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A Critical Review of the Introduction of English Immersion Program to Korean Public Schools

  • The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea
  • Abbr : 사회언어학
  • 2008, 16(1), pp.131-158
  • Publisher : The Sociolinguistic Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > Linguistics

박휴용 1

1전북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Recently the Korean government has promoted, as part of a national plan for facilitating English education, the introduction of English immersion programs into public secondary schools in Korea. English immersion programs have been installed in many elementary schools in Canada and the U.S. as a practice of bilingual education, especially to help students in the linguistic minority. The government has also emphasized that the program will be further utilized for teaching general subjects in addition to English, and that it will be installed in the elementary schools as soon as possible. This paper critically reviews the suitability and validity of the English immersion program for Korean public schools from the socio-cultural, politico-economical, and language educational perspectives. Before doing that, this paper discusses: i) the origin and the objects of the immersion program, ii) the English immersion program implemented in the U.S., and iii) the difference between the features of English Immersion programs in the U.S. and those that have been introduced to Korea. Based on these discussions, this paper argues that the English immersion program is not an optimal, nor a suitable program for English education in Korean public schools. This paper suggests some ideasfor planning foreign language education policy in the future.

Citation status

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