재미동포의 한국어 교육

Korean Language Education of Korean American in the United States of America

This paper studied the Korean language education in the U.S. and our research is divided into two large sectors. Firstly, formal school systems including middle to high school, SAT II, and colleges/universities. Secondly private sector including weekend Korean schools and Korean language schools for adoptees. Korean immigrants have been very diligent in teaching Korean language to their children. They used churches as classrooms, themselves became teachers, and even prepared teaching materials themselves. Thanks to Korean immigrants' efforts, you can find weekend Korean language schools any where in the U.S. Korean language became one of9 foreign languages tested on SAT II since 1995. Now Korean language is being taught in 130 colleges and universities and also in 67 middle/high schools. It is very hard to find such a precedent. However, in recent years things have changed. As the number of Korean immigrants decreases, the number of students in weekend Korean language schools especially in lower grades started to decrease and some middle/high schools closed Korean language classes due to the small number of students who want to take Korean classes. On the other hand, different classes have been launched – Korean classes for second generation of Korean immigrants and non-Korean students. In another words, now the students are not limited to Korean but have expanded to non-Koreans.