[6] Under the new post cultural revolution Chinese leadership, a large pool of English-proficient personnel was deemed to be required for China in securing its access to global scientific and technological advances in propelling towards modernisation.
[6] This resulted in a venture to expand the provision and improve the quality of English learning teaching since the 1970s, through a series of reforms carried out in areas such as curriculum development, syllabus design, textbook production, teacher training and pedagogy.
[10] The need for native speakers in English is very important because it helps to foster good pronunciation and communicative habits when speaking the language.
Furthermore, students in China are more used to a prescriptivist approach to their education and as a result may not be too receptive to the teaching methodology of native English speakers in explaining rules.
As the need for English grew rapidly, companies started to vy for communicatively competent students, putting pressure on schools to produce such talents.
[15] After the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace and Amity with the United States, English language education in Japan started in 1854 and opened up to the West.
Firstly, a Japanese student can obtain a teaching certificate from any public or private university so long as they fulfil the required amount of credits.
Moreover, teachers do not have sufficient practical experience when it comes to actually teaching in classrooms, hence they tend to mimic the way that they were taught when they were students.
Additionally, in-service teaching training is available for current English teachers, but it is clear that at a national level, it is inconsistently conducted.
This method is commonly applied to long reading passages because government-approved English texts are usually of higher difficulty than what the student can actually cope with.
These tests are considered to be one of the most accurate ways to measure English-language proficiency in Japan and affects employment and further education opportunities.
As a result, many government and private institutions have used this test as an objective means of measuring a student's English language abilities.
[20] This is bad for communicative learning because there is a lot of emphasis on written and reading proficiency instead which perpetuates the Mute English phenomenon.
[23] It was noted in 2009 that South Koreans ranked 136th out of 161 nations in speaking skills, with points falling below average in the internet-based test (iBT) of TOEFL.
[24] After the Korean War in the 1950s, there is a rising demand for English and is currently being taught as the mandatory foreign language at secondary schools.
[23] Education in South Korea has been valued for centuries deeply rooted by Confucian attitudes[25] and neoliberal ideologies,[26] with it seen as the most powerful means to achieve upward social mobility and economic prosperity.
[27] English has become a symbol of modernisation and globalisation, and is seen as one of the most significant "soft skills" for employment, with the mandatory submission of TOEIC scores for white-collar jobs.
[28] Deemed as "a lifelong project for individual excellence",[29][26] English has become a necessity for Koreans and associated with one's aspirations in enhancing their worth in a competitive society.
[26] A widespread use of English in street signs, brand and government policy names, entertainment, beauty and fashion industries and academia today reflects the positive attitude towards the language.
This would mean plans to implement English-medium instructions and a restructuring of English teaching licensure, but they are still largely considered to be monolingual.
In fact, in a survey conducted by Jeon in 2009, it was found that the greatest stress that teachers experience while teaching English, is the number of students.
With a smaller class, teachers can make the lessons more communicative and interactive, which helps to mitigate the effects of Mute English .
Annually, South Koreans spend $752 million on additional support to take English proficiency tests and they are globally regarded as the largest market to take the TOEFL.
Furthermore, there is a phenomenon called "jogi yuhak'', where middle to high income parents send their children to English-speaking countries such as the US or Australia to help improve their English.
[31] If they do poorly on the English section, it greatly reduces a Korean student’s chance of getting into a top university, which continues encouraging them to only focus on what is tested.
[33] This therefore perpetuates the Mute English issue because the focus on entrance exams would mean less opportunities to develop speech skills in the classroom.
She found that at every level of education (elementary, middle and high school), teachers ranked supplementing interesting and additional materials for their students were the fourth and fifth most reasons for stress.
Fifth- and sixth-graders will study the language for 70 hours a year to achieve the goal of reading, writing, comprehending and speaking English properly with a vocabulary estimated to be around 600 to 700 words.
Jogiyuhak or jogi yuhak (early study abroad) is the educational and linguistic investment that many Korean families take part in, in order to achieve good English standards - a native-like fluency and accent.
The English villages are intended to reduce this loss, and make the immersion experience accessible to students from low-income families as well.