Native English teachers in Busan and many other parts of Korea are part of Korea’s investment for a prosperous international future.They should be given the appropriate warmth and respect for having traveled thousands of kilometers to work in Korea to make situations better.
Korean teachers play an important role in teaching English to the young learners. They need to maintain the level of comprehension in the classroom as they have a safety back-up that is Korean language.
The Busan administrators who have written about this topic should be careful and should not withdraw the view that they have made and also should be clear in their policy and opinion that international language coaching is necessary to improve the present situation in Korea.
The people of Asia can speak good English when if they are trained and given encouragement. They mainly need to avoid using their native language in the classroom and speak only English. The situation prevailing in Korea can be compared to a sports club which restricts people from wearing shirts or shorts. The strong feeling is that it is not easy to play the sport without the proper wear or costume. In the same way the young children finds it difficult to learn a new language with out proper guidance and training from people who are extremely good at it.
The first language can be learned very well if the second language is allowed to use when necessary and mingle since it provides a kind of safety for the learners in understanding matters. It really helps and makes a difference to the pupil who finds it culturally difficult to adopt from their mother tongue to the new language.
People can learn English better by way of pictures, indication, action, signal or even through miming. All these gestures helps the pupil to understand and grab the meaning, but due to some block if the teacher is unable to make the same understandable to the children the teacher can as well translate the message in the mother tongue and get it easily understandable for the pupils.
The situation will be surely improve when the student feels more comfortable with English and slowly the need for the second language will be decreased when concerned to group conversation in English. So the ban on the use of Korean language in English classes will usually have the opposite desired effect.
These two languages should be chained such that it should help in translating the subject and be way to learning a new language. More practice will definitely make the student from bouncing from one language to the other, which results in increase and strengthen the fluency of the language.
Respecting and using both, the mother tongue and English language will definitely land to win. To new English learners in Korea it is better that they start with the Korean language, translating Korean words into English and gradually lead to discovering and learning English in comfortable environment. This definitely proves that language is naturally a means to communication.
There should be a proper balance between the two languages. It is essential that the Native English speaker teaches the language in proper method along with clear pronunciation. This teaching should be a language model with 100 percent genuineness.
The drawbacks that can be noticed in Korean teachers are that they often make mistakes and the same can be rectified only by proper mingling and learning from the native English speaker. It is always Teamwork that wins. Further, the quality and high level of flexibility between both trainers and teachers also results in success
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2007/10/137_12043.html