48
In addition, the majority of the 15 Korean students mentioned that English education in
Korea has not been focused on English speaking skills. In other words, the public
schools and the private institutes have not invested a great amount of funds in English
speaking skills; they would rather create English reading and grammar courses. That is
why half of the 30 Korean students felt that it has been very difficult for them to improve
their English speaking skills in Korea.
Ten out of 30 Korean students stated that the next most difficult part for them to
improve is English writing skills. One of the 10 Korean students, Linda, said,
“Accidently, the native English speaker looked over my English essay, and she said to me
that my essay had many grammatical errors. Moreover, some of the sentences did not
make sense at all. After I heard these comments, I realized that English writing is not
easy.” Another student, Daniel, discovered that it was very difficult for him to precisely
choose a word, idiom, and phrase depending on each situation while he wrote an essay.
Because of
the lack of English vocabulary, he felt that he could not write a good essay.
Furthermore, Betty mentioned that she generally started writing the essay in Korean first
before she wrote the essay in English, so sometimes it was very difficult for her to write
the English essay because of translating the words from Korean to English.
Eleven out of 30 Korean students said that it was the third most difficult for them
to learn English listening skills. One of the 11 Korean students, Charles, mentioned:
I did not feel that my English listening skills were not so bad when I was in Korea.
However, when I came to UNK, I was not able to clearly listen to UNK professors
and Americans. Especially, when UNK professors and Americans
spoke English
so fast and used humor and jargon in the classes, I could not understand what they
talked about.
49
Through Elizabeth’s and John’s interviews, they felt embarrassed like Charles did above
when they could not fully understand while they communicated with Americans who
spoke English rapidly. In addition, two Korean students,
Karen and Jennifer, found that
people who come from different countries, such as Australia, England, New Zealand, and
Canada, and different states, such as the Western and Eastern states, have different
English accents, so this reason makes English listening skills difficult for Korean students
to understand when they communicate with people from the above places.
Twenty-one out of 30 Korean stated that it was the least difficult for them to learn
English reading skills. The majority of these students discovered that they have studied
English reading skills for a long time compared to English speaking skills, English
writing skills and English listening skills. One of the 21 Korean students, Richard,
mentioned that his English middle school and high school teachers intensively focused on
English reading skills, so he felt that English reading is the easiest of the
four parts of
English. Four students of the 21 Korean students, Christopher, Nancy, Mark, and Donald,
stated that they extensively studied English reading in their schools and private institutes,
so it was not difficult for them to read English workbooks and materials.
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