Korean Language Writing Education in the Multi-Cultural Society

Abstract

The goal of writing could change whether the subject is a mother-tongue learner or a foreign one. This paper is to review Korean language writing education for foreign learners at the Korean beginnerʹs course in the multi-cultural society. Foreign learners should be given some directions as below for writing. In the beginnerʹs course, stroke order and spelling and notation should be comprehensively taught. This is the basis for letter expression and the practice of short‐sentence composition is required to develop into long‐sentences. Here, it should be noted that correction or evaluation is very important in class or for task and performance. In doing so, learners become familiar with writing in his daily life and ultimately gains confidence.BR Tribble suggests four categories of the role of teacher in writing class for foreign learners and that the referred roles include reader, assistant, evaluator and examinant.BR The recent trend witnesses that learnerʹs demands are growing in writing class and, especially for beginners, writing tasks for practical use surely heighten his motivation for learning.BR There are two types of writing activities for beginners. They are mostly concentrated on personal writing and social writing. Personal writing here refers to a diary or daily records, which of them are a means to help memory. Social writing is to build and maintain social relations with family or friends and it includes a personal letter, an invitation, a congratulations card, consolation, telegraph, phone messages.BR Some activities for writing are dictation, limited writing, guided writing, free writing and so on. Dictation requires precision and free writing needs the most fluentness. In this paper, ‘dictation’ and ‘limited writing’ used in the beginnerʹs step are reviewed.BR This paper deals with writing education and activities for foreigners taking the beginnerʹs course in Korean in the multi-cultural society. And I also hope that a similar study will be applied to foreigners who are on an intermediate and expert level in Korean.