Why can’t the Korean goverment sort out the mess of the teaching of English in this country? First of all, the new president and his team announce a plan for all English classes in high schools to be taught exclusively in English by their Korean English teachers (immersion) by 2010. Then it changes to 2013 and now the idea has been dropped completely.

The problem is that less than half of the country’s English teachers can actually speak English fluently - Shouldn’t it be a requirement for the job that you can speak the language you propose to teach to others? Also to know how to teach speaking? Seems crazy, doesn’t it? Not it Korea.

This is a country where English means reading, listening, grammar, vocabulary - anything but speaking! The reason for this is that the English part of the University entrance test, does not involve speaking. Neither does TOEIC, a high score in which is required by applicants for jobs in the big companies. The new president has announced that speaking will soon form part of the University entrance test - and that’s where all the trouble started.

Everyone asked the simple question - How are we going to get all these grammar experts ready to teach speaking in the classroom?

How indeed, when most of the native speaker teachers are not qualified to do so!

The ubiquitous English hagwons are supposed to fill the gap. Parents pay a lot of money to send their kids here to get what the state schools can’t provide. It is not a requirement for the native speaker teachers (NSTs) in these hagwons to have any teaching qualifications and in most Korean children’s hagwons, their Korean managers require NSTs to teach writing skills and go through a graded reader in their 2 lessons a week with each class. Although speaking is advertised in promotional material as part of the deal, if it’s dealt with properly, the kids will be very lucky.

Sure, writing is important and it needs an NST for that, but there is very little time left to teach speaking if the teacher is required to deal with reading skills as well! The result is a little bit of unstructured discussion from time to time.

This is the situation in many English hagwons in Korea. The native speaker teachers they employ don’t have enough time to teach speaking skills and are probably untrained to do so anyway.

Perhaps the Korean government thinks that if it insisted on proper teaching qualifications, there would be a crisis in numbers. But perhaps if it paid properly for trained teachers, the situation would eventually right itself.

Solutions - it’s time to insist on trained foreign English teachers and drop reading from the curriculum in hagwons. Use a native speaker teacher for what he or she can give you that a Korean teacher can’t. Speaking and Writing skills only - 50-50. In state schools, make your Korean English teachers get at least level 6 in Ielts. Have them do a TESOL too.