ABSTRACT
In Asian countries, the teaching of English has unique characteristics, especially in the Eastern countries such as Korea, China