Importance Of English Language

Every day, more than 7,000 different languages are used in around world,

and Chinese, English and Spanish are the three most common languages around

the world. The most common six official languages: English, French, Spanish,

Chinese, Russian, and Arabic. English is one of the only working languages used by

world widely, and English is also commonly used in most of business meetings.

Therefore, millions of research papers and books published and translated by in

English, and Swales said that “English will remain the primary language of research”.

As a result, many countries which as English is not a first language have invested for

many years money, effort and time to improve their English. South Korean is one of

the countries

The problems of South Korean English education are first, Korean student

have to take English classes through the public schools. Usually Korean students

receive 50 to 60 hours of English class. Second, Korean Students are learned

English by general Korean teacher not from the English speaking countries.

Interestingly, the Korean Ministry of Education may not hire many English teachers

who are from the English-speaking countries. Instead of hiring the native English-

speaking teachers, Korean educational governments generally hire English teachers

who are the same respective nationality. In other words, those teachers, especially

those who are majoring in Secondary English Education, may not be as effectively

trained as teachers who are from the English-speaking countries like the United

States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and so forth. (Cho 11) lastly, class

system has problems. In America, every student tries to discuss the problems

For example, in my class which is speech class, every student

ask to questions or argue about the topic but international students in the class even

include me, we just listen when they talk. On the other hand, in the Korea, the

education system is basically heavily lecture based; it means that teachers or

professor usually transfer information to students and then the students just write the

note. In short brief, Korean English education system is based on memorization even

when they learn the English. They don’t have group communication or discuss the

question in English. Only they focus on grammar test, words test, or memorize

articles for the test. The problems make Korean students introspectively when they

speak English.

The differences of the Korean to English that English started from the Indo-

European Language group, but Korean shares similar structures to languages in the

Ural-Altaic Language. An English vowel that Korean students have difficulty

pronouncing is /Ɔ/, which does not exist in Korean. Some tend to substitute the

Korean /o/ for it. (Cho. 33) Syntactic Differences is in English, the word order is SVO

(subject-verb-object), while the basic pattern of a Korean sentence is SOV