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8 - English Language Teacher Education in South Korea: Changes and Challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2020

By
Sang-Keun Shin
Edited by
Amy Bik May Tsui
Amy Bik May Tsui
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
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Summary

This chapter outlines the various English teacher education policies and the corresponding measures introduced by the South Korean government to emphasize the importance of English to its national competitiveness. It points out that, despite these policies and measures, English teaching in schools has not significantly improved. It observes that in contrast to official rhetoric ostensibly supporting varieties of English, even teachers who speak fluent English set native-speaker English, especially American English, as the norm and feel burdened about teaching in English as they feel they lack English proficiency. In addition, in-service English teachers continue to raise the question of whether Communicative Language Teaching pedagogy developed in the ESL environment is appropriate for South Korea in which English is taught as a foreign language. Many teachers also experience reform fatigue due to frequent changes in policies for political purposes. The chapter concludes that there is an urgent need for research on English education policies and English teacher education policies that will create the environment where new English teachers can put theory into practice.

Keywords

globalizationEnglish feverwashbackgrammar translation methodCommunicative Language TeachingEnglish as a lingua francalocally appropriate pedagogyreality shockteacher socializationnative-speaker varieties of Englishreform fatigue
Type
Chapter
Information
English Language Teaching and Teacher Education in East Asia
Global Challenges and Local Responses
 , pp. 159 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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