Teaching Teachers to Teach English as an International Language: A Korean Case

Abstract

One focus of teaching English as an international Language (EIL) is the development in learners of the requisite knowledge and skills to address cultural difference as it appears in both its local and global contexts (McKay SL, Teaching English as an international language: Rethinking goals and approaches. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002; Holliday A, The struggle to teach English as an international language. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, 2005). Little attention, however, has been paid to the perspectives of Korean teachers of English regarding EIL pedagogy in the Korean context. This chapter addresses a gap in the literature by providing a contextualized account of the thinking behind curricular revisions to a culture course aimed at teaching teachers to teach EIL in Korea at the turn of the millennium. In order to measure the overall effectiveness of the course, a model of Intercultural Communicative Competence, listing a set of ideal attitudes for encounters of cultural difference, is referenced to examine the appropriate knowledge and skills for interviewing culturally-different speakers of English. The themes gleaned from the teachers’ written reflections of the intercultural interviews provide a few theoretical insights upon how EIL pedagogy can better promote intercultural communicative competence in this and other contexts.