There are many hurdles facing learners of the English language in South Korea. As I see it, four of the most common difficulties students have with acquiring English are alphabet related difficulties, Grammar/structure, loan word confusion and lack of exposure to actual English communication.

The first, and most obvious problem a Korean learner will face when learning English is the fact that Koreans, unlike ESL students from say, European countries, do not use the Roman alphabet. This must be learnt first. This is not a particularly arduous task, but it has some tricky aspects. For example several consonant sounds in the English language are not present in the Korean alphabet. Those are, F, V, Z also the L/R sound is indistinct. This can lead to some real problems with pronunciation.

A final problem regarding alphabet is that Koreans are used to a fairly strict phonetic alphabet. Therefore a “ㄱ” character will always sound like the English “G”. However English often has some unusual spellings with for example silent “P” or different pronunciations for the same spelling. E.g. Cough and Dough. This can give rise to spelling and reading difficulties.

Another fundamental difference between Korean and English is the fact that Korean grammar is arranged SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) this is almost completely opposite of the common English structure SVO (Subject-Verb-Object.). As a result Koreans often have great difficulty with the syntax of English, frequently placing the verb at the end of the sentence as they would if they were speaking Korean.

Another major characteristic of Korean grammar is that it is agglutinative; that is, the smallest meaning units of the language are stacked up and merged together, unlike in English, which tends to isolate them. -

A less obvious issue Korean students often have is the inaccurate use of loan words. Loan words are both a blessing and a curse for the Korean ESL student. On the plus side is the fact that even a Korean who has studied no English already has a large English vocabulary of English loan words. However these are often used inaccurately and prove to be a difficult habit to break. For example some inappropriate English loan words common in Korea are Gag man (comedian) eye shopping (window shopping) live beer (beer on tap(draft)) tire punk (a tire puncture) etc. The student, considering these words to be already English will use them frequently during English conversations. It is quite a struggle for the teacher to convince the students to use the standardized English phrases instead of the “Konglish” ones.

One of the greatest impediments the Korean learner (in Korea,) will face in their quest to become fluent in English, is the lack of opportunity to practice one’s English in a real world situation. They will attend their language academy and speak English to the native ESL teacher. The Korean teachers however, often deliver their lesson in Korean with actual English communication nowhere to be found.

Outside of the language academy English is nowhere to be heard, save a few grammatically awkward phrases on advertisements and billboards.

Thus the short amount of time the students spend with a native speaking English teacher is often the only time they spend communicating in English. Unless they arrange a conversation club with fellow learners or are fluent enough to make English speaking friends

Endnotes.

1. = . Professor Gregory Mock.

Darian Godfrey