Building Communicative Language Skills for Korean Middle School Students

Abstract

English language courses in Korean middle schools place great emphasis on developing the ability to achieve on the Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test (KSAT). This standardized test is designed to assess reading and listening comprehension as well as grammar knowledge. Accoring to Choi(2008, p.41), the KSAT does not include speaking and writing components, thus leading to very little, if any, teaching of speaking and writing in middle schools. With an influx, however, of English speaking foreigners in Korea, and more students travelling and studying abroad, speaking ability is increasingly becoming more important. This Textbook, therefore, aims to encourage middle school students to practice all 4 skills in meaningful and communicative ways. In order to motivate these studnets who have been hesitant to produce English, this Textbook takes a Cross-cultural approach. Instead of pure focus on test taking skills, students will read and listen to texts to compare and contrast various aspects of Korean culture such as greetings, travel etiquette, and food with those of English speaking countries around the world. These texts will then be used as input to facilitate speaking activities are kept uncomplicated and are intergrated opportunistically to either support speaking or to practice writing a genre that corresponds to a selected cultural topic.