When I first went to the United States to study in the summer of 1998, every trip to fast food joints was full of stress. I managed to submit my order, but had difficulty understanding what the clerks said to me. Only after several repetitions and after my face had reddened did they make themselves understood. Spending almost 20 years studying English at that point including experience at an English-related workplace did not save me from embarrassment. Indeed, for many of us here, the struggle with the English language is a never-ending story. After conferences and meetings, we hear many of our colleagues saying “if only it had been done in Korean.”

Koreans spend a lot of time and money studying English, as the term “English-fever” would indicate. English is first taught at kindergarten. Tremendous efforts are then poured into learning the language through elementary, middle and high school. The efforts continue in college to get good scores on standardized English tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC, so as to impress potential employers in the job market. Even office workers flock to morning and evening sessions of private teaching institutions so as not to be left behind.

And yet, Koreans’ English proficiency does not match the resources mobilized. In terms of English ability, Korea’s global ranking falls roughly in the middle, basically in the same group as countries where English is not so relentlessly taught as in Seoul. If the so-called principle of “10,000 hours” holds true, by the time students graduate from elementary school in Seoul, English should not be a problem. And by the time they graduate from high school, they should speak like BBC anchors. What then explains this meager outcome after all the time and effort?

One credible explanation is the exam-oriented study of the language. Much of the study time is spent focusing on how to ace final exams in high school, to excel on college entrance exams and to achieve high scores on standardized tests. TOEFL and TOEIC scores have long been a determining factor in corporations’ hiring standards. Even the government is now fixated on these scores: on official government hiring exams standardized test scores have replaced conventional English tests. So, much of the national focus is placed on how to ace these standardized tests as opposed to how to enhance actual English communication ability.

And now English is being used as a utility tool to reform the college entrance exam, i.e., the College Scholastic Aptitude Test. Knowing that a big chunk of parents’ spending is on English education, the government now says it will do the parents a big favor. According to the Ministry of Education, the CSAT’s English section will become much easier from 2018 ― so easy that parents will no longer need to spend money on private education. However easy the exam becomes, private tutoring will probably persist as long as parents deem the CSAT the most important exam for their children.

Regardless of the appropriateness of the government’s new scheme, it again confirms the follies we have committed so far ― treating English mainly as an exam subject and a score to achieve rather than a tool for communication in the globalized world. Even the government is now acknowledging that communication ability is not the main objective of English education in Korean schools. A bad signal indeed.

As long as English remains a global communication tool, students will have to encounter the hard reality anyway and interact and compete with those from other countries. An easy college entrance exam would not relieve students of this future reality. This scheme of “easy now, difficult later” does not solve the problem. If anything, knowing this, parents will continue to up the ante in this race, regardless of and perhaps because of the government policy.

By Lee Jae-min

Lee Jae-min is an associate professor of law at Seoul National University. ― Ed.