South Korea's Ineffective Way of Learning English

          When it comes to English, all Koreans do is memorize a bunch of phrases. Not only just phrases, but just about everything. You may wonder why this is such a problem. Here's the problem: when these English-learning Koreans go out into the real world and have to use their knowledge on English, they're actually clueless. All that memorizing does not pay off in the end.

          Because think about it, what's the point of having a bunch of vocabulary memorized when you can't fit them together to form a decent sentence? The reason to this defect is due to the fact that Korean schools only teach super basic, supposed-to-be conversational English phrases again for the purpose of memorizing, yet fail to practice free talk. I told my dad about how in my Spanish class, everyone has to share one announcement in Spanish about their life for every couple of weeks and it's speaking from the top of your head, you can't write down what you want to say beforehand and use it. My dad's response was that we were learning foreign language well and how back when he was learning English in school, all he did was memorize a bunch of phrases which did not help outside of the tests he had to take for the class, so he blames that for the reason to why he's poor at English. That was years ago, but Korean schools have not changed the way they teach English.

           The Korean schools should consider how effective it is to actually practice natural conversations in the foreign language you're learning during class. I've heard of a number of hilarious cases where solely memorizing English phrases has come in to play when it shouldn't have. For example, an English-speaking foreigner and a Korean had gotten in a car accident and the foreigner asked the Korean in English, "Are you okay?" and because the Korean had memorized the answer to such a question, he automatically answered without missing a beat, "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" This phrase here is what all Koreans have memorized, and it does no good because it does not allow them to think of alternative ways to answer.

          In America, when we learn a foreign language, we learn how to actually form various sentences so that we may give various answers. It's unbelievable how awkward and incorrect English sentences can get when formed by Koreans incompetent with speaking what's really in their hearts. Korean students are constantly beat in the head with studying English since it's a global language, but such arduous efforts go to waste when not even the simplest yet grammatically correct sentences can be formed. So Korea should take note of this and start teaching students various ways to form English sentences so that the knowledge may actually come in handy for their bright future.

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