Chinese came next with 189 schools, followed by French with 52 and German with 47. A growing number of high school students are selecting Japanese and Chinese as their second foreign language.
As for Spanish, only four schools are offering the language course and two foreign language high schools are teaching Russian.
However, no schools are running Arabic language classes, which some 300 million people in the world use. Ironically, Arabic was the most selected language by Korean students for the college admission test last year.
With this trend, many German and French teachers have given up teaching their majors and are teaching other subjects such as Korean literature and English.
Accordingly, universities are reducing admission quotas for German, French and other unpopular language departments.
I was told people selected Arabic because it was easier to look smart in it compared to, say, in Japanese, Hanja, or German, subjects many students study. A Korea Herald article last week confirms that:
Of the nearly 100,000 students who took the optional second foreign language section in last year's College Scholastic Ability Test, 29.4 percent chose Arabic. Many students believe it is possible to get high standard scores in Arabic without studying much because no high school teaches the language.
Only 33 universities across the country require scores in this section, where students pick one from the six foreign languages -- German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic -- or Chinese characters. Arabic was added to the list of elective CSAT subjects in 2005.
I posted the exam used back in November, and if you click through this Naver link, choose a source, and scroll down to 5th period you can see the foreign language questions and answers. For those who don't read Korean, the choices are: German, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, French, and Chinese characters as used in Korean. The Japanese exam is here*, as a .pdf file, and the answers are here. What do you think? Easy? Hard?
* I fixed the link. 미안해.
7 comments:
The exam seems to me a Hanja (chinese characters) test, which is different from a Chinese test as language. As you know, most Asian countries used the chinese characters for long time, so did Korea. But most young people thesedays don't understand the chinese character, though. (Simply because the Hangeul (Korean Alphabet) is enough so they don't need them)
Badger and Hog is correct. The exam you linked to is the Hanja exam, which didn't seem too hard to me, but I've studied Chinese characters as used in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. I looked at the exams for the languages I've studied: German, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. The level of difficulty was high beginner/low intermediate. A high school student with two to three years of daily instruction would be able to pass easily.
These exams, like so many others, are a waste of time and money. Most students study the language only to prepare for the exam and then do nothing with the language afterwards.
As you said, Brian, the students seem to be selecting languages based upon the desire to get an easy high score.
"However, no schools are running Arabic language classes, which some 300 million people in the world use. Ironically, Arabic was the most selected language by Korean students for the college admission test last year."
(Korea Times)
"None of the schools taught Arabic, which is the most preferred elective foreign language subject in the college entrance exam.
Of the nearly 100,000 students who took the optional second foreign language section in last year's College Scholastic Ability Test, 29.4 percent chose Arabic. Many students believe it is possible to get high standard scores in Arabic without studying much because no high school teaches the language."
(Korea Herald)
"Japanese is known as one of the least difficult foreign languages for Koreans to learn, as it has a similar word order with the Korean language. Japanese teachers are also easy to find."
(Korea Herald)
Another unfortunate things is that the less popular languages are becoming less taught.
"With this trend, many German and French teachers have given up teaching their majors and are teaching other subjects such as Korean literature and English.
Accordingly, universities are reducing admission quotas for German, French and other unpopular language departments."
(Korea Times)
Yet another example of how popularity is leading education. I recall how one of Korea's universities decided to teach less math and science because those subjects are less popular. I can't find the article. Maybe you've got it archived somewhere?
Education should be immune to popularity contests, but the hogwon mentality ("popular means good") has really infected the whole education system here, from top to bottom.
"Most students study the language only to prepare for the exam and then do nothing with the language afterwards."
Which is pretty much, just like the 1-2 year foreign language requirements for undergraduates at American universities.
100% of schools offer English right?
German is decreasing in highschool during the last ten years, but there is a button. There are students who want to go to Germany and study there. That would mean there are high schools in every bigger city who will offer German, though it is many times less than before. That's okay considering how many language could be important.
Apparently a lot of parents in Bulgaria for example choose to have their children focus on German because English is so widespread and easy to learn after German that you can pretty much get it for free afterward, whereas going from English to German (less people use it, grammar takes a long time to master) is more of an uphill struggle.
In the past year Spanish has now overtaken German in the UK as well as the second-most learned foreign language (after French if I remember correctly) but I actually think German is the best choice for a really motivated student because with less people learning it there's much less competition for positions that require it, and it's not as if the German-speaking world has gone anywhere, and they're still at the forefront of some pretty good technologies like wind power and passive houses. Spanish has a lot more people but it's spread out and isn't very impressive on a per capita basis.
Japanese of course is a no-brainer for a Korean. You can't go wrong learning Japanese.
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