Short cut to better English

A Seoul National University study has found that students who have received English education at the elementary school level show better test results but interest and self-confidence in learning English drops as students grew older, the Ministry of education revealed yesterday.

The research was headed by Kwon O-ryang, a professor in the English Education department at Seoul National University. The 8,000 students tested included students who took mandatory English classes since third grade in elementary schools and students who started taking English classes in middle school. They all took the same English proficiency exam called "GTEC for students." Kwon found that there was a 45.1 point difference when comparing the two groups.

The exam, which is composed of three parts - listening, reading and writing - is a national English exam in Japan developed by a company named Benesse Corporation.

Also, more than 40 percent of the elementary school students responded they enjoy studying English and 46 percent said they wanted to speak English when encountering a foreigner.

However, 9 percent of middle school students said they had more self-confidence in English while only 4 percent of high school students gave the same answer.

"Elementary school students express great confidence in acquiring English but the increasing level of difficulty of the language makes the students lose some of their interest," Kwon said.

The research was conducted after a decade passed since the government introduced English as one of the fixed curriculum at elementary schools nationwide in 1997.

As a solution, ministry officials said they plan to send 10,000 English teachers abroad for training by 2015, hire more native-speaking English teachers nationally and designate a fixed number of elementary schools as English research centers.

(sharon@heraldm.com)



By Cho Ji-hyun