SEMINAR: Asian Studies Seminar Series

Teaching Korean language to intermediate and high-intermediate university students presents several challenges. Among these, language material and learner autonomy are among those aspects more in need of a solution. Firstly, classroom material should be not only of interest to students, but at the same time should also be connected to their everyday life, and useful in a future perspective. Therefore it is often a challenge to find language texts that fit the needs of intermediate and high intermediate Korean language students at Australian universities. Secondly, learner autonomy is important because intermediate and high-intermediate university students are in many cases also last year students, and thus they must be able to pursue their own individual Korean learning goal in the future without the support of a classroom.

These challenges were addressed through the implementation of a text-based Korean language course, where the core of the syllabus is represented not by grammar points, language functions or skills, but mainly by texts. This approach allows students to see texts in their social settings, and the instructor to scaffold students until they are able not only to approach a text by themselves, but also to use the resources presented in the text for their own social needs.

This presentation aims at illustrate the design process for a text based Korean language syllabus and at showing its implementation in the classroom. Several drawbacks that emerged during the design and teaching processes are analyzed and discussed for a further implementation of a text-based syllabus.