초등학교의 원어민 영어보조교사 활용 실태 - 경기도를 중심으로

Issues in hiring native English teachers in the elementary school: Focused on Gyeonggi Province

  As communicative competence has been emphasized in the school curriculum, the EPIK(English Program in Korea) was launched in 1995. Since then, many of English native teachers have been invited to Korea. Recently, the Korean government declared that in order to systematically establish an English education infrastructure in Korea, native English teachers will be dispatched in all Korean middle schools by 2010. Despite many positive effects of the native English teacher program, the rapid increase of the demands of native English teachers has caused a lot of problems as well, including that of unqualified teachers. In this paper, the current state of the utilization of native English teachers in Korea will be evaluated. Also, the results of a survey of elementary school vice-principals and teachers on native English teachers will be presented and discussed. In order to make the native English teacher program successful, the following are suggested: (1) a clear policy regarding hiring standards and a training process system needs to be established to upgrade the quality of native English teachers; (2) a variety of ways of securing qualified English teachers, such as exploiting Korean bilingual teachers who are proficient in English or making use of parents from multicultural families, should be considered.