YTN TV has a cute little piece on the sudden increase in the number of American middle and high schools teaching Korean as a second language. OK, it’s only 50 nationwide, but that a lot more than the 19 that were teaching it in 1997. YTN credits the efforts of local Koreans to push Korean language education in American schools and the growing number of Americans who are learning Korean as people come to know Korea more and more. And, says YTN, it’s more than just Korean-Americans studying the language, and they’ve got the video to prove it. Check it out.
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6 Comments
Got a URL of the list of schools in the US teaching Korean?
My experience is that unless there is a large Asian population, it is difficult to get any Asian languages taught in US schools. Many times we get Spanish because the schools hired a teacher who speaks Spanish first and English second.
Only 50 schools? Dan’s right, even the large Vietnamese population in my town didn’t get a Vietnamese language program in high school. Even the local college barely had one.
The picture looks like a SoCal, maybe most of the new schools are in Los Angeles. I didn’t watch the news clip, but I saw “LA” at the bottom of the article.
And when I say, “the picture looks SoCal”, I’m just guessing. It could be Seattle, they are wearing a lot of heavy-coats for LA in April.
Korean population here in LA has taken a jump I know. I’ve kinda been following the transition of my local community into a rather more visible Korean community. The number of business with Hangul out front is quite a bit now. Anyways I wouldn’t be surprised to see Korean language teaching popping up in High schools around here. Though the number of tutoring centers trying to teach English to Koreans is quite a bit.
When I lived in Anaheim, Korean was the third most spoken foreign language in the county. Spanish and Vietnamese were 1st and 2nd. I never saw any offerings of either Korean or Vietnamese in the schools, just the standard French, German, and Spanish. In fact, my Korean daughter’s Kindergarten enrollment paper were sent home in Spanish. I called the school and told them she is Korean. If you are going to teach her in anything other than English, you teach her Korean.
Mr. Mehlhorn, isn’t Spanish useful in California as a second language?
Austrian-German could be learned through TV lectures by Governour Arnie Schwarzenegger. Oh, and Spanish, too: Hasta la vista, Baby!