ABSTRACT
In this case study, I introduce the case of one Korean high school English teacher, Ms. Kim, who is faced with the dilemma of teaching English to Korean high students in a high-stakes testing environment. She believes that the Korean English education system is orienting students in damaging ways for understanding what it means to learn a language and communicate using that language in reading and writing. She aims to provide her students with authentic reading experiences in which students talk to the author, ask questions, talk back to the readings, note interesting expressions and simultaneously gain practice in reading for the test. She adopts annotations as an instructional method to reach this goal. I illustrate Ms. Kim’s use of annotations in her classroom and her students’ responses in detail. In closing, I return to the dilemma of authentic reading instruction in a high-stakes testing environment as an issue prevalent in many parts of the world and I provide questions that help shed light on the complexities of teaching in a high-stakes era and the role of annotations as an instructional strategy that has the potential to bridge the gap between authentic reading instruction and teaching to the test.
