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All schools in Gyeonggi Province will hold English-language classes in English only starting 2011, and every school in the province will have native speakers as teaching assistants by 2010. Some school will also start teaching other subjects in English. The Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education announced a project to strengthen public English education on Thursday.
The education office said the project is aimed at teaching students to be comfortable speaking with English-speaking foreigners without taking extra classes at private institutions. The ratio of English teachers who can conduct classes only in the language will increase by 15 percentage points every year from the current 56.3 percent to the full 100 percent by 2010. English teachers must take job training for more than 75 hours and undergo a 30-hour training course at least once every three years. Elementary English teachers will have to take 180 hours of job training.
As part of an employment test starting this year, applicants have to demonstrate their ability to conduct a class only in the language. Some schools with native-speaking teaching assistants will start so-called English immersion classes from this year. However, only some classes will be in English at first in consideration of the understanding of students.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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