- What lessons and experiences for the improvement of the quality of language education program at Vietnamese schools could be drawn from the language education policy and practices in Korea?. - Content analysis of the documents. - 2.1.1 Korean language . - The Education Law sets forth in more detail the aims and principles of education in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution. - Article 2: In order to achieve these aims, the following educational objectives shall be set up: 1) Development of the knowledge and habits needed for the sound development and sustenance of health, and cultivation of an indomitable spirit. - 3) Succession and development of national culture and contribution toward the creation and the growth of the world culture. - 4) Fostering of the truth-seeking spirit and the ability of scientific thinking for creative thinking for creative activity and rational living. - 5) Development of the love for freedom and of high respect for responsibility necessary to lead well-harmonized community life with the spirit of faithfulness, cooperation and understanding. - Article 3: The aims of education shall be carried effect not only in schools and other educational institutions but also in all political, social, economic and cultural life of the country. - and basic matters relating to the management of the education system, including school education, lifelong education, financing education, and the status of teachers are decided by law. - The main aims of the MOEHRD are to. - and · foster citizens to be constructive members of the global community.. - Usually, the homeroom teacher covers most of the subjects. - To provide a variety of experiences for the balanced development of the mind and body. - To provide students with a wide range of learning experiences conducive to the understanding of the diverse world of work. - Middle school education puts emphasis on helping students acquire basic abilities essential for learning and daily life and democratic citizenship on the basis of the success of elementary school education. - To promote the well-balanced development of the mind and body and to offer opportunities for students to discover their potential on their own. - To foster an attitude of taking pride in and developing tradition and culture and to cultivate an understanding of the basic values and principles of liberal democracy and the democratic way of life. - To make students conscious of the Republic of Korea's national missions and to see to improve the physical condition of students. - The MOEHRD has overall responsibility for control of the curriculum. - Article 23 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Law. - that the Minister of Education has the power to determine the standards and content of the curriculum. - Last National Curriculum is the Seventh National Curriculum, which has been introduced gradually since the beginning of the 2000 academic year (March 2000), it was recommended that, in preparation for the 21st Century, the development of creativity in elementary school, junior high school and high school children should be given high priority. - The basic purpose of the Seventh National Curriculum is stated as to loosen the rigid and centralized curriculum framework. - Local offices of education and schools should establish systematic and concrete guidelines for the organization and implementation of the curriculum and develop individualized guidelines which are customized for local needs and circumstances. - To optimize the volume and level of the content of learning and to introduce the differentiated curriculum so as to provide students with in-depth education. - To diversify the contents of the curriculum and methods of instruction in consideration of each student's ability, aptitude and career choice. - Korean Language. - The above table shows the minimum numbers of total annual instructional hours by subject and grade level (grade 1 through grade 10) during the period of the national common basic education. - Textbooks have recently been revised and updated to reflect the requirements of the new Seventh National Curriculum. - The original classification of the Korean language is often debated. - The standard language (pyojuneo or pyojunmal) of South Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul. - The standard language of the South Korea which has developed from several different dialects in Seoul usually becomes the standard language for the entire population. - 2.1.2 Korean writing The Korean script is a phonetic alphabet which was invented in 1443 under the reign of King Sejong (r the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty. - Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical phonetic values: Consonants IPA. - In 1984, however, the Korean system was revised along the lines of the McCune-Reischauer System, with a few modifications, so that the two systems most widely used in Korea and the West were, in effect, the same. - This was made necessary by the widespread use of the computer which required automatic transliteration in searching words.. - However, as a result of the Yanta Conference, Korea was divided into to separate political entities: North and South Korea. - Until now there is no evidence of the Korean language and civilization before 200 B.C. - The earliest record regarding the ancient Koreans and Korean language was mentioned in the Chinese annals of the Han Dynasty in 108 B.C. - These phonetic and semantic adaptations of Chinese ideographs for Koreans expressions, however, posed a problem in the flow of the