Special Lecture

Special Lecture

April 27, 2013, 2 – 3: 30  Dasan Hall of Economics 32211

The increasing demand on speaking and writing ability in standardized English tests and how English teachers can prepare themselves for it

Speakers:

• Park, Yujong (Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, SKKU)
• Park, Chan Young (MA student of Dept. of TESOL, at Graduate School of Translation and TESOL, SKKU)
• Lee, Haemoon (Professor, Dept. of English, Dean of Graduate School of Translation and TESOL, SKKU)

Unlike the passive skill based English education in Korea in the past, more and more emphasis is put on the production skill in English recently. For one example, NEAT is reflecting the determination of Ministry of Education for the future direction of English education in Korea by including speaking and writing parts in addition to the reading and listening parts. The expected washback effects are more balanced four skills of language: speaking, writing, listening and reading. Though all standardized English examinations have already included speaking and writing parts to meet the needs from various settings, academic and non-academic, developing NEAT is particularly meaningful and drastic in that English classroom in middle and high schools should be responsible for young students’ productive skills in English.

The lecture will be composed of three parts:

(1) Current state of NEAT

(2) Major English tests compared in terms of the types of speaking and writing test items, such that their difficulty levels are analyzed.

(3) Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) will be introduced as a theoretical framework that can analyze the types and difficulty levels of various real-world tasks that are used in the test. Also the theory provides how to develop the productive skills step by step.