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Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education
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 ¡®English Zone¡¯- cutting edge technology 
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Written by Charles Ko (Daejeon MOE Coordinator)
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Daejeon Metropolitan Office of Education (DMOE hereinafter) is doing its best in improving the English education environment for students and English teachers. One of the changes DMOE is proud of is equipping majority of Daejeon schools with an ¡®English Zone¡¯ classrooms with cutting edge technology. So far, 100% of the middle and high schools in Daejeon have installed an ¡®English Zone¡¯ classroom and by early next year, 100% of our elementary schools will be equipped with ¡®English Zone¡¯ classrooms.
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In Daejeon International Marketing High School, there are 11 different booths as part of the three English labs consisting of airport, hospital, duty free shop, pharmacy, post office, bank, etc. providing opportunities for students to not only learn the language while sitting in front of a desk but in settings where students are allowed to feel and experience the language first hand. (see pictures)
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With the help of the native speaker teacher and Korean co-teachers, students are able to have tangible exposure and necessary practices which would allow them to enjoy their English classes and be more confident about practical English.
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In addition, the ¡®English Zone¡¯ facilities of some of the schools are equipped with the latest technologies which enable computerized virtual reality programs. This virtual reality program allows the learners to not only look at the different settings but enable them to practice real situational English.
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In Virtual Reality English Education, students are able to see themselves moving and acting in the screen exactly as what they are doing. Students will be meeting people in the virtual space and speak English to them and actually have conversation. (See below)
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In Daejeon, a city considered as the Mecca of Korean science and technology, many students are enjoying the newly adopted system for enhancement of their English proficiency. Such facilities not only provide new experience for our students but also give a lot of different options for our native speaker teachers in their curriculum development and lesson planning.
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In October, Daejeon MOE has held another training workshop (3 days) for native speaker teachers and their co-teachers. This workshop was designed not for the new native speaker teachers but for the teachers who have more than a year of experience teaching as a GET. Unlike other training programs or workshops, the contents were prepared by the participating teachers. All teachers and co-teachers as a team were to create beforehand a lesson plan of one of their well conducted lesson at their own schools. Each team submitted their lesson plans to the program operator and all the lessons were put into a booklet. At the workshop, using the booklet, each team came up to the front and actually conducted their lesson. By doing so, at the end of the workshop, all teachers were able to see various options to teaching English and go back to their school with many other new lessons they can employ in their teaching.
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On the last day of the workshop, all participating elementary school teachers audited an open class held at Daejeon Nuriul Elementary School and the secondary school teachers at Daejeon Samcheon Middle School. After the open class, all teachers got together for critique and discussion about the lesson and co-teaching.
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Currently in Daejeon, there are approximately 200 native speaker teachers teaching at public and private schools. For the first semester of 2010, there will be approximately 60 new native speaker teachers coming in to Daejeon. In such rapid growth, it is very fortunate that majority of our native speaker teachers are happy with their work and that there is a very healthy network among native speaker teachers in Daejeon.
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