by JAMES S. KIM | @james_s_kim
editor@charactermedia.com
On this side of the Pacific, we often hear about our friends and peers heading over to Asia to teach English. But we rarely hear from the student perspective.
South Korea and Japan spend billions of dollars each year on private tutors and academies in addition to what is taught in school curriculums just for that extra edge in English. However, according to the folks at YouTube channel Asian Boss, majority of South Korean and Japanese students have trouble communicating in English even at the most basic level. Asian Boss took to the streets of Sydney to ask a few young men and women, likely international students, about their own experiences—and struggles—learning and conversing in English.
All of the interviewees reveal that they began studying English at a young age—one commented that children begin to learn English as early as kindergarten in Korea. But for some, English isn’t just difficult. They loathe it.
“I just hate English,” one young male student commented. “Whenever I hear English or meet foreigners, I get dizzy and I start sweating. … That’s how bad it is.”
Most students expressed that learning English felt like picking up another subject, like math—an assessment tool to measure academic performance, as one student put it. Their experiences were limited to memorizing vocabulary terms and grammar rules without properly applying that they had learned. After their exams were done, they would forget everything.
Besides opportunities for conversations, one Korean student said there’s an aspect of shame Koreans run into. They’re afraid to make any mistakes, he said, and they miss out on speaking because they worry about trying to sound perfect.
Overall, the interviewees agreed that learning English should be more fun and cultivated at an early age as an important communication skill instead of a mandatory subject. The education system needs to go away from treating English as “a problem to be solved, like a math problem.”
Take a look at what else the young Japanese and South Koreans had to say below.
Reader Grace Lung pointed out that Asian Boss, an Australia-based channel, interviewed their subjects in Sydney in an area where many international students hang out. Thank you for the heads up, and we apologize for our error.
(H/T to RocketNews24)
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