여러분에게 영어란 무엇인가요? 왜 공부하고 있나요? 재미있어서, 아니면 성공을 위해서 둘 중에 하나이거나, 아니면 둘 다이겠죠? 물론, 어느 쪽이 더 좋다라고 말할 수는 없습니다. 재미도 있고, 재미있게 공부해서 성공까지 한다면 좋겠지만, 뭐 별로 재미없어도 다른 목적을 위해 공부하고 있는 사람에게 "왜 재미를 못 느낍니까?"라고 말할 수는 없으니까요. 한 가지 목적이라도 충족이 된다면 그것으로 충분하다고 생각합니다.
그런데 이것이 좀 지나치다고 생각되는 요즘입니다. 네이버 뉴스 메인에 떠서 읽게 된 뉴스 기사가 있는데, 여러분도 아직 안 읽어 보셨다면 한 번 보세요. 워싱턴 포스트에서 얼마나 한국의 현재 상황을 정확히 보도했는지는 저도 잘 모르겠습니다. 하지만 이렇게 작성된 기사를 놓고 보면 정말로 심각한 상태에 이르렀다고 느껴지지 않으십니까?
기사 1 :
"한국 학생들에겐 영어가 전부"기사 2 :
“영어는 한국인의 황금 혓바닥”그리고 아래는 위의 기사의 참고자료가 된, 워싱턴 포스트의 원문 기사를 소개합니다. 그냥 검색해서 들어가면 가입하고 로그인을 해야해서 읽기 불편해요. 그러면 안 되는 거 알지만 그냥 전부 원문을 긁어 왔습니다. ^^ 읽어 보세요.
한국인의 영어 교육 실태를 은근히 비판하고 있는 이 기사를, 영어 공부를 위해서 읽는다고 해도 뭐 어쩔 수는 없겠죠? 한 번쯤은 생각해 보아야 할 문제이고, 그리고 우리나라의 이야기이므로, 여기에 반박하고 싶거나 동의해서 비판하는 의견을 내고 싶을 때에도 이 내용은 읽어 두시는 편이, 그냥 같은 내용을 한글로 읽고 넘어가는 것보다는 훨씬 도움이 될 테니까요.
English Is The Golden Tongue for S. Koreans
- Parents Pay a Fortune So Children Can Learn
By Joohee ChoSpecial to The Washington PostMonday, July 2, 2007; Page A16 SEOUL -- Just a week into his summer vacation, 15-year-old Min-Kyu Kim already has a tight schedule and ambitious goals: On this particular day, he intends to memorize 600 words of English vocabulary, solve 10 pages of SSAT math problems and take practice tests for English. He estimates the tests alone will take about five hours.
"I do what I have to do," he says, seated at his desk in a small room in Seoul. Nearby his mother prepares watermelon for an afternoon snack.
Min-Kyu has just finished 8th grade at Hillside School, a boarding school for boys in
Marlborough,
Mass. He says he is happy to be back for the summer in his home country,
South Korea. But he is not quite back at home, which is a 90-minute drive south from Seoul in Cheonan City.
His temporary housing for the summer is a tiny studio in a Seoul neighborhood known for hakwons, private academies that teach prep courses for overseas exams including the SSAT, SAT, TOEFL, GRE and GMAT. Known for a Spartan style of education, the hakwons enforce study-till-you-drop policies, fine students for wrong answers and, in some cases, spank them.
"We don't have good prep schools in Cheonan," said his mother, Eun-Joo Kim. "I feel bad making him study like this during his vacation, but what can I do? It's for his future and he really needs to improve his SSAT scores."
Nothing gets you ahead in today's
South Korea like mastery of English. So in recent years, rising affluence and an enduring Confucian love of learning have combined to create what analysts call an "education exodus." Last year, 24,000 South Koreans in the first to 12th grade left the country to study, more than triple the number who did so in 2001, analysts estimate.
Families who can't afford foreign travel have plenty to choose from at home: English-language summer camps, English-speaking babysitters, salons where pregnant mothers go in hopes that unborn children will absorb the English being spoken. And old-fashioned tutoring remains popular: According to the
Samsung Economic Research Institute, Koreans spent $15.6 billion on English-language tutors last year.
With two teenage sons at private schools in the United States, Eun-Joo Kim has been spending about $210,000 a year for tuition, guardian fees, tutoring, air tickets and hotels. "If you compare it to money you'd be spending on hakwons while enrolled in schools in Korea, that's nothing," she said, calculating with her fingers.
"My friends raising their kids here sometimes spend even more on private tutoring after school. But their kids' English pronunciation is not native like my son's, of course," she said.
Banks are setting up study-abroad centers that offer such services as money transfer, investment consulting and school selection. Shinhan Bank, the nation's second-largest, more than doubled its centers to 160 in April. With restrictions on the purchase of property abroad lifted in recent years, more parents here are buying residences near their children's schools in foreign countries.
Airlines also are doing well by the trend. Flights from
Los Angeles and
New York to
Seoul are booked solid well in advance, even with additional flights during heavy student travel periods.
"It's a war. If I can't get my kid on the flight on the days designated by his school, he's got no place to stay," said Kim Yang Ho, father of a fifth-grade boy attending a boarding school in
Connecticut. "So I have to pull some strings or else put him on first class."
Businesses taking care of the young students at foreign locations are flourishing as well. Their services include transportation from airport to school, room and board during long weekends, private tutoring and psychological counseling to help with homesickness and stress.
When one boy went to his guardian's home in
New Jersey for Easter, a parent at Shinhan Bank said, "we were charged $700 for three nights. It's ridiculous."
The key to fluency, many parents say, is to start early. "My girl began when she was 6 months old," said Lee Jinsun, who sends her 7-year-old daughter to a private kindergarten taught in English only. When her daughter was younger, Lee hired tutors for weekly visits to read English storybooks, and babysitters to speak English three hours daily for $100.
Toddler gyms with English-speaking trainers were also a favorite. "At the end of the day,
Disney lullabies are effective so my girl can dream in English," she said.
English-based cultural centers with prenatal education programs are in fashion. There women sing, exercise and read books in English, in the belief that their fetuses can hear.
South Korean national newspapers print weekly special sections on how to improve English skills. Daily newspaper inserts are filled with ads for English academy programs and their star teachers, with slogans such as "How much English exposure will your child get today?" and "Achieve the
Harvard Dream!"
Of 148 countries conducting the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), organized by Educational Testing Service, Korea ranks highest in number of applicants. About 130,000 people last year paid $20.3 million in testing fees.
But South Korea's scores on average ranked 103rd among the 148 countries. People here offer varying explanations -- Korean and English are poles apart, instruction in many Korean public schools remains rudimentary and only a minority of students can afford to go abroad.
For those who do go, the experience can be deeply enjoyable. Rising ninth-grader Min-Kyu said he welcomes the lower pressure of American education. "We get to do a lot of sports and meet a lot of friends" at his school in
Massachusetts, he said. "In Korea, no exercise. It's all about hakwon until 11 p.m. every night."
But family relationships do suffer. "My husband complains all the time that we don't get to spend much time together as family," said Min-Kyu's mother. "But my sons live in a global world now, so we do have to make sacrifices."
베이징에 다녀왔습니다. 지금 있는 상하이랑 정말 많이 다르더군요. 아직 잘 모르는 나라, 그리고 언어도 아직은 자유롭지 않은 나라에서 한 도시에 쉽게 익숙해져 버린다는 것이 과연 좋은 것인가, 라는 생각이 들어서 상하이를 벗어나서 북경에 꼭 가 보고 싶었습니다.
