영어컨설팅 | Real English Consulting Ltd.

This is the sixth installment of a series of interviews with experts in English education aimed at offering tips, trends and information related to English learning and teaching in Korea. — Ed.

By Yang Sung-jin

Stephen van Vlack, professor of the Graduate School of TESOL at Sookmyung Women’s University, said Korean parents should help their children develop in both Korean and English, particularly concerning literacy skills.

With expertise in theoretical and applied linguistics, van Vlack also said that authentic reading is a “doable” strategy for most Korean learners, while providing detailed steps as well, depending on proficiency levels.

He said those who want to become English teachers should ultimately try to become designers and evaluators who can provide useful and effective feedback in a caring, noncompetitive environment.

He said he has seen “dramatic transformations” in many Korean students and teacher candidates when they are pushed to perform in a caring environment with appropriate context and feedback.

The professor received a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of Dublin — Trinity College in Ireland, and has been teaching for 15 years in Korea, Germany, and Singapore.

The following is an excerpt from an e-mail interview.

Korea Herald: In your teaching experience in Korea, one of the key issues for Korea’s English education?

Stephen van Vlack: By far the most important issue for English education in Korea is that of goals. Clearly defined and realistic goals need to be established at all educational levels including the post-tertiary level and these goals at different levels must relate to each other. Goals provide the basic mapping system for the entire learning experience. It is from the consideration of goals that we develop assessment tools, create and define materials, and decide approaches and techniques are going to be used in the classroom. Without clearly defined goals both students and teachers are lost. It’s like swimming in circles and if one spends their whole time swimming in circles they’re eventually going to get tired and sink.

KH: What strategy do you recommend for Korean students want to improve their English proficiency in general?

SV: One simple strategy which is doable in Korea and has a great potential is that of simply reading. Many study English but they don’t actually read. Taking the language out of context makes it very difficult to learn it well. Since Koreans are highly literate and there is a virtually unlimited amount of authentic texts available to Koreans, then reading is something which is certainly possible. The idea is that people should read as much as they can from various types of sources. The most important is not the length but the authenticity of the reading texts. Through reading one can learn structural aspects of grammar in a meaningful interesting way, provided when they have chosen their own reading texts. We read ultimately to get information, to be entertained. If we can combine this type of entertainment with language learning through reading then one may end up learning a lot.

KH: Would you elaborate on learning strategies for students depending on the proficiency level?

SV: The most important thing for beginners is vocabulary. In order to be able to get themselves to the next stage in the developmental process, beginning level students need a large number of vocabulary items in their mental lexicon. There’s a fundamental distinction between being able to recognize a word and being able to use a word, and beginning level students need to focus on both.

Intermediate level learners tend to have difficulty controlling their language. The area that they need to focus on is that of accurately producing and recognizing larger strings of linguistic code. Rather than just focusing on words they need to focus on phrases and clauses. Intermediate learners also need to develop a feel for how the target language patterns itself. Becoming familiar with these patterns allows people to not only listen to longer texts but also allows these learners to be able to produce longer and more complex texts.

Advanced level learners need to focus on the different functions for which languages are used and how each language deals with the specific functions. An example of a function would be something like making a formal complaint. Once one gets to the advanced level they are expected to perform with language and all linguistic performance is organized around functions.

KH: What advice would you want to give the green parents who want to raise their children as bilingual speakers here?

SV: It is generally claimed that a child in a simultaneous bilingual development type of situation needs a minimum of 40 percent of their input to be in one language in order to develop as a bilingual. This is a lot of input. It is also important to realize that this 40 percent needs to be continuous. Children forget faster than they learn, so taking Korean children overseas for a certain period of time and then bringing them back to Korea without much English input will not have an enduring effect for bilingual development.

The most important thing is to try to keep up the child’s English development. This means that a child needs continuous and continuously changing input. It’s important that children are asked to do different things in both of their languages and that new responsibilities (tasks) are given to them. This may be difficult to do in Korea for the English language but an inventive parent will find ways of immersing their child in English. Don’t seesaw back and forth from one language to the other. Both languages need to be continually developed and this relates specifically to literacy skills. Literacy development is a large milestone on the path to bilinguality. It is important to make sure that the child achieves a high degree of functional literacy in both languages.

KH: What should English teachers or teacher candidates here due to better help train students improve their English proficiency?

SV: The most important thing for a teacher is to create environments where students need to do things using the target language (English). Having done this, the teacher needs to make sure that she or he guides the students through the process of using language by providing carefully regulated feedback in a caring, noncompetitive environment.

Teachers can’t make students learn a language. The teacher’s job is to create scenarios and to regulate these scenarios for optimal potential learning. Feedback is absolutely essential when we are trying to get students to produce language. Without feedback students will not know how well they perform the task and what they did well (which they can do again) and what they didn’t do so well (which they won’t do it again). Teachers should ultimately be designers and evaluators with a valuation focusing not on scoring but on providing useful and effective feedback so the students can move forward in their learning.

KH: What are the most memorable episodes in your teaching experience in Korea?

SV: One thing that never ceases to surprise me is just how important our experiences with the language may be. As a general trend my students tend to be disappointed with her overseas experiences. They either did not learn as much as they hoped to learn or they actually came back with bad feelings about the target language country, at least in some aspects. As a result of this, I’m left with the impression that we have not prepared our students well for the rigors of using language in authentic international situations. To function in such situations one needs to not only be flexible but needs to be systematically flexible according to context and in the decontextualized situations in which we often teach in Korea such skills do not develop well.

On the other hand, it is always rewarding to see how quickly and effectively students are able to adapt to new situations when they are created in the classroom. I have seen dramatic transformations over short periods of time when students are pushed to perform in a caring environment with appropriate context and feedback. There are things that we can do in this Korean setting which they can’t get overseas and in a full immersion type of setting.

The professor can be reached at his homepage (http://udveksling.com).

(insight@heraldm.com)

2009.06.11

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