Blog#8 South Korea's Education

        Hello everyone, this is Shoko :) How was your summer vacation??I went to the lake Kawaguchi and enjoyed swimming in a river, eating Houtou which is kind of noodle, and watching fire works!!Yet i have been so busy for working and studying these days:(

        As you know, The relationship between south korea and japan is getting worse these days. I think the statement to japan’s emperor by Lee Myung-bak is still fresh in your memory. So, today’s my topic is south korea and I would like to focus on its education because i am taking teacher training course.

        South Korea, the official name is Republic of Korea, is a country located in the southern part of Korea peninsula. It is also one of neighbors of Japan which you can visit there within 3 hours by airplane from Tokyo. It is a high democratic country. The population is about 50 million. After the war with North Korea which ended in 1950, it has culturally and economically developed rapidly. Despite its tininess; 109^th largest country in the world, now it is one of the largest developed countries in Asia. According to Wikipedia, in 2008, its GDP was 1,163 trillion dollars which was ranked 15^th in the world and now its economy is fourth strongest in Asia and fifteenth in the world. Recently, South Korea is famous as exporting its culture such as K-pop, drama, food, and electronic devices. Samsung, a Korean consumer electronics company, is now one of the biggest companies as other world’s companies.

Map of South Korea

           South Korea has a compulsory education system like japan. All 6 to 14 year-old students can be taken education for free for 9 years. 

So infrastructure of education system is good compared with other developing countries. After compulsory education ends, 99.6% of students enter high school. There is no entrance examination for high school in South Korea unlike Japan. Therefore entrance examination for university is the only examination which students take. This is one reason why exam for university is extremely hard. You might know that examination  is totally bruising. Korean people attach huge importance to career. It means university you graduated decides your job and future. It is quite common that parents take a day off on the day of exam to encourage and pray for their children. Despite extremely low temperature, they wait outside until exam is over. Sometimes even police are there to take care of those parents and drive students who get a wrong exam venue to the right place.

Praying parents 

           Cram school is also one of features of South Korea’s education. Parents let their children go to cram school at an early age. Many students usually get up early in the morning and go to bed late in the night for studying. Because of that, many students damaged their health. South Korea has conscription and needs healthy young people to make strong army. 

So the government once prohibited cram school to prevent losing healthy young men. However, it did not work at all. Soon high schools were replaced as cram schools and students continued to study until midnight every day

South Korea's cram school

        There are many problems cause by its education style. In that highly tensed situation, students obviously feel unbelievable stress and pressure from parents all day. Of course they have no holiday. You might have heard that suicide rate in Korean is highest in the world.  12,858 people killed themselves in 2008, which is equal to 35 people killing themselves every day and many students are included in the number. You can see more detail HERE. Also, bullying is another huge problem.

        Thanks to such a severe education style, Korea marked high score in PISA investigation. However, its education style makes children physically and also mentally tired and unhealthy. They might need to think what is the best way to educate children once again.

Blog #8 IELTS TEST

 Hello everyone!! This is Chiaki Tochihara. Today is the last day of my long summer vacation, but I really want to see my friends, so it’s ok for me. I hope you had a great summer vacation, too:*

Today, I’ll introduce to you about an English examination called IELTS, which means International English Language Testing System. Do you know about it? Or Have you ever taken the exam?? I have taken the exam twice, and I felt the test was terrific test that I have never taken before.

Nowadays in Japan, TOEIC test is very common and we had such an exam when we entered this university. Most of Japanese people would know TOEIC because when we start to find a job, almost all companies ask us about the scour of TOEIC test, so university students try to study hard and get high score of TOEIC test. Basically, thought TOEIC test has two sections, listening and reading test, it becomes to have other section, speaking and writing test. Unfortunately, however, we cannot use the score of TOEIC test for studying abroad.

On the other hand, recently, IELTS becomes popular all over the world and same as Japan. The test is suitable test for people who want to show their English skills for study abroad and study training, or who apply for their transmigrations. IELTS is admitted by some institution of higher education in UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In America, it is getting to be accepted for the entrance exam, and the candidates all over the world have been getting increase.

Speaking of study abroad, TOEFL test is very common one, but TOEFL test has many difficult specialist vocabularies and examination candidates have to take the exam with using a computer, so that means, in speaking section, we speak to the screen of the laptop. I think it depends on the person which exam is good for them but there are three advantages of IELTS test.First, we don’t need to have specialist vocabulary’s knowledge. Of course we need to learn many vocabularies, about 10000 words, but even if we are lack of the specialist vocabularies, don’t worry because we can figure out such a difficult meaning word by reading sentences around the word, we can guess its meaning. In TOEFL test, if we have not learned a special field, we cannot get high score even if we have high English skills. But in IELTS test, we are equal on the situation weather have learned a special field or not, so it is easier to get high score. Second, we can test our real English skills for all four sections. IELTS test has four sections, listening, reading, writing and speaking, and we have to write the correct spelling of the answers even on the listening test, it means it’s not a mark-test. Of course there are also some questions for the test-taker to select among, but we are needed to write correct spelling and the singular and the plural, so it will become our real English skills because nowadays writing on the paper becomes less than before because of the computer or some convenient devices, many people, even native people, cannot spell correctly today, so IELTS improves our spelling skills too. And especially on the reading section, some topics of the passage are really interesting and good for our life, we can get to know about interesting categories, so I have never felt tired as reading and studying for IELTS test. These new knowledge make us more clever and we can put our learning to practical use after entering the foreign university. Third, we can feel as if we were in other place outside Japan. The exam begins with an explanation which proctor gives in English. At the first time that I took the exam, I was surprised but I could enjoy the environment looks like foreign countries. In addition, there are many candidates, not only Japanese but also the people come from other countries. So I can also feel foreign environment. At last, we can talk with a British examiner during speaking test, so it is a sort of a good training of talking with native speaker. I cannot speak in smooth and fluent English but I like speaking section because of I can talk with them!!

In short, IELTS is an exam but I can enjoy taking this exam!! If you have never taken this exam, please try and know your real English skills. After taking the exam and getting to know which section is your weak point, you can strengthen that point!!

Oh, I have to say to you guys, please pay great attention, because this test has very strict surveillances: due date, show passport, expensive, identify fingerprint and many things that we should do before the exam….if you forget to do only one of these, you cannot take the exam even if you paid….the same as me….