KOTESOL: Why Is English “Difficult” for Koreans?
There is definitely the perception in Korea that English is difficult to learn. When I first came to Korea, there were two things that Koreans would do to playfully strike fear into children. They would say, “If you do not behave, that American over there (all foreigners back then were referred to as “Americans”) will scold you.” And secondly, they would tell them that when they entered middle school and started learning English, they would have a horribly hard time because English was so dreadfully difficult. Here we will look at the issue of perceived difficulty of learning English, whether it really is difficult, and what may be the causes of any difficulty in learning English.
Is English Intrinsically Difficult?
To answer the question of intrinsic difficulty in learning English, we can look at how children learn their first language. If it takes children longer to learn English as their first language than it does for children to learn other languages as their mother tongue, then we could say that English is more difficult. However, research has shown that, regardless of what the first language is that the young child is learning, they generally begin to make single-word utterances by 11 to 12 months of age and later join words into paired combinations and short phrases. By the age of three, the young child is beginning to speak their first language (L1) in complete sentences – whatever their L1 may be. This tells us that, no, English is not intrinsically difficult to learn – at least not as an L1. If language were intrinsically difficult to learn, it would have the tendency to lose L1 learners and eventually die out.
Is English Difficult to Learn as a Second Language?
This question is different from the one above in that it is referring to the difficulty of learning English for people who already know one or more languages. And the answers you get will differ. If you ask a French L1 speaker if English is difficult to learn, they may say “no.” If you ask a Japanese L1 speaker, they are most likely to say “yes.” Why the difference? The difference lies in that the second language learner has already learned a language and has already acquired a set of cultural attributes. When a language is linguistically similar to a speaker’s L1 and the culture of that language community is similar to that of the speaker’s L1, a language will be easier to learn. Conversely, if the two language communities are linguistically and culturally distant, the second language will be difficult to learn.
The U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), which trains government personnel in languages, has classified the 88 languages that it teaches into four categories, according to difficulty for native English speakers to learn. The categorization is based on the number of hours that it takes for learners to attain an advanced level of proficiency. Category 1, the 12 easiest languages to learn, includes languages like French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish. In Category 4, the small category of the most difficult languages, one finds Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese and three other Chinese languages. So, as we find that Korean is difficult for English speakers to learn, we can conclude that English would be equally difficult for Koreans to learn.
How Long Does It Take to Learn English?
Available FSI data indicates that it takes native English speakers an average of 600 hours to attain advanced proficiency in Category 1 languages, while it takes on average 2,200 hours to reach equal proficiency in Category 4 languages. One can safely conclude that about an equal number of 2,200 hours would be required for a Korean speaker to acquire an advanced level of English proficiency. It is commonly pointed out that the Korean high school graduate, after 10 or more years of English study, often has great trouble producing a short simple sentence. And in those 10 or so years, they may have had even more that 2,200 hours of English study if public school and private academy classes are added. The answer to how long it takes to learn English may not lie as much in the number of hours of study as in how one studies and how one is taught. Whether English, or any language, is easy or difficult to learn as a second language depends a lot on the learning strategies used and the motivation of the learner, as well as on the methodology used, the content knowledge and the teaching techniques of the teacher.
Is Getting a High English Test Score a Good Goal?
The Korean education system is highly test-driven. Students spend years preparing for high-stakes test, and their futures literally depend on the outcomes of these tests. At present, the main high-stakes test is the college entrance exam, but in the past there were similar high-stakes tests for high school and middle school entrance. On these tests, English has been one of the main subject areas tested for the college entrance exam, as Science and Mathematics are the other two. During the students’ university years, studying English for a high TOEIC score is a requisite for landing a desirable job after graduation. These tests largely employ an objective testing format such as answering multiple-choice questions. However, such discrete item tests provide no information on learners’ ability to use language for communicative purposes. Accordingly, communicative skills are not emphasized in secondary school English courses, especially in high school. What is emphasized is memorization of features and facts about English, which are to be regurgitated on exams.
It must be recognized that “learning English” is an expression often used to refer to two very different things. (1) It is used to refer to learning about English – memorizing vocabulary items and memorizing grammar rules so that this information can be accessed to answer multiple-choice questions on a test. (2) The term “learning English” is also used to refer to acquiring the skills needed to communicate, both verbally and in writing, and practicing those skills to make them automatic. The first can be compared to studying academic subjects such as History and Mathematics; the second can be compared to learning a skill such as riding a bicycle or playing tennis.
If I bought a book on how to ride a bicycle, read it, memorized it and got a perfect score on a test of its contents, what would happen when I finally attempted to ride that bike? I would fall flat on my face. What many Koreans do with English is quite similar. They memorize facts about English for doing well on answering discrete items on English tests, and then they fall on their faces in their attempts to communicate because they have not practiced English communication skills. Simply put: if one does not practice communication skills for “learning English,” they do not form communication skills. Getting a high English test score is a goal for advancing academically and for securing a job, but it should not be one’s only goal if his/her wish is to become skilled with English communication.
More will be coming in the next issue on which ELT methodologies and techniques do and do not efficiently contribute to second language acquisition.
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Monthly Chapter Meeting
Date & Time: July 13 (Saturday), 1:30 pm
Place: Chosun University, Main Building, Left Wing
Featured Workshops
- · Memorable Vocabulary Teaching and Learning (Jessica Magnusson; GNUE)
- · Guided Teacher Reflection for Busy Teachers (Roger Fusselman; Seoul Chapter)
Swap-Shop: Share your teaching ideas and activities.
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