Written vs. Spoken English

Posted: 2003/11/11  By: Bubba (Views:3431)

Although I agree with a large percent of your post, I respectfully disagree with the following
statement:

You Wrote: "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."

While a person who can write well in English is more likely to be able to speak and
understand proper English (and vice-versa), being proficient in one field doesn't necessarily
guarantee proficiency in others.  If a solid background in written English guarantees that one
can speak English well, why are there so many Korean students (who presumably spend about 4-6
years learning English in primary education) who can't respond to a simple spoken question?
 After all, for these years on end of 'learning' English in primary schools, what these
students are primarily studying is written English (for university entrance exams, as well as
the TOEIC/TOEFL tests).  I've also known people who can write coherent and gramatically correct
English sentences, but who had to first write down whatever they wanted to say.  If all you
study is written English, where do you learn your proper accents, intonations, and rhythms?
 Sure, you can go to a dictionary to find a phonetic translation of just about any word you
like -- but intonation and rhythm?  Nevermind being able to understand someone with a 'typical'
English accent (usually American -- by Korean standards, at least)... What happens when you
meet someone with a Cockney accent?  Or Australian?  Or Kenyan?  Even though these people might
all write their English exactly the same way, (plus or minus a few displaced letters and
colloquialisms) they certainly don't sound alike.  Can you make yourself understood to them
without a good amount of knowledge as to what spoken English is /supposed/ to sound like?
 Maybe... but probably not without a good amount of hard work on everyone's part...

What I'm trying to say here is that it's incredibly hard to learn to speak a language simply
by learning to read and write it, and it's not the way most (if any) 'native speakers' learn
the language.  With that being said -- Is it useful for a child to attend a school to learn a
second language before they even have a relatively decent grasp on their own?  Probably not
very useful.  Going to school one hour a day isn't going to teach a 6-year-old how to speak
English like a native speaker... In order to do that, you would need a truly bi-lingual
environment.  If more parents would realize this and stop being blinded by their almost
monomaniacal obsession with getting their children into a 'good university', maybe they could
save their money instead of squandering it on 'native-speaker' classes.  Simply put, I don't
think most parents put much thought into their childrens' education past finding 'the best' (or
maybe just the best way to get their kids out of the house).  For English, 'the best' (in the
typical Korean parent's estimation) is a class taught by a native English speaker (after all, a
well-trained Korean English teacher can't possibly be as good as a native-speaker with
absolutely no knowledge of teaching methodology, now can they?)  Parents are looking for
whatever edge they can for their kids where the university entrance exams are concerned, and
hagwons exploit this fact by offering 'native speaker' classes which they tout as being
superior to classes with just a Korean teacher.  Well, maybe some are... After all, there are
some people in Korea with real qualifications and real teaching experience, but even so -- how
many students when they go home are actually going to _use_ English, rather than just studying
it?  After all, if the students aren't _speaking_ English away from school, what use is it to
send them to an English conversation class?  It's like trying to learn how to build a car
without ever being allowed to see one outside of a classroom, or trying to understand the
Theory of Relativity with a book on calculus and a slide-rule -- maybe some people can, but
most people will not be able to.  

What chance does a student who's trying to learn English have in this country?  If they're
lucky enough not to spend 90% of their waking time inside one classroom or another, then
typically, they're made to study other subjects so excessively that by the time it comes to
study English, their poor brains are so fried that there's almost no chance they can have any
retention whatsoever.  It's useless to harp on parents' attitudes towards one subject when the
whole system is so unbearably screwed-up.  Get rid of college entrance exams, get rid of
academic snobbery and backwards-thinking Confucian ideals, stop thinking you have to make your
children work harder than any other children in the world because you live in a 'developing
country' (you don't), and maybe someday more than 1% of the population of Korea will learn
enough English to hold their own in a simple conversation.  Until then, enjoy being in that 1%
or so who's learned English despite (not because of) everything your parents have done to
you...  You certainly deserve to take a long break.