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.

The chapter summarizes the argument made throughout the book: Symbols mediate our relationship to physical facts and material culture; The use of symbols enables us to construct and thus manipulate social reality; Symbolic forms have symbolic functions that are multiple, changing and conflictual; Symbolic power can turn into symbolic violence; and Language as symbolic power has been transformed by the use of symbolic systems like the Internet. It then discusses the implications of viewing language as symbolic power both for applied linguistic research and for communicative language teaching. It reflects on the role symbolic power plays in educational practice and it examines the challenging issue of how to deal with politics in the language classroom and the ethical questions this raises. The chapter ends with an analysis of Toni Morrison’s Nobel lecture and her memorable statement: “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

Chapter 2 provides a historical perspective to vocabulary teaching. It covers how vocabulary was addressed in methodologies ranging from Grammar-Translation to communicative language teaching. It then looks at how vocabulary testing has developed over the last 100 years.