The purpose of this study is to analyze the actual English educational condition of multicultural children. To accomplish this purpose, a survey was conducted with 82 parents of multicultural families living in Busan, Ulsan, Changwon and Gimhae over 3...
The purpose of this study is to analyze the actual English educational condition of multicultural children. To accomplish this purpose, a survey was conducted with 82 parents of multicultural families living in Busan, Ulsan, Changwon and Gimhae over 3 months. The multicultural parents had children who were from elementary to high school students. In addition, in order to collect more extra data the teachers in charge of multicultural children were interviewed to give their opinions about the real condition of multicultural students in English education.
The main results are as follows:
(1) The survey shows that the English grades of multicultural students were similar to – or lower than the average Korean students. The multicultural students with low marks had difficulty being educated by their parents whereas the majority of the multicultural students with high marks had a better environment to learn English due to having Filipino mothers. On the basis of the data, multicultural children of mothers with higher English competence received better education. Many multicultural students participated in English education from after-school classes and mentoring programs offered by university students in addition to formal school education.
(2) A comparison between the multicultural students’ Korean proficiency and English abilities showed that those students who lacked in Korean proficiency also lacked in their English abilities. Conversely, students who were fluent in Korean were in the top 10 percentile of their English classes. However, in the survey of the parents’ views they replied that their children were able to improve their English ability regardless of Korean.
(3) The teachers’ interviews showed that multicultural families who could not afford to provide their children with an English education achieved less than the average grades. In the teachers’ opinions, there was little to no difference between the English grades of multicultural and average Korean student in elementary education However, they expected that there will be a striking difference at the middle school level.
(4) The majority of fathers had a low level of education and either worked as technological workers or had blue-collar jobs. In contrast, the majority of foreign mothers had achieved a higher level of education, but were unemployed. In addition, the highest percentile of the average monthly income was 1 million won to 3 million won, which is below the Korean middle class the economic average. In the language aspects, while foreign parents sometimes spoke their mother-tongue at home, the proportion of children who occasionally spoke foreign parents’ mother-tongue and those who never spoke foreign parents’ mother-tongue at home was similar.
In conclusion, multicultural children lack the educational support from their parents and live with economic difficulties multicultural students have few opportunities to learn English. Moreover, the higher Korean proficiency the children have, the better English marks they achieve.
These results imply that the government may have to support the multicultural students’ English education by providing supplementary lessons. In addition, Korean educational programs need be created to improve the Korean ability for both foreign parents and their children. Lastly, since multicultural families are made up of a variety of different nationalities, further consideration needs to be taken to categorize multicultural students based on their exposure to English at home.
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