Many people think education in Korea is like a banking system which is mentioned by Freire and we are all creating cram education and cram schools. Though I also agree with these critical points, I would like to mention about the education that I received when I was in a high school and a university.
When I was young, I loved writing stories. When I was teenagers, I wrote more than 15 stories and I’m still keeping them. I actually wanted to be a writer and my favorite subject was always Korean literature. If I remember correctly, I didn’t only receive the banking education. I also did some critical activities which required critical thinking. I studied a lot of poetry and novels in a Korean literature class in a high school and many test questions about the literature were not easy. I had to think critically to understand them well. My literature teacher (He was my favorite teacher) used to say this a lot; “Please be flexible when you read poetry and novels. One word can mean many things.” There are a lot of metaphors in poetry. So it was not that easy to understand the one single line of it. I think Korean literature class that I had helped me a lot develop my literacy and think critically. But the problem was that the classroom setting was not powerful enough to engage all students in critical discussion since we all had to stick to studying for the big exam.
I had taught Korean literature to a high school student as a tutor when I was a university student and I had a really hard time to teach her. Whenever she read some stories, poetry, or articles, she didn’t really understand the main points. Her Korean literature score was always poor. She often complained like this; “I actually don’t know what these questions are all about, and what they want me to answer.” I gave her a book which had many short stories and let her make a one sentence summary for each, but she wasn’t interested in that homework. She only wanted to have a high score from the test.
When I was a university student, my second major was Advertisement & Journalism. I took a class which was about journalism. Every week, the professor gave us a news article (in Korean of course), which were usually political or about current issues, and wanted us to make a simple but good summary. The professor was very strict and a little bit scary. He was never satisfied with our summaries. He always said that how we couldn’t make a good summary. I still remember his moan.
“Can’t you read Korean? How could you say that you are a university student?”
Anyway what I thought about literacy was this; it’s not that easy to get even with our own language. That’s why I was a little skeptical about critical activities in second language learning since they are difficult to be conducted even in first language. I didn’t know what I should do with my beginner students who can say only very simple things in English. But when I did a presentation in class with many coursebooks to talk about some potential problems, I realized that I was wrong. What I have to consider is not my students’ language proficiency but the classroom setting or activities which can make them be engaged with full of interests. When I did a presentation in class, I heard this; “Every woman is young and slim,” and this is very easy sentence that my students also can make. After my presentation, I decided to use English coursebooks in my class for my critical lesson, and the result was beyond my expectation. In general, I hoped that my students could more actively participate in the discussion with critical views about the coursebooks. So that they could have a wider perception on the all kinds of books they can find in a bookstore or they get in the institute. They are somehow passive learners since the coursebook in the institute are already designated. If they can have oppositional views, they might be able to choose their own coursebook and they also might be able to resist some with reasonable reasons. Then the institute (where has the power to choose the books) may have to consider learners’ own opinions better than before. I hope that we have the same power for language learning. I mean learners, teachers, and the others from outside like researchers, publishers and organizations. Sometimes it’s hard for learners to realize that they can have the power to choose their own tastes in language learning. I think we need to make them awake and it is one of important roles as a teacher.
I expected that they would be a bit shy to answer to my discussion question. When I asked, “what do you think of our coursebook? Do you like it or not?”, they gave a lot of opinions like below.
S1: It’s not good.
T: Why not?
S1: No grammar.
T: You mean grammar explanations?
S1: Yes, no grammar explanation. It’s just simple, and no vocabulary.
T: What else?
S2: No real pictures.
T: Yes, right. There are no real pictures. Do you prefer real pictures to illustrations?
S2: I like real pictures.
T: Why?
S2: Understand well.
T: I see. Anything else? What about speaking activities in a book? Do you like them?
S3: No, I don’t.
T: Why not?
S3: Too simple. Boring. Not fun.
I knew that they were ready to do some critical task though they are not really good at speaking English. I divided them into three groups and gave a different coursebook which were all for beginners. I also gave them a worksheet and let them find some problems and strengths. They seemed very interested in knowing that there are a lot of coursebooks for their level and they all look different. They compared the book with their own coursebook (which was not my intention, but it was nice to hear their ideas about the coursebook that we are actually using in class), and also discussed the problems of the coursebooks. Sometimes they found some good things. One interesting thing was that if there are no kind grammar explanations, they considered it as a problem. I could understand why publishers want grammar in their coursebooks as Thornbury said in his article. Even though they were beginners, they seemed to dislike too simple activities and dialogues. They all agreed that the coursebook we are using is not that good. I hope that they could gradually develop their critical views so that they can hopefully change the system in the institute where they are studying by spending money through this kind of lessons.
After some time, I gave them another worksheet and let them upgrade one of the poor activity from the book they criticized or make their own and creative speaking activity. But the time was not enough. I told them that we would continue this lesson tomorrow, and I would give about 15 minutes to prepare their own activities. I also announced that each team should demonstrate their own activity to lead the class and meantime they would also evaluate each activity. Next day, I was surprised to know that they were already all prepared. They said that they went to a café together after class and made the activities. In class, we did those three activities, and I could see that they were all very excited. Their participation was also much better than before. At that time I sat like a student and participated in the activities that they made. I thought second team’s activity was nice and well made, but my students liked the first activity which was a speed game.
I’m sure that they also enjoyed the critical lesson since they discussed for a long time than I expected, gave a lot of ideas, and also they made the activity after class in a café. I think because they were all adults and when I said that they have their own right to criticize the book that they are studying with, it somehow touched their cognitive process. But when they did the activities they made, I could see a lot of similarities with my teaching style. Three activities are all very similar with activities that I already conducted in class. That wasn’t my intention since I wanted to see wholly new ones different from ones in a book or I made. I’m not sure that this was bad or not, but I realized that I have a quite strong power in class and my job is not that simple since I may change their beliefs, opinions or anything even though it could be a very small part in their life.
After this lesson, I decided to have some critical lessons with regular classes during the two months’ course. I really want my students to be flexible, be open-minded, see something with various views, to be engaged and motivated in English learning, so hopefully they can be the active learners with intrinsic motivation. And to lead them to this goal, as a language teacher, I realized that I should make an appropriate classroom setting to engage them in critical and active learning.
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