Friedeman 1

Elizabeth Friedeman

C&T 598- Dr. Cho

20 June 2017

The Impact of EFL Testing on EFL Education in Korea by Choi

Quote: The KSAT does not include speaking and writing components, thus leading to

very little, if any, teaching of speaking and writing at high school. It has been an open secret that

students as well as teachers do not bother to deal with productive skills in high school

classroomsthough this undesirable way of teaching EFL seriously violates the National

Curriculum prescribed by the Ministry of Education, which mandates a communicative

integrated skills approach.

I found it interesting that despite government mandate for communicative integrated

skills approach, teachers do not bother teaching EFL in such a way because of the influence of

the KSAT and its lack of productive skill components. This mismatch definitely demonstrates

one of the main problems with English language learning in Korea Choi also discusses, the

extrinsic motivation that does not necessarily coincide with ones intrinsic desire or need to learn

English. If they are learning English for a test that does not include productive and

communicative skills, then why are they learning English? It is interesting how the English

system revolves around tests that seem to be more about competition and selectiveness than

actual English proficiency. Some people could have made the same argument before Americas

SAT was revised to be less difficult in vocabulary (it had previously included vocabulary or

skills that were not necessarily direct measures of student ability to succeed in college).

Chois description of the phenomenon of teaching English in blatant contradiction to the

governments integrated skills mandate as an open secret seems to parallel a lot of other trends
 Friedeman 2

in Korean and American society. I had a discussion about how a lot of societal habits occur

mostly to save face or meet a particular claim of achievement, but are not really achieving the

true purpose. For example, the separation of trash by type between recycling, compost, and

landfill is a habit in Korea. However, I have heard that the trash all usually ends up in the same

place, or only some is recycled even after citizens separate their trash. As for education,

conversational English class may be enough to call a school integrated in their language

learning approach, but it appears that (especially for third-graders) these classes do not receive

much attention, focus, or care in comparison to English classes geared toward test-taking. Even

in American society, I can think of instances at my high school when initiatives or extra-

curriculars were done mostly for show and seemed to mostly fail at the true purpose. For

instance, the healthy food initiative imposed on public school district required that students put

one fruit or vegetable on their tray, but it would often end up being thrown away at the end of

lunch. Sometimes extra-curriculars like German National Honor Society or even National Honor

Society to some extent existed not to provide solid service or German-related opportunities, but

to look good on a college application.

I think this idea of saving face is part of the ongoing struggle with English education in

Korea. However, I enjoyed how Chois article pointed out the positive future for English testing

as a necessary evil. The article mentioned several ways that tests have changed to produce

more positive washback and acknowledges the role of research in producing better tests and

better English results.

Questions:
 Friedeman 3

1. How do you think that teachers can incorporate a more integrated skills approach despite

the KSATs influence?

2. Which of the tests do you find the most appropriate for Kyunghwa students and why?