교과교육연구 제37권 제1호 2016년
               IELTS reading and material design for Korean students
                                                         Hyun Kyu Park
                                                      (Chosun University)
                                    Abstract
            In this paper, at first, I will analyse East Asia learning style in various ways and 
            show how English class in Korea is progressed. In addition, difficulties for IELTS 
            will be also following when asian students follow the ways.
            Then, I will analyse IELTS reading test in details. And finally, imperative factors 
            to improve skills for IELTS will be shown and material design for IELTS test will be 
            also suggested.
           Key words: learning style in East asia; IELTS analysis; material design for IELTS 
           Ⅰ. Introduction 
              Recently, the international English language testing system (IELTS) has widely 
           been performed throughout Asia as a reliable means of evaluating candidates’ English 
           ability with regard to whether they are ready to study and train in English-speaking 
           countries (Talyor and Charge, 1997). Korea is also one of the countries accepting 
           this test, and an increasing number of Korean students have attempted to take the 
           IELTS test with a variety of purposes such as further extended study, immigration and 
           visible evidence of their English ability for obtaining a better job. (Terry, 2003) 
           However, although the students have adequate awareness regarding the test and it is 
           particularly analyzed, there are still a number of difficulties in practicing IELTS 
           reading  in  that  not  only  is  the  most  widely-used  English  teaching  method 
           inappropriate to prepare for the test, but sufficient data also is not provided. 
             For instance, the IELTS test requires students to have the capacity to decide 
           between True, False and Not Given by analyzing questions, and comprehend the overall 
           picture given by a piece of reading text and abstracting contents (Wilson, 2010). In 
           addition  to  this,  the  exam  includes  a  broad  range  of  fields  in  terms  of  ESAP, 
           involving humanities, social science, science and technology (Clapham, 1996), whereas 
           a huge amount of class time consists of grammar-centered lessons, while themes dealt 
           with in the classroom being very restricted. 
             In other perspectives, there is no reliable alternative material to replace the 
           text book, Cambridge IELTS, namely most of the ideas and study direction on IELTS 
                                     -  1  -
         comes from the text book. Korean students therefore tend to study the text book 
         rather than practicing IELTS reading. 
         In this respect, I decided to conduct a small scale study to examine how the material 
         is  made  and  what  factors  should  be  included  to  have  efficient  access  to  IELTS 
         reading. First of all, I am going to discuss the differences between Korean and 
         Western language acquisition methods based on cultural and social aspects. In detail, 
         a Korean text book used in secondary school will be analyzed in order to find aims - 
         what skills can be learnt, what information can be obtained, and how students can be 
         disciplined with exercises provided from the book. 
           Additionally, an IELTS test will be also analyzed not only to ascertain the level 
         but  to  grasp  what  faculties  the  test  requires  for  its  reading  section,  and  the 
         analyzed data will then be utilized as a means to find factors by which the Korean 
         text book should be improved. Finally, the accumulated data will play a role as a 
         framework in order to design new material. 
         Ⅱ. East Asia learning style and the difficulties in the reading section of 
         IELTS
            Reid  (1998)  carried  out  studies  indicating  that  learning  style  departing  from 
         study  purpose  (IELTS)  can  cause  learning  failure,  frustration  and  de-motivation, 
         resulting  in  low  achievement  in  the  IELTS  score.  According  to  the  explanation 
         regarding learning styles observed from Rao (2001) and Clenton (1999), teaching in 
         most  East  Asian  countries  is  traditionally  dominated  by  a  teacher-centered, 
         book-centered  method  and  accentuation  on  rote  memory  (Liu  and  Littlewood,  1997). 
         These traditional teaching approaches would be useful to become familiar with general 
         English  learning,  but  would  not  be  appropriate  for  academic  tests  requiring 
         professional  skills  (skimming  and  scanning)  and  further  extended  information 
         (schemata knowledge). 
         1. Teacher-centered learning 
           For this style, knowledge becomes accumulated by being delivered via the teacher 
         and the material used in the class rather than discovered by the learners, namely the 
         students  learn  knowledge  as  much  as  the  teacher  provides  without  any  practical 
         application. Japanese and Korean students tend to be often reticent in the classroom 
         and  show  a  passive  attitude  to  classroom  activities  (Harshbarger  et  al.,  1986). 
         Korean students demonstrate the concept of “listening to the teacher” in their 
         learning style, as this is their most frequent activity in secondary school lectures, 
         and hence they can encounter difficulties when they are expected to answer questions 
         requiring  verbal  or  abstract  reasoning  ability  (Liu  and  Littlewood,  1997). 
         Comprehension exercises including deciding whether statements are to be deemed true, 
         false  or  not  given,  and  exercises  asking  for  replaced  vocabulary  use  are 
         representative  examples  of  problematic  areas  for  the  traditionally  taught  Korean 
                             -  2  -
         student. As the supporting instance of this, most questions given in Korean textbooks 
         train students to find the same words as those written on the question rather than 
         practice reading or substituting similar words. This should make the students spend 
         more time on finding information which a question requires. 
