Incheon Free Trade and English Zone

This afternoon I attended a ceremony marking the dedication of the Incheon Free Trade and English Zone that is being built near Incheon International Airport. The city is investing heavily in developing a free trade zone called New Songdo City, as well as teaching English in the public schools.

Since the late 1980's, there has been a strong push to in Korea teach children English. For the most part, kids attend a hagwon (also referred to as a cram school) in the afternoon when they get out of public school. Typically hagwons cost anywhere from $300-700 a month (about 300,000-700,000 Won). Most families can barely afford to send their children to a hagwon and typically have an income of $20,000-30,000 a year (if both parents work).

Recently the government has been investing huge amounts of money building English camps (Washington Post article about the English Camp in Ansan) where children can go and learn English in a immersion setting. Similar camps have been built in Incheon and Paju.

The city is also heavily investing in English programs for the public school by hiring native speaking teachers to teach English and western culture. The long term goal being to increase the ability of people to speak English in time for the 2014 Asian Games, which Incheon is in the running to host.

I find it interesting how much money the government is throwing at teaching English as a second language. The main problem being that unless those that are learning to speak English continue to practice speaking English on a regular basis, it is difficult to improve their speaking abilities. Also, Koreans are afraid of making mistakes, therefore they are hesitant to speak English, even if they have the ability.

If your interested, you can also look at the pictures I posted of my classroom remodeling in two earlier posts, Under SiegePart I and Part II.

You can also visit the following websites:

Incheon City

Namgu-Office (The area of Incheon in which I live)

Nambu Elementary School (My school's website)

My photo album page on Yahoo Photos

Jackson Country May Mouthball Libraries Due to Lack of Funds

I'm not sure if anyone remembers when this happened in Grants Pass back in the 90's. As local bond measures were defeated, the funds for libraries in Josephine Country dried up. The libraries were closed for a few weeks. They did eventually reopen, but only after someone put an ad in US Today which made a mockery of the fact the public libraries were shut down.

Now a decade later, the same thing could happen to the Jackson Country Library system. Loss of timber recipts from the federal government, due to the fact the Republican Congress did reauthorize the reciepts leading to $23 million shortfall in the budget. Living overseas this came as a shock (I'm not able to keep up with all the news happening in Oregon sometimes). My mom happened to email me this morning asking me if I knew this was happending.

Represenatives Defazio and Walden have reintroduced a bill which will bring Oregon rural communities $273 million dollars. The thing is, with the change in power in Congress and so much legislation getting pushed though, who knows if this will really happen.