What is the role of the English village in ensuring Korea’s economic competitiveness?

English Village is used to provide a more conducive environment for the Korean students to study English. The purpose of setting up the English village is to raise the standard of English among the younger generation. The English village runs camps in order to motivate the Korean children to learn English. The Koreans learn English by having fun through the singing of nursery rhymes and storytelling. The children are taught western cultures, such as Halloween in order to understand the western countries more.

English is very important as it is a global language used widely for commercial purposes. In order to ensure more Koreans are able to communicate with foreigners, the government has invested a lot of money on setting up English village in other parts of South Korea as it is accessible to as many children as possible. Koreans benchmark Singapore in terms of our level of proficiency in English by 2025. This is to ensure the survival of the country as the government will have to depend on them to ensure the future work force is strong and competitive, thus they learn basic English.

We feel that the English village will not be sustainable in the long run due to many factors. The Koreans are still speaking their first language instead of using English though they have learnt basic English.  In addition, it may be difficult to sign up for the programmes organized by the English village as it is not well known to the locals. The locals have not regarded English as an important language to be used in their country. Another challenge faced by the government is the lack of volunteers to teach the children English and to run the programmes.

In our opinion, we feel that it is good to set up an English village as it raises the awareness of the importance of English to the locals. However, we think that measures could be taken into consideration in order to publicize the benefits of the English village. The government should stress the importance of English and also provide subsidies for the locals.

By Super students.