In Memory: Prof. Shin Sangsoon (1922-2011)
When I think of Professor Sangsoon Shin, my lifelong teacher and mentor, what immediately comes to mind is that he never just talked the talk. He always walked the talk. He was one of those rare breed of teachers who had the courage of his convictions. He always said what he meant and always meant what he said.
Way back in the 1950s and 1960s, Professor Shin had the courage or the audacity, if you will, to teach English through English. He didn’t mind ending up as the laughing stock of his English-teaching colleagues on campus. He didn’t fear at all to go where none of them had dared to go before.
Unlike most of his colleagues, he was not afraid to live by his conviction that the Korean-language bridge to English wasn’t worth that much. He wouldn’t have been caught dead taking refuge in the sanctuary of the Korean language.
Back in the early 1970s, Professor Shin proposed to the universal ire of Korea’s ELT community that fluency-based teacher-certification be institutionalized. He ran into loud and persistent opposition from much of the Korean ELT establishment of the day. Undaunted by all this widespread static, he went right on making his case for many such ELT-friendly causes throughout the rest of his stay on this planet.
This proposal of Professor Shin’s was nothing short of revolutionary for his contemporaries. He made the proposal from his bully pulpit as president of CETA-K (College English Teachers Association of Korea), the predecessor of KATE (Korea Association of Teachers of English).
Hindsight is always 20-20, but he had to put up with all sorts of undeserved sneers and jeers from the country’s (philistine) ELT community. Truth does have a scratched face, doesn’t it always?
Talk of reinventing the wheel. It is ironic indeed that today we are revisiting some of the very issues Professor Shin had the foresight to raise decades ago to such across-the-board ridicule. One of them is teaching English through English. Another one is English-language proficiency as the key criterion for teacher certification and promotion. It is indeed a case of what is old becoming new again.
Professor Shin was a giant of a lodestar for Korean ELT and will go down as such in history. He had so much to give to ELT in the nation as a whole. He literally re-created ELT for Gwangju and Chonnam as well.
Most of all, he made Gwangju and Chonnam the birthplace of audio-based English-language listening comprehension testing in Korea as we know it today.
It is anything but a stretch to say that he almost single-handedly turned Chonnam National University into a cradle of ELT leadership for the entire nation. It is a tribute to him that Gwangju is accorded, albeit often a bit begrudgingly, pride of place in Korean ELT circles today.
Professor Shin is leaving behind a whole legion of stunned admirers both at home and abroad. Among them, mostly his former students, is a cohort of internationally recognized scholars of language teaching and linguistics. They will forever be in debt to this great teacher for tirelessly showing the way forward. If not for him, they could never have dreamed of being where they are today.
It now behooves us to make sure that what Professor Shin poured all his heart and soul into while here with us be carried on and not forgotten anytime soon. We can best preserve his legacy for future generations by faithfully following in his footsteps.
That’s easier said than done, though. What we need most of all here is to always keep in mind the courage of his convictions and his sense of high principle as a dedicated teacher and dignified human being.
Now that the torch has been passed to us, let’s all try and be worthy heirs to Professor Shin’s road to ELT. With that in mind, we must live the way he did. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I know he would just love that. How do I know? I was his one-time star student and trusted assistant. Besides, he officiated at my wedding back in 1968.
On behalf of your admirers, myself included, goodbye and goodnight, Professor Shin. Do take good care of yourself. In the meantime, the entire city of Gwangju and the whole province of Chonnam will be missing you so very much; as will the rest of the country’s ELT community. With you gone, we will never be the same. May you always rest in peace.
By Nahm-Sheik Park
President, International Graduate School of English, Seoul
A version of this article appeared
in the Gwangju News print edition, December 2011.