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Is English Skill That Important Geno, I think you needn't worry. There's no way in hell Korea would actually adopt English as the official national language. I can say that with the utmost confidence. Even if the government tried, nobody would actually do it. And as for self-learning, it's possible to self-teach oneself a language as remote from one's own as Chinese is from English; but it's damnably hard, and most people frankly are just too lazy, and even the ones who try (as I do with Korean) take a long, long time. Like Mark, I find it's hard to find people who'd rather speak with me in Korean than practice their English with me, even when their English is nowhere as good as my (not very good) Korean. There's also the question of the sphere of use: when I worked in a French company in Canada, I got to the point where I could understand 99% of what was going on in meetings, respond (sometimes in nearly decent French), and so on. Socializing with the crew, though, was the time when I kept asking for clarification and explanation. It's pitiful when someone who's lived in a country for 5 years hasn't even started on the language, but then again, unless one's a lifer, many people can't see the point in working as hard as it takes to get full competence. They're sadly pragmatic in that way, and English will be more useful to a Chinese businessman than Chinese will be to an American businessman, if he plans on going home in a few years. Which most of them do. So according to the individuals' self-perceived values, English is more useful to a Chinese guy than Chinese is to an American, so... well, what can we do? Koreans learning Chinese is way different from Anglophones learning Chinese. Koreans learning Chinese is like Anglophones learning French or German; so many common words and roots, it's really an unfair comparison. You're right to refute Nick on English being flat-out easy; there are things in English that are so damned puzzling to my students I fear some will never really "get" it, given their lack of willingness to practice and the alieness of the grammatical concepts from the perspective of Korean grammar. All these plural/singular things, all these irregular verbs; it's a hell of a lot more work to conjugate verbs for various subjects and tenses in English than in Korean, let me tell you. (Half the time you don't even need to say the subject aloud, or even the object!) That said, I agree that second/foreign language learning should be encouraged more in North America. If not French in the East, then an Asian language in Western North America ca be very useful (oops, I'm betraying my Canadian background, not mentioning Spanish). The people I meet who speak multiple languages tend to be more open-minded, more aware of things, more willing and able to think things through than the average monoglot I know. And sadly, there are a lot of monoglot Anglophones who are teaching English abroad, as I am. |