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and primarily taught English reading, listening, grammar, and vocabulary skills similar to
public schools. Interestingly, they stated that the main roles of these English teachers in
private institutes supported them to obtain the best score on the English tests of the public
schools and the English part of the annual university entrance exam instead of a more
practical use of the language.
The above situations show that South Korean students have spent numerous hours
for several years on English through the public
and private educational system, and some
of them even decide to come to the United States to improve their English abilities. In
the Summary of Findings, the majority of the 30 Korean students thought that the English
educational environment in Korea was not joyful or meaningful, so they strongly
believed that there was no purpose for learning and studying English without achieving
the best scores on every English test. Due to this reason, the 30 Korean students poorly
ranked English education in Korea. Therefore, the researcher indicates that learning and
studying English for South Korean students is not effectively or efficiently constructed,
and the level of South Korean students’ satisfaction of learning and
studying English in
Korea is relatively low. Because of the improper English environment in Korea, it
definitely makes it difficult for South Korean students to be interested in learning and
studying English consistently and to improve English speaking and writing skills.
Surprisingly, the researcher discovered that most South Korean students learn and
study English for more than 10 years through the public and private educational system in
Korea, but when they arrive in the United States, most of them struggle to use their
English abilities; particularly, they are seriously lacking English
speaking and writing
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skills. Because of this reason, many of the 30 Korean students experienced the
difficulties of speaking English with native-English speakers and foreigners and writing
an essay or academic paper for their American college assignments. Furthermore, many
interviewees commented that it was very challenging for them to listen to native-English
speakers’ conversations because of different accents and pronunciations and to fully
understand specific jargon and terminology related to students’ majors and American
slang.
In addition, the majority of the 30 Korean students mentioned that it was very
difficult for them to build a strong relationship with a domestic student or a local
community member. That is why many Korean interviewees
stated that they typically
hung out with Korean friends even though they came to the United States to improve
their English abilities. Moreover, some of the 30 Korean students strongly agreed that it
was a big problem for them to find a way not to speak Korean with other international
students frequently and to connect with more domestic American students and local
community members because they really wanted to speak English with Americans. The
researcher discovered that South Korean students struggle to find an American to practice
their English with daily and worry about consistently hanging out with Korean friends
while they live in the United States.
Through
the above findings, the researcher was able to determine the difficulties
of learning and studying English in Korea and America. Before finalizing the answer of
this question, the researcher strongly suggests that South Korea evenly focus on the four
parts of English education and recruit more qualified native-English teachers from
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English speaking countries to provide South Korean students with a good quality of
English education if South Koreans wish to be successful learning and studying English
or if they decide to go to English speaking countries. If not, it will continuously be
challenging for South Korean students to significantly improve English
speaking and
writing skills even though South Korean students go to English speaking countries to
improve their English proficiency.
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