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Beyond the Boundary between Writing and Speaking: General English Program of Korean Universities and Digital Storytelling

This essay attempts to speculate on the possibility of creating an emerging program for the General English program of Korean universities beyond the split between writing and speaking, and thus of resuming a comprehensive rhetoric education in the age of digital media. For this purpose, it speculates on how General English programs were situated and managed before the late 1990s and to what extent the three universities could renovate their General English programs. It also reviews General English programs that Ewha Womans Univ., Yonsei Univ. and Chung-Ang Univ. have been renovating since the late 1990s. By reviewing advantages and limits of current College English programs, this essay attempts to suggest what would be the proper direction desirable for General English program of Korean universities in today’s drastically changing cultural and educational environment. In this argument, a strong emphasis is put on the literature-based digital storytelling model that can consolidate the seemingly split processes of writing and speaking in the current programs. When literature-based education can still hold the ideal for balanced self-perfection, the argument concludes, General English program, as a method of enhancing rhetorical capacity and critical thinking, needs to move forward to a direction that can reflect this ideal in its pedagogy and facilitate a flexible adaption to the digital platform.