         2. Closure-oriented style 
           Sue and Kirk (1972) discovered that Asian students tend to rely more on authority 
         figures, and to conform more to teaching materials. Korean students expect that the 
         teacher and teaching materials will be the authority, and are faced with problems if 
         this does not occur. Additionally, they pursue the fast and continuous correction 
         from the teacher, and do not feel comfortable when correct data is conducted from 
         multiple ways. (ibids.) 
           According to Clapham (1996), students taught under teacher-centered education do 
         not like vagueness, uncertainty and fuzziness in that they usually acquire tangible 
         information without any doubt or curiosity, namely there is infinitive belief toward 
         the teacher and teaching materials. As an effect of this, they tend to make hasty 
         conclusions from incomplete information or ignore ambiguous information though it 
         could be essential to connect contexts, thus their comprehension on a text must be 
         lower. This can be a reason why the students point out the true, false and not given 
         question as the most difficult one, because it somewhat includes an ambiguous aspect 
         to choose one amongst them. 
         3. Analytic and field-independent 
           Analytic learning includes meanings that the study process is orderly progressed, 
         and learners concentrate on details and formulate plans. The learners familiar with 
         this  type  tend  to  concentrate  on  sequential  details  rather  than  the  overall 
         structure. 
           Field independent learners also tend to concentrate on the details related to their 
         interest or field of study, and disregard the details if there is no correlation with 
         the  students.  Generally,  the  field  independent  learning  is  based  on  bottom-up 
         processing, moving from the parts to the whole concept. Thus, the learners focus on 
         individual  words  and  phrases,  and  accomplish  comprehension  by  stringing  these 
         detailed elements together to build up a whole (Urquhart and Weir, 1998). However, 
         they might have difficulty in resolving ambiguities or selecting between alternative 
         possible interpretations of the incoming data. In addition to this, a particular 
         question  involved  in  IELTS  reading,  which  requires  understanding  regarding  the 
         overall context of an article, author’s purpose and implication, should impose a 
         heavy burden on the students in that the reading is a psycho-linguistic guessing game 
         happening with interaction between reader and author. 
         4. Visual learning style 
                             -  3  -
           Reid (1998) found Korean, Chinese and Japanese students to be visual learners, with 
         Korean students ranking the strongest. They can sometimes feel very confused and 
         uncomfortable when lessons progress without any visual support. In order to avoid 
         this phenomenon, most Korean lecturers make active use of the blackboard by putting a 
         great deal of information on it. Reading material also includes a number of visual 
         explanations  such  as  picture  and  illustration,  which  can  help  the  students’ 
         understanding and reduce anxiety about reading. In other words, academic tests such 
         as IELTS and TOFLE which do not provide visual information impairs the students' 
         confidence, making them more likely to fail to make a successful reading. 
         5. Concrete-sequential 
           Students who have a positive attitude to this learning style are willing to follow 
         the teacher’s guidelines and demand full information from the teacher rather than 
         making their own conclusions. Harshbarger et al. (1986) found that a number of Korean 
         students are likely to follow this learning style and use diverse strategies such as 
         “memorization,  planning,  analysis,  sequenced  repetition,  detailed  outlines, 
         structured review and a search for perfection”. They prefer to receive learning 
         through materials based on the learning syllabus, because the materials not only 
         offer  well-organized  information  according  to  a  teaching  sequence,  but  also  are 
         conveniently utilized as a framework via which the students can give the further 
         information obtained by a teacher during a class.
         6. Thinking-oriented and reflective styles 
           These styles are basically relevant with visual, concrete-sequential, analytic and 
         field-independent  learning  styles.  Grabe  (2009)  regarded  Asian  students  as  more 
         apparently  thinking-oriented  than  feeling-oriented  learners.  Their  judgments  are 
         generally based upon logical and analytic knowledge. In order to avoid ambiguous and 
         inaccurate comprehension in reading a text, they prefer to approach familiar themes 
         and well-known information which can be reflected in their own thinking. 
           However, the IELTS test which deals with a variety of fields such as humanities, 
         social  science,  science  and  technology  would  deny  this  learning  style.  Chiefly, 
         students  favoring  this  learning  need  to  nourish  the  ability  to  make  independent 
         conclusions, and have a strong positive attitude to allow them to abandon anxiety 
         when  they  read  unfamiliar  articles.  In  a  different  perspective,  a  wide  range  of 
         schema  knowledge  can  be  considered  for  easier  access  to  IELTS  reading.  This  is 
         closely related to the idea that materials used for IELTS learners should serve them 
         as  a  tool  which  raises  the  ability  to  think  independently,  and  play  a  role  as 
         scaffolding to support the learners to be capable of doing by themselves with a 
         little support (Nuttall, 1996).
         7. Cramming system 
                             -  4  -