By Noh Kwang-woo
I have been teaching English at the high school level for approximately 20 years. Recently, I have struggled with thoughts of whether I should continue to teach English at high schools or find another career path.
This is because some of the questions in the English part of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) are so tricky, even beyond comprehension, that I doubt that what I teach is helpful to students taking the English test.
I am not sure that ordinary high schools students can understand some of these reading questions. Apparently those questions are not designed to evaluate the proficiency of students’ English.
Instead, these questions are designed to help in ranking the students in the English part in Korean CSAT to facilitate a selection process of smart students for college entrance. It begs the question: Does it make sense that students with more background knowledge are more likely to choose the correct answers than those proficient in English?
Our English education has made some remarkable progress toward emphasis on communicative functions. It is very encouraging that a lot of English classes in secondary education settings are conducted for developing practical uses of English.
Also welcome was the decision that the listening part was extended into taking up about 50 percent of the English part from this year on. That change is advisable since expansion of listening is thought to be more conducive to more communicative classes at each level of schools.
But in just a year the organization of the English part will be returning to the previous ratio of questions, which is intended to boost selective discrimination by adding more questions to the reading section. However, it is against the desirable trend that there should be more emphasis on keeping a good balance among the four skills.
Another factor that negatively determines the direction of English classes is asking direct questions about grammar or structure. Many students are afraid of one or two questions about choosing what is wrong about the given passages. They force students to spend quite a substantial amount of time learning grammar, which is not essential to a good command of English.
This is not to say that grammar is not important and should be disregarded. Instead it should be learned without focusing on explicit instructions so that learners acquire it naturally through the four skills of language. And even if grammar must be taught intentionally it would be better presented with examples of various usages so that it can be learned deductively by being able to reason the rules applied to example sentences.
The current questions of the English test demand such a high knowledge of grammar from students that they may feel intimidated by such questions and lose interest in English itself. Accuracy is one of the objectives we strive to obtain in English education, but it should not be at the cost of fluency.
If we are to choose between two, I think fluency should be the first priority. Accuracy comes after fluency. If we agree on the view, we should not put any grammar questions into the English test part of the CSAT because it would make them feel annoyed with trivial knowledge of grammar to get high scores.
Generally I don’t think students are fluent enough to emphasize accuracy over communicative skills. The moment we put stress on grammar over any other skills, students turn their attention from active skills to focus on passive skills in language functions.
In conclusion, I suggest that the English part of the CSAT exam should keep a balanced ratio between listening and reading with comprehensible reading questions but without grammar questions.
The writer is an English teacher at Chungryang High school in Seoul.
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