South Korea, 19.12. – 24.12.2016
Seminar “Science subjects instruction in an English as Foreign Language (EFL) setting”
As part of Kazakhstan’s national plan, the 100 Applied Steps to A Modern State Program of new, comprehensive reform processes have been initiated in the country. These include. among other things, introducing trilingual training in Kazakh, Russian and English. According to the Plan, by 2019-2020, high school students will have a choice of learning Computer science, Chemistry, Biology and Physics in English. In support of these changes a massive program of in-service professional development for teachers was launched and has been implemented for several years with the goal of improving teachers’ skill set in Kazakh, Russian and especially in English. The best participants of the program are rewarded with, among other things, study tours abroad.
For this purpose INTAMT Academy in cooperation with Nazarbaev University organized a study tour to South Korea for the best high school and college teachers of the Republic of Kazakhstan from the 19th to 24th December 2016. The topic of the study tour was “Teaching methods of general subjects in English for high school students in non-English speaking countries”
According to to the statistics of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2016, South Korea ranked first among OECD countries in the number of people aged 25-34 who have completed higher education. The Confucian tradition, which for hundreds of years defined the convictions (views/behavior) and lifestyle of Korean society, urges Koreans to embrace continuous development and learning. Therefore, it is no wonder that about 9% of the Korean GDP is invested into education.
During the study tour the participants visited The College of Education of Seoul National University and Korea National University of Education, where they were introduced to the system of teacher training and content-based teaching methods in South Korea.
At the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation the participants were informed of the knowledge requirements for high school students by leading specialists. The President of Korea TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) shared his experience in teaching and answered all the questions of his guests.
Practical activities of the study tour included visits to high schools, where the participants learned about the organization of educational processes in the school as well as viewing school facilities and equipment. They also had a chance to talk to the principals and teaching staff.
Other activities included seminars and workshops by top high school and university teachers on Applied Linguistics, Fundamentals of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), communicative language teaching (CLT) and modern teaching methods in Biology; Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science to second language speakers at the Seoul National University.
The participants also visited the unique Museum of Education, where they could learn about the formation and development of school education in Korea from the Middle Ages to the present day.
The Kazakh guests also had an opportunity to admire Korean culture during a sightseeing tour of Seoul.
