Immersion education in Southeast Asia

동아시아의 몰입교육

With the advent of the 6th and the 7th national educational curricula in Korea. English language teaching in communicative perspective has been highly recommended and widely practised in that context. The aim of new approach is to enhance the students' general communication abilities in English. However, English teachers still find it very hard to improve the students' communicative competence in English since English remains to be taught as a school subject. In so far as English is taught as a school subject, students' attention is paid to the formal elements of English and the increase in communicative competence in English is hardly expected Only when the students' attention is paid to the content, their communicative competence is expected to increase. The best way to shift the students' attention from formal elements to content is to teach other school subjects in English, that is, English immersion education. To introduce immersion education to Korea, the two most successful examples of Singapore and Hong Kong are reviewed in terms of language policies and general practices in their primary and secondary schools respectively. To implement the program into Korea, extensive research on it is expected henceforth.