It is no wonder that many students hate English. English education is tremendously unfair to the study-obsessed youth of Korea, who are condemned to mediocrity or failure in English due to the promotion of archaic memorization as the main study strategy and the harm done by translation, both of which discourage thinking in English. Can we imagine being able to function in our native languages without thinking in them? Why should learning a foreign language be so different?

Memorization interferes with learning to think in English and thereby makes language skills unnecessarily difficult to acquire. It is usually a huge waste of time because memorized English vocabulary, dialogues and grammar appear to be stored in the same part of the brain as 2X3=6, and it is simply too difficult to remember and retrieve memorized English during an actual conversation because it is stored differently ― and in another part of the brain ― than language skills acquired by actively using, and therefore absorbing, a language while thinking in it. Nevertheless, Korean students are often forced to learn dialogues by rote and then single students are required to spit out all the roles of a dialogue as a so-called “performance test” which involves neither communicating nor thinking in the foreign language. Similarly, students memorize long lists of vocabulary probably without even considering how the words might be used in sentences.

Translation is another serious problem. Many students write word-for-word translations between the lines in their books even though they already know most of the words. In addition, many middle-school students get confused when they hear a question such as “Am I a teacher?” because they translate the word “I” (along with the rest of the sentence) into Korean, think the question is therefore about them and then answer, “No, I’m not.” As a result, one could argue that many Korean students can’t even understand such basic English as “Am I ...?”

To help our youth to become more successful in learning English, the college entrance exam should include a speaking test and the Korean Ministry of Education should promote success by requiring that teachers teach speaking, give oral tests and motivate students to use think-in-English study methods while largely discouraging memorization and translation. Alone and in the classroom, students should practice making oral language decisions about words and grammar, the same decisions that enabled us to improve our native-language skills.

Oral testing for the college entrance exam will be extremely expensive. However, it’s also “expensive” to have national English programs that don’t work. If Korea wants much better results, then the oral testing expenses and other difficulties involved such as teacher preparation, perhaps both smaller class sizes and the hiring of more English teachers, and competition from language institutes can simply be regarded as inconveniences to be managed. Let’s enable the next generation to choose to experience the pleasure and confidence that increasing fluency progress will bring!

In conclusion, I recommend that the Korean Ministry of Education (1) require that teachers teach English in English and (2) prepare them to do at least simple oral testing in our public schools with a view towards (3) speaking tests as part of the college entrance exam, and (4) also require teachers to promote better study strategies that lead to thinking in and speaking English, while (5) exerting pressure on both Korea’s school systems and private language institutes to stop their overemphasis on memorization.

Does Korea have the will to make difficult, but necessary, changes?

Be honest! If memorization and translation (and the resulting failure to learn to think in English), and the lack of speaking tests are not the main reasons for Koreans’ difficulties in learning to speak English, what is your explanation? 

By John D. Murray 

John D. Murray, a former teacher of German, Spanish and French, has master’s degrees in ESL and German. In Korea, he taught in middle schools for 12 years and as a professor in the English education department of a university for three years. ― Ed.