Discussion:Reflection on one value that you think has shaped your cultural identity.
As flow of western culture and globalization, Korean culture has been mixing with a variety of other cultures. As time has been passing, English education is getting one of the significant factors compared to other kinds of languages. In my family, also, we are trying to achieve high quality of English education with various methods for better our lives. In this reflection, I will demonstrate diverse aspects on English education in South Korea based on my experiences.
Most of all, I strongly believe that English education has been huge impacts on people in my family. Since globalization and industrialization, as English is getting the officially universal language of the world, overheating English education is one of the biggest problems in South Korea. As a consequence, many adolescences feel stressful and pressured because they study too much about English. Actually, my parents forced me to go to English private institutes to study more and have high score on internationally authorized English test including TOEFL. Also, at school, once a week, all students must speak only English and we are not allowed to use Korean, especially the day. This phenomenon has completely negative influences on student's mental and physical health because there is no enough and available time to work out and to relieve the amount of stress, which has definitely bad effects on the growth. However, in the era of globalization, strict and concentrated English education system is good to the young students. Through the system, the high rate of employment is provided and a large number of chances to broaden perspectives as well as ways of realizing dreams are other knowledge I could bring to the situation. Some new university graduates in Korea assert that learning English and speaking it very fluently are well-related to their success and the great proportion of employment and promotion regardless of graduating from prestigious university in Korea (Inn Chull, 2008; Prey, 2005). Actually, my attitude toward the education is quite positive as English could be used as an opportunity to be successful, particularly to me and my family and could help us to broaden horizons by providing numerous chances.
In conclusion, since getting harsh English education system in South Korea has been causing lot of side effects, the education needs more challenges with Korean government and Ministry of Education to deliver long lasting benefits.
Reference
Choi, I. (2008). The impact of EFL testing on EFL education in Korea. Language Testing, 25(1), 39-62.
Prey, R. (2005). How do you say 'imperialism'? the english language teaching industry and the culture of imperialism in south korea.