<My English Learning Experience>

86WDTMaggie  (Kyungok Lee)

My English learning experience can be divided into two parts, one of which was the English classes in middle and high school days and the other of which was the private academy English classes I attended as an adult.  These two kinds of classes were very different in various aspects.

First, the English classes in my middle and high school days can be classified into "Traditional Classroom".  At those days, the class size was extremely big (about 70 and 80 students per class), and the various learning-teaching materials and methods available nowadays had not been introduced yet.  Teachers should manage those big classes with the text books which were the only teaching material supplied to school teachers.  Then, teachers could not be anything but be the "Explainer", who explains everything themselves and students listened to the explanations and took  notes.  There was barely a chance of variety of activities initiated by students. The contents of English classes were focused on the "grammar" and "getting good score in University Entrance Examination".  So, people came to have many difficulties in using basic  English in practical fields after 6 and more years of English study during school days.

Second, the private academy English class I attended 10 years after the high school graduation were in many aspects different from the school English classes.  The most important point was that I was an adult and attended the English class with my own will.  English was very interesting to me, so I wanted to study more. And also, in private academy at that time, the class size was generally less than 10 students and very diverse teaching materials and methods had been introduced to the English classes.  In those classes, students participated in group works, role playing, free duscussion and many other student-initiated activities.  Teachers were closer to the "Involver" or "Enabler", rather than "Explainer."

Many people around my age have said that after graduating from high school, they have had much difficulty in using English in practical fields.  That means the retention rate of English study from school classes were very low.  This may come from various factors : the "Explainer" teacher, passive students, lack of self-motivation of students and so on.   So they have been forced to attend the private English academy to learn more active and practical English.  These English classes were, in some aspects, very effective in English learning, because of many factors such as "Involver" or "Enabler" teacher type, various activities focused on students participation and so on.  And the students who attended these classes were self-motivated and goal-oriented.  They came to the classes with their own will to achieve certain goal, which improves the retention rate of English learning.

Nowadays, English class in schools have changed very much from those of my school days.  The class size has been diminished to accommodate student-centered learning activities and various teaching materials and methods have been introduced.

These trends will help young people learn English more easily and effectively.