Practical reading and debate for Korean middle school students

Abstract

This book will help students are able to learn how to do practical reading and do a debate. In Korea, many parents are focusing on English education for their children and they send their children to language academies outside standard public education. According to the research paper1, the amount of money of the English education market in South Korea is estimated at over 4 trillion won per year( about $3,333,000 USD) and the expenditures on English study abroad adds an additional trillion won (about$ 833,000,000 USD). Furthermore, by 1997, already 70% of the children in Seoul were participating in the English education market. As students get older, they need high English scores to get better jobs. Ironically, even though they may get high scores on the standardized English tests, most of them cannot express their opinions at all in written and spoken forms. Due to this interesting phenomenon, Korean educators have realized the importance of focusing on practical English education in public schools. My Portfolio is an attempt at implementing practical English education with regards to reading and helping students form opinions in their own words. The group of students I seek to address is a group of 15 year olds, in their second year of middle school in a Korean EFL learning context. The target learners are in a Korean public school, and there are 25 of them who are Intermediate mid level according to ACTFL. I have chosen this target group of students because I am teaching these students and I can observe them and apply my methodologies and activities in this textbook. The target students are accustomed to take test-focused and teacher-centered classes; however they have expressed an interest in learning about interesting subjects with authentic fun reading materials, and they want to learn practical grammar points and in order to express their opinions more easily.