activities for students. Due to a lack of balance in language classes, learners rarely have opportunities to produce the language and to learn cultural knowledge in the classrooms, not to mention making connections to their real lives in Korea. Due to a lack of background knowledge and speaking opportunities, students often face difficulty when expressing their ideas and opinions in English even though they have been studying it for over 10 years. This textbook is designed to help learners learn the language and content of the target culture at the same time. In order to help the learners to build cultural background of the language, the content chosen for the textbook includes art and historical topics. In each chapter, the target language and a meaningful topic are presented as a reading passage. Modified authentic reading materials will be provided for the chapter. At the end of every chapter, a writing activity is provided which requires both content and language knowledge from the chapter. To develop the target learners’ fluency and balanced language skills (speaking listening, reading, and writing), this book also includes various fun activities. The target audience of this book is young adults and college students at the pre-intermediate level who are taking courses at language institutes in an EFL environment (Korea). It is assumed that the target audience is well aware of the importance of language learning, so they seek to learn not only English per se but also cultural knowledge of the language. In order to motivate the target learners, the topics chosen for the book are relevant to learners’ own lives. This book also provides learners with opportunities to talk about the topics instead of asking them to recall lists of names and dates which are not relevant to them. Learners will be able to learn the content through involvement by doing fun activities: creating art mysteries, creating educational art and history videos, watching films, writing post cards from the past, writing historical fictions, and visiting museums and historic sites. I believe that this textbook will be able to meet my target learners’ needs by providing meaningful content and activities.