Wednesday 11 February 2015

English Only

At our English academy, we are going to change into an "English-only" mode starting with the new semester in March.

Currently, all students (except maybe for phonics classes) are required to speak English during class time.

However, before class and during break time students have been allowed to speak in Korean to each other.

That policy is changing.

About 70 % of classes have now been told that they should only speak English while inside the school, and (fortunately) we have had a very good response.

First we asked a handful of "good" classes, mainly 5th-6th grades, to help write a "break time English" list of phrases/sentences/questions and answers.

Then we said to those students, ok, you are going to begin the new policy, so your classes will only speak English at all times.

The students, for the most part, have adopted and conformed to the new rules without a fuss.

Probably there will be a some minor frictions over the next few weeks as most of the remaining classes are told to conform to the new rules, but hopefully the spring semester will start out well and by the end of March there will be only English spoken within the school (with the exception, naturally, of some grammar lessons, etc.).

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