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Abstract

Despite continuously reforming the Korean English education system, English teaching in public schools is still influenced by the washback effect. Due to exam-oriented teaching, Korean students often lack confidence in their speaking and writing abilities when they have to take speaking classes in high school. Even though Korean students have been taught English for 7 years, from elementary school to middle school, they are not readily able to use the language form and structure they have studied, when speaking in English. For the most part, they are also unaware of how culture factors into the language. This Textbook seeks to provide students opportunities to apply their grammatical knowledge to more communicative activities. Students will learn about various current topics via listening and reading, and then have ample opportunity to practice speaking through many scaffolded speaking activities: ultimately, the goal is to improve the students’ communicative competence so that when they graduate from high school, they are better able to communicate in English using 4 skills. This Text book is designed to motivate students to improve their speaking skills by incorporating meaningful and engaging authentic listening and reading texts, revolving around current issues in the news. The target learners are eight students in their second year of high school who are preparing to study abroad in the near future. They are advanced-low according to ACTFL. Each class lasts two hours in the after school program and takes place once a week for a year. Method This textbook applies Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to engage students in speaking activities with regards to current topics. The numerous communicative activities in this Textbook encourage the whole class to interact with each one another, not only to improve their speaking skills, but also to build confidence in producing the language. Expected Outcomes and conclusion This Textbook is designed to help improve student’s speaking ability, and overall communicative competence, by learning about current issues and also increasing their awareness of cultural contexts through this Book’s varied topics. In terms of communicative activities, the students will develop creative thinking by participating in their final group work.