Abstract
South Korea is (in)famous for its citizens’ excessive investment in English education—a phenomenon that is frequently referred to as ‘English fever’. Drawing on a variety of academic, institutional, and public sources of data, this chapter examines the trends, causes, and issues surrounding English private tutoring (EPT) in Korea from 2000 to 2020, a period during which both public and private sectors made significant investments in English language education in response to the need to boost individual and national competitiveness in a globalized world. The analysis highlights four major characteristics of EPT in South Korea: prior learning as a motive for EPT, the persisting belief in ‘the earlier, the better’, the importance of parents’ perceptions of English and English education, and the government’s dilemma in controlling EPT. This chapter suggests that EPT is not simply a pedagogical practice for academic achievement, but a complicated sociocultural issue involving multiple social actors pursuing their own distinct goals and beliefs.
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Notes
- 1.
The literal translation of jeoldaepyeongga is a criterion-referenced test. To avoid confusion, we use it as a Romanized Korean word. Even though it is often named criterion-referenced test, as a large-scale standardized test, it considers test takers’ relative standing. Furthermore, as it employs the English level system based on score ranges, the difficulty of the English section in the CSAT, which is established differently each year, plays an important part in determining a test taker’s level.
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Lee, B., Jang, I.C. (2023). A Sociocultural Perspective on English Private Tutoring in South Korea in the Last Two Decades: A Critical Review. In: Yung, K.W.H., Hajar, A. (eds) International Perspectives on English Private Tutoring. International Perspectives on English Language Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26817-5_7
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