Research Papers / English and U.S.A. in the eye of Korean kids [7]

Here is my first writing in this forum. If you comment it from any ponit of view such as grammar, structure, format, and other things, I would be greated honored. This is the introducton part of my thesis.

Title: English and U.S.A. in the eye of Korean kids: A Case Analysis of Students of a Prestigious Private Elementary School in Seoul

1. Introduction: The English Fever and Students' Life
Nowadays, a huge amount of money is poured on "English education" in South Korea (henceforth, Korea) every year. Children as young as five old go to English Kindergarten or private English language center until late at night as most school-age students go to cramming schools (hagwon) at night after finishing their study at school. Even a great number of children are being sent to English-speaking countries for the purpose of "English education" and the number is growing year by year. One professor of politics has recently decried this highly heated current pursuit of 'English education' in Korea as a 'collective neurosis of English fever' (Y-M Kim, 2002).

In Korea, English competence is considered the most decisive factor in schooling and career building. Since it is believed that English competence is highly related with success in the future, parents put huge efforts and money into 'English-learning-activity' for their children. Most of them want their children to learn English by any means and at any cost. Though Korean parents' highly educational expectations on education has been a major driving force for the development of Korean society, the overheated English-learning boom, which is driven by the trend of globalization, cause many problems.: the incredibly high and consumptive household expenditure on the private education market and the indeterminate foreign language policies that the parents and the students confused and exhausted.

Even though the number of studies dealing with English-learning and middle or high school students is abundant, it is still rare to have a research on the perception from the point of view of young learners on the language English and the nation U.S.A. Parents are very eager to teach their children English from early age and the children, whether they like it or not, are thrown into the world of English-learning environment, even from 3 or 4 years old. They spend much of their time on English learning at the cost of other activities and free time.

This study will describe the perspectives on English and U.S.A of students who are attending a prestigious private elementary school in Seoul. Most of them have learned English more than 4 years and still learn English more than 6 hours at school and 6 hours at cramming school (hagwon) after school in a week. It will also delve into the underlying assumptions of their perspectives so that it will help us analyze their attitude towards English and U.S.A. in more depth way. The two research questions were (1) How do the children perceive English? And (2) How do they perceive U.S.A.?