Download Teaching English to Korean Students

Teaching English to Korean
Students
Understanding Their Particular Problems

Korean language is totally different from English
in structure.
 English, Spanish, French, German and most
other western languages are conclusion oriented
language and use Roman alphabets, while
 Korean and Japanese languages are
situation oriented language and use their
own writing characteristics.
 Chinese also have their own writing
characteristics, but as Chinese language is
conclusion oriented language like English. So,
for Chinese students, English is easier to learn.

In English, conclusion of a sentence,
verb comes first in the predicate clause.
 In Korean, verbs come at the end: so the
structure is totally reversed.
 Native Spanish speaking students can speak
English without so much difficulty if they could
only convert Spanish words to English words.
 Korean students can not speak English well
even though they know the English words,
because they need some delay time to convert
the sentence structure before they utter out a
sentence.

Here is the table of comparison;

( English )

writing characteristics

back ground/ customs

language origin/root

language structure

accent/ stress
Roman Alphabet
Europe
Greek/ Roman
( Spanish )
( Korean )
Roman Alphabet
Korean Alphabet
Europe
Asia
Greek/ Roman
Korean/ Altai
conclusion oriented
conclusion oriented
situation oriented
frequent
frequent
none/ rare

So, we need to understand the difference in
language structure and customs between
English and Korean language. We have to be
cognitive that Korean students have to learn not
only the semantic and lexical English words and
phrases, but also the new sentence structures
which are totally reversed to their native
language.
 And this means that when we deal with new
Korean students, we have to speak more slowly
and have to have patience waiting longer time
until they start to say in English.

It usually takes about one year until the new
Korean students start to say a sentence in
English even still with much mistakes and wrong
pronunciations. It would take about 2-3 years
until they can speak English without so much
difficulty/ hesitation but still with some mistakes.
It takes about 5-7 years for Korean students to
speak English fluently with immediate code
switching(*) ability.
 (*) code switch – ability to switch from one
language system to other language system

Most ELL programs and books are focused on
teaching native Spanish speaking students
because the majority of ELL students in America
are native Spanish speaking students including
Mexican students. While Spanish is similar to
English in language structure, Korean language
is totally different in structure.
 I want the teachers who have Korean students in
their classes to understand that Korean students
have more difficulty than other ELL students in
learning English.
 Thank
you for your effort in
 understanding and teaching
 Korean students with peculiar condition.