English-speaking kids and unqualified, native-speaker English teacher (Eng/Kor)

Posted: 2002/03/11  By: Roger Soh (Views:3558)

Nowadays, Korean people are going crazy about speaking English like a native speaker. Korean
mothers, particularly, are going even crazier about making their children speak English like a
native speaker even before they learn to speak their native Korean language right. I often get
calls from so-called phone-English-speaking academies who suggest me to talk with a native
English speaker for any topic I would like to talk about. I then ask the caller what kind of
person the native speaker is and the caller says he or she is just a native English speaker.

I then say, most of times with some anger, so what? What on the earth is the big deal about
it? For me, it is ridiculous to waste time to chat with a native English speaker whose identity
and quality as a human being have never been known to me.

I would sincerely like to ask my fellow Korean people if they and their adorable kids really
have to speak English like a native speaker. If someone asks me the same question, my answer
will definitely be NO.

Many people think putting some butter on their tongues is the best way to learn spoken
English even before they learn basic English fundamentals but I resent that. For those people,
I would say "In America, even street gangs who can't even read a word speak fluent English
because they were born in America."

What is more important is to build solid English reading, writing and grammar background.

Without it, you can speak broken English with limited expressions only for occasions and
topics you are accustomed to. You can never express your thoughts for a random topic in good
spoken English. We can see so many examples of this case in Los Angeles Korea Town.

When a person brags about his English proficiency spitting out some English words twisting
his tongue as hard as he can, I ask him or her this question: " Can you translate this Korean
sentence to good written English? All of them I met backed off.

If you have solid written English background and can express your thought in good written
English, you can also speak good English without having to worry about speaking like a native
speaker. If you have solid written English background, you can learn to speak English with
right accents, intonations and rhythms. If you do, English speakers can definitely hear you
even though you can never be a native English speaker.

I would like to sincerely ask Korean young mothers: please don't rush your little babies to
those English-speaking kindergartens to make them speak English even before they can speak
Korean. Are you sure those native English speakers who teach your kids English are really
qualified to teach? Do we have and do you know any standard to screen the qualification of
those native English speakers who live in Korea making a living as English teachers? Do you
really think you must send your kids to those English-speaking kindergarten paying almost one
million Won a month just because all the neighborhood kids are also going there? Do you really
think that will help your kids learn right English ? Well, think again.

In fact, Korean young mothers do not deserve all the blame for this ridiculous phenomenon of
sending their little babies to English-speaking kindergartens. The blame really belongs to the
Korean education authorities who thought of the dumb idea of English-speaking classes in
elementary schools and who have never done any education policy-making right.

Learning good English is important for young kids to live in global society. However,
learning how to twist their tongues as hard as they can without ever learning the fundamentals
of right English is not the way. It won't work and do any good to your adorable kids.