New English teaching program in Korea focuses on rural schools

English teachers to be sent to rural areas

The Education Ministry has selected 386 teachers, including overseas college students, to take part in an English teaching program for elementary students in rural areas.

Aiming to close the regional gap in English education, the ministry launched a four-week training session for the teachers yesterday before dispatching them to their assigned schools.

The program called "Teach and Learn in Korea," or TaLK, send the teachers to elementary schools in rural areas to teach for six months or a year starting from Sept. 1, according to a ministry official.

They will teach English speaking, listening and writing skills three hours every day after school for five days a week. This is a measure drafted for some 1,500 elementary schools in rural regions that do not have a native-speaking English teacher.

Each teacher will be paired with a Korean college student to help them adjust when they are dispatched to the schools, a ministry official said.

Of them, 300 currently attend colleges and 86 have graduated.

By nation, 249 teachers came from the United States, 70 from Canada and 22 from Australia. A few are from New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

A ministry official said 254 of them will teach for six months, while the remaining 132 will teach for a whole year.

In a congratulatory message, Education Minister Kim Do-yeon said, "By running this program, children in rural areas will be gifted with the opportunity to learn better English and it will also be a chance for the overseas Koreans to find out more about their native country. In addition, foreign students will have an advantage later in becoming global leaders."

By Cho Ji-hyun

(sharon@heraldm.com)

2008.08.05