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˃READNGFOCUS
A hunger for English lessons.
ADAPTED FROM
A HUNGER FOR ENGLISH LESSONS
BY CHOE SANG-HUN
Published in
NEW YORK TIMES Friday, March 24, 2006
1
Kim Hyo Jin, a timid junior high school student, stood before
her American teacher fidgeting. The smiling teacher held up a
green pepper and asked in clear, enunciated English: "What is
this?"
2
"Peemang!" the South Korean teens blurted out, then covered
her mouth with a hand as if to stop - too late - the Korean
word that had left her mouth. Mortified, she tried again.
Without looking the teacher in the eye, she held both her
hands out and asked, this time in English: "May I have green
pepper?"
3
Kim took the vegetable with a bow, and darted back to her
giggling classmates - beaming and feeling relieved that she
had successfully taken a small first step toward demolishing
what South Koreans consider one of their biggest weaknesses
in the competitiveness world: the fear of speaking in English
to Westerners.
4
Kim was among 300 junior high school pupils going through
a weeklong training in this new "English Village." Built a few
kilometers from the western border with North Korea, the
government-subsidized language camp is, at 280,000 square
meters, or 3 million square feet, the largest of its kind in the
world, officials say.
5
The complex - where the slogan is, "We produce global
Koreans!" - looks like a mini-town scooped up from a
European country and transplanted into this South Korean
countryside dotted with pine groves, rice paddies and military
barbed-wire fences. It has its own immigration office, city
hall, bookstore, cafeteria, gym, a main street with Western
storefronts, police officers and a live-in population of 160
native English speakers. All signs are in English, the only
language allowed.
6
Here, on a six-day obsession course that charges students
80,000 won, or $82, apiece, pupils check in to a
hotel, shop, take cooking lessons and make music videos - all
in English. There are language cops around, punishing
students speaking Korean with a fine in the village currency or
red dots on their village passports. To relieve the stress, the
authorities do permit students to speak their native language a
few times during their stay, usually at mealtimes.
7
Across South Korea, the English Villages are sprouting up.
Ten are already operating, with more on the way. They
represent the latest big push in South Korean parents'
multibillion-dollar-a- year campaign to give their children a
leg up in conquering English skills.
8
With few natural resources, South Korea realized early on
that it must push exports and produce high-quality work
forces. Education is an obsession. Mastering English is a
nationwide quest from kids to office minions in corporate
giants like Samsung and Hyundai.
9
"It's funny because Koreans know English," said Jeffrey
Jones, former president of the American Chamber of
Commerce in Korea who heads the Paju complex. "They
spend a lot of time learning English. They can read, probably
better than I can. But they have trouble speaking."
10
Jones, a longtime resident of South Korea, says that when
many Koreans see a Westerner coming their way on the street,
they detour or run away. «They are afraid that they might have
to speak English," Jones said. "So one of the things we do here
is to break the wall of fear. And students come away not being
afraid of foreigners and Westerners particularly."
11
South Korea has become one of the most aggressive
countries in Asia at teaching English to its citizens. The
language is taught from the third year of school; beginning in
2008 it will begin in the first year. Outside the school system,
parents are paying an estimated 10 trillion won a year to help
their children learn English at home or abroad.
12
Yet many college graduates falter in chats with native
speakers. South Korean officials are often accused of grouping
together in international conferences, afraid to mix with native
English speakers. That, linguists say, is a result of a national
school system that traditionally stresses reading and rote
memorization of English grammar and vocabulary at the
expense of conversation.
13
The public sector in this highly competitive society is racing
to address the problem. The country is building a $15 billion
international economic free zone on the coast west of Seoul,
where English will be a common language. The southern port
city of Busan is planning a town where English is an official
language.
14
In Korea University of Seoul, 30 percent of all classes are
now in English. Speaking English with a native accent has
become such a status symbol that some parents reportedly put
their children through the clinically questionable surgery of
snipping the thin tissue under the tongue to make it longer and
supposedly nimbler, helping the children to pronounce the R
sound
better.