Chinese sentence as syntactically the two languages differed. - The invention of Hangul was a product and a contribution of King Sejong (r the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty. - As a great leader, King Sejong thought the literacy of the masses was needed in order to bring about the desired social reform. - 2) Systematization of the Korean phonology, and 3) Creation of phonetic alphabet and the instruction of its use. - Here is the King Sejong’s proclamation of Hangul: Our language being different from the Chinese, Hanja of the Chinese language as a writing system cannot fully transcribe our speech. - Sejong and the inventors of the Hangul certainly did not foresee the role that was to be played in the development of Korean nationalism by the Korean language and Korean literature. - Across the several centuries, Hangul faithful served the humblest needs of the common people, but until 1893 Hangul still was not accepted among elites and in the official circles of government and education. - In our country, however, in spite of the existence of our language and our own fine alphabet, not many people learn it. - With the signing of the treaty between Korea and the United States (1892), the Western missionaries were allowed to practise Christianity in Korea and were engaged in the educational and social improvements for Koreans. - And the Bible began to be translated into Korean and penetrated into the lowest strata of the Korean society. - A concise Dictionary of the Korean Language: H.G. - This officially meant the ending of the Chinese protectorateship of Korea and the beginning of the Japanese control of Korea. - The first Korean language newspaper Tok-rip Shin-mun ‘The Independent’) was published by So Chae-p’il in 1896. - Hangul played a very important role in the development of the modern Korean literature: the first contemporary novel (Li In-jik: Hyol-ui nu ‘Bloody Tears’) was written in 1906. - The Japanese policies regarding education and language education are reflected in the following quotations: …the Japanese regime did not allow Koreans to teach Korean history, language, and culture in schools. - 2.2.3 Language education in Korea after 1945 After 1945, in the aftermath of WWII, the politics of the Cold War resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate governments in Korea, and the Korea was divided into the two countries: Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the North (generally known in many other languages as North Korea) and the Republic of Korea in the South (known as South Korea). - In the North, on February 16, 1948, North Korea made a proclamation of “the Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” which marked the birth of a communist state. - The Article Eighteen of the Constitution is concerned with the education and language education. - Also at this time, North Korea the horizontal arrangement of words with a left to right progression, instead of the traditional vertical form, with the right to left progression. - In the present era of globalization and internationalization, the isolationism of the North Korean language education policy limited the communication and closer relationship between the North Koreans and the world communities. - In order to overcome these obstacles and difficulties, North Korea provides an extensive foreign language training in their schools (from the first grade of elementary school), but its result is still moderate due to the lack of the qualified teachers and the backwardness of the teaching methods.. - 2.3.1 Policy of national language education As for the status of the Korean language in education, after the liberation, the national language classes were concerned, the exclusive use of Hangul was adopted by the schools and the young generation was for the first time on their way to learning the native tongue officially in school with the full support of the Ministry of Education under the Military Interim Government. - On July 17th, 1948, the main copy of the Republic of Korea’s Constitution was prepared and also signed in Hangul. - And on September 30th, 1948 the National Assembly passed the Resolution No.6 “the Exclusive Use of Hangul as the Official Writing System in the Government”. - The official documents of the Republic of Korea shall be written in Hangul, the Korean alphabetic script. - However, all the government branches and offices did not comply with the law (government documents continued to be printed in the mixed use of Hangul and Hanja without parentheses) with the exception of the Ministry of Education. - The Textbook Committee which belonged to the National Education Review Committee, established the regulations of the use of Hangul in textbooks, according to which “the textbook for the elementary and secondary schools shall be in the exclusive use of Hangul except when necessary Hanja may be inserted in parentheses “ (Hangul Hakhoe : 418). - On December 6th, 1957, the Council of State presented to and adopted “the Revised Hangul Plans”. - The contents of the resolution were: Objective – until such time as the new legislation takes place, this resolution will prevail in enforcing the exclusive use of Hangul. - Amendment to the Legislation No.6 – the Ministry of Education is responsible for creating policies for implementation regarding the Hangul exclusive use. - Thus, in 1962 most of the Revised Hangul Plans had been carried out. - But beginning in 1963, under the pressure of the Hanja Revival Movement, the attitude of Ministry of Education had changed completely. - In 1968 and in subsequent years, the movement of the Hangul exclusive use was warmed up. - This was mainly due to President Park’s personal urging of the Hangul implementation by Presidential Decrees No. - But the struggle for the mixed use of the Hangul and Hanja was continued by the followers of Chinese characters. - They thought that being a member of the so-called Kulturkreis of Chinese characters (han-cha-mun-hwa-kwon) guarantees the firm place of Korea among the countries of the future North-east Asian Economic Community (tong-puk-a kyong-che-kwon). - The classical works of the past must be translated into modern Korean with Hangul letters. - There is a purification-substitution process which was considerably intensified by the restriction of the number of Chinese characters in usage in the South. - But with the decreasing of the Chinese words, there was an increasing of the non-Korean words borrowed from English and other western languages. - The national curriculum for Korean language instruction has been developed to promote the development of Korean culture and Korea national language, to protect the purity of the national language and maintain the nationalist mentality, to help Korean people use the Korean language effectively and accurately in information-based society, to educate attitudes and competence in creative use of the Korean language in their everyday life. - To educate the competence in the use of Korean in daily life, to study the phenomena of the Korean language on the basis of fundamental knowledge of the Korean language and languages, to educate competence in creative expressions of ideas and emotions, competence in accurate and critical interpretation of the contents and aspects of the Korean language, to have a comprehensive look at the objectives, purposes and coherence in the use of the national language. - Through this to nurture attitudes and love for the Korean national languagee, correct understanding of the culture of the Korean language. - The aims of the Korean language curriculum. - To educate attitudes and competence in order to be able to actively contribute to the development of national language and culture, to correctly understand the natioanl language, to creatively and accurately use the national language, to have a comprehensive understanding of the contents, purposes, and coherence of language usage, of the nature of literature, of language and language usage. - To educate competence in creative expressions of ideas and emotions, in critical understanding of diverse materials about the Korean language, in understanding the principles and effective and accurate use of the Korean language. - The basic contents of the Korean language curriculum cover 6 areas: listening, speaking, reading, writing, language knowledge and literature knowledge · To study speaking, listening, reading and writing with an aim to understand the working mechanism of the language and to develop a competence in creative use of the Korean language. - The basic contents of the six areas are presented in the following table: Table 3: Basic contents of Korean Language Curriculum in the seventh NEC Areas. - Reading Practice - Reading information exchanges - Reading of the perusable content - Reading of emotive expressions - Reading of the intimate content Writing. - Minimum instructional hours of Korean language in schools: Under the Seventh National Curriculum, Korean language is one of the national compulsory subjects in all Korean schools from grade 1 to grade 10. - Table 6: Courses of the Korean language and Chinese characters and classics for Grades 11 & 12 of high school Subjects. - Korean language (8). - However with the advent of the modern schools which preferred to use the national language as instruction language, English became a subject for general education and lost its original purpose of preparing students to be proficient users of English. - The structural syllabus of the past was now replaced by notional –functional one. - Most of the regular foreign language teachers in Korean schools have received teacher training in Korea. - The qualification necessary for the above procedure is that the instructor must be a citizen of a country that speaks the target language as the first language, and that the instructor must have training in one of the following ways. - There were changes of foreign language education curriculum in NECs, and at present the foreign language curriculum of the 7th NEC is being applied for all Korean schools. - Chapter 3 A SURVEY OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN KOREAN SCHOOL 3.1 Introduction 3.1.1 Survey purpose In order to get a better understanding of Korean language education curriculum in Korea schools, we have carried out a small survey on the teaching and learning of the Korean language in a High school in Korea. - The purpose of the survey is to investigate issues relating to language education in Korea schools with an emphasis on the teaching contents, students attitudes toward the subject and students scores in the national language and foreign languages. - The survey questions were then processed with the help of the statistical program SPSS/PC. - 3.1.3 Survey questionnaire The survey questionnaire contains 15 multi-choice questions which are divided into 4 parts with the following topical foci: 1) Interviewee’s sex (Q-0.1), 2) Questions concerning the national language (Q-1.1 to Q-1.5), 3) Questions concerning Chinese characters and classics (Q- 2.1 to Q-2.3) 4) Questions concerning foreign languages (Q-3.1 to Q-3.5) Following are the contents of the questionnaire: