[EYE ON ENGLISH (16)] Active reading boosts English speaking skills

This is the 16th installment of a series of interviews with experts in English education aimed at offering tips, trends and information related to English learning and teaching in Korea. -- Ed.



Hosting a daily radio program is stressful, to say the least. But Lee Hyun-suk hosts not one but two programs on EBS: "English Speaking" in the morning and "English Headquarters" in the evening.

Both programs share target audiences -- English learners of Korea -- but their angles are different. "English Speaking," as the title itself amply suggests, is designed to encourage Korean learners to improve their speaking competence, while "English Headquarters," launched just this month, is to sum up all the key expressions taught on various EBS programs for an effective refresher.

The sheer amount of broadcast hours is daunting, but Lee said what`s not broadcast is more demanding.

"Hosts of EBS radio`s language learning programs are offering lessons based on the textbooks they write each month, and I`m also spending about 100 hours on the monthly textbook," Lee said in an interview with The Korea Herald.



Despite the heavy workload, Lee said it`s exciting to host shows for English learners willing to tune in to a radio program to improve their language ability.

Lee, who lived in Hong Kong for four and a half years in his childhood, said his career in the English education field started with his sense of hitting a limitation when he graduated from college, majoring in English education.

"Since I attended a foreign language high school, I was exposed to not only English but also other languages such as German and Chinese. I also studied Japanese in college, and enjoyed talking with others. But when I studied foreign languages, I realized I should learn more to become an English teacher," Lee said.

Lee`s choice was to attend a simultaneous interpretation and translation school -- not in Korea but in the United States. He went to the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, and even served as the college`s student council president.

"My idea was that studying translation and interpretation would boost my English competence, and since the field requires high levels of fluency in both Korean and English, I think the courses helped me a lot when I entered the English education field," he said.

The interpretation and translation school curriculum was challenging, but rewarding because he not only expanded his horizon as a future interpreter but also acquired a key learning technique -- active reading.

Lee said he set aside one and a half hours reading newspapers early each morning, which was part of his active reading sessions. Plenty of immersive reading helped him collect new expressions that he wanted to use for actual situations.



Active reading, Lee said, is a process in which learners recognize useful expressions in text and then try to appreciate their usage and practice them repeatedly. Using the technique favored by interpretation school students also helps. For instance, the learner reads an English newspaper article on a given topic such as a nuclear power plant, and highlights key expressions. Writing down those expressions in a separate notebook is also effective. And then finally reading a Korean newspaper article on the same subject, this time trying to sum up the content in English while trying to recall and use the expressions from the English article.

Lee said a thematic approach also matters when it comes to English speaking. Dealing with diverse topics through active reading paves the way for boosting the learner`s speaking skills that can be readily applied to real situations.

Lee also recommended that students should focus on memorizing entire sentences rather than vocabulary items. "Some students still favor memorizing vocabulary items separately but I think memorizing sentences is much more effective for improving speaking competence," he said.

(insight@heraldm.com)