Originally published here: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/ 2007.11.15
PAJU, Gyeonggi Province – Gyeonggi English Village is a mega-project with a question mark. The question is whether or not the millions of dollars spent on the development are paying off by improving the language skills of students or motivating them to study English.
Laid out on a tract of land an hour’s drive north of Seoul, the language theme park boasts some top-notch facilities and impressive architecture designed to transport visitors to an idealistic Western hamlet. Its main street is dotted with many of the conveniences you would find in a regular English town: restaurants, a pub, bakery, coffee shop, bookstore, library, theater, concert hall, exhibition center, and a city hall. Visitors do not just enter, they immigrate to a land where English is the official language and they are encouraged to use it to conduct their daily activities.
What the camp does is supplement classroom language learning with an immersed environment, special programs and entertainment, which are also intended to have a motivational impact. “The best thing a visit can do for someone is to make them more excited about learning,” said Christian Zonts, a Gyeonggi village “edutainer” who skipped Los Angeles for his full-time drama gig. The staff is enthused about their work. Zonts is not looking back: “From the first day when I saw a couple of performances, I knew I had joined a good team.” His new thrill is successfully combining entertainment with educational and linguistic elements, “How do I entertain people that may not understand everything I say? It’s a great feeling to know some 5 year old laughed at you when he may not understand everything you said – and you are from halfway around the world.”
The programs include one-day, one week, and two week options. Most visitors are groups of students from schools within Gyeonggi Province although more schools from outside the area are discovering the park, and it is open to the public. The village also conducts teacher training programs, which seem to be hitting the mark. “It was very hard for me at first, but now I feel more comfortable teaching English,” said Lim Kyu-sub, a Seong-il High School English teacher who is just completing a five-week course. The new teacher also had a positive outlook on the village concept: “We can come here on public transport, without buying an airline ticket and talk with foreigners. He did suggest further support from government to make full use of the project. “I think it’s worthwhile,” he added. Certainly one motivation for the village is to stem the flood of education spending overseas, currently estimated between $1 billion and $4 billion per year, depending on the criteria observed.
The concept is not without its detractors, who suggest English villages are a waste of money because they do not accurately depict an English environment, Korean is spoken, and the focus is too much on entertainment instead of language acquisition. However, language schools also face similar challenges in finding qualified native-English speaking teachers and offering an intensive learning environment with a low student to teacher ratio.
“Our class has 34 students, so each student only gets a little chance to speak English and there are just one or two teachers. They need more foreigners to make it easier for students to practice,” said Solmoe Elementary School teacher Kim Tae-hyung.
Perhaps the camp could use more foreigners out there in the street, engaging students and visitors in novel ways to increase their exposure and practical experience with the language. “Street talk,” a village program which sent staff into the street to do just that, could be expanded. And as Kim also pointed out, more practice with the language will generate better results.
This is something the administration of the park is addressing, according to Mike Nance, an edutainer supervisor. “We are hiring more people and expanding programs. It’s getting bigger and bigger.”
The criticisms of the camp do have some merit. Reports suggest the whole program cost close to $100 million. And many of the shop proprietors are Koreans. When addressed in the Korean language, they respond in kind, which doesn’t exactly help with English skills. However, it points to a central tenet of language learning, that it be somewhat voluntary. It also brings up a dilemma in that the camp needs to cater to its constituents, who are Korean, may not be comfortable speaking English all day, and need to communicate.
English is also not the native language of many of the camp’s clerks. However, surveys show that two out of three English speakers are not native speakers; the language is moving beyond its Western center. One could argue that overcoming the American-accent obsession in Korea is a good thing and in this case adds to the international flavor of the village, which has employees of diverse racial backgrounds and national origins. And developing a wider perspective is part of what the village can do, particularly in a country with a homogeneous population seeing more foreigners become residents.
Foreigners in Korea just topped 1 million. “If the English village helps kids picture a world where not everyone speaks Korean and thus inspires them to study English and travel abroad … then it is fulfilling an important function,” said South African hagwon teacher Jennifer Bryson on her blog, after a visit to the camp.
The kids seem to be getting a kick out of the place. “English class was very very interesting. About the new seven wonders of the world. It’s a good idea,” said one student from Dongnam Middle School in Pocheon. And the edutainment fulfills its mandate too. During the show “The Coyote Monster” developed by the staff specifically for the camp, students are encouraged to participate in advancing the plot, fulfilling the language acquisition requisite of active listening. When asked, “Do you know which way Billy went?” the student audience is quick to respond both vocally and physically, shouting “Over there! Over there!” and pointing stage right.
Said 12-year-old Im Do-won on his second visit: “English village is fun.”
By Frank Smith
(franksmith@heraldm.com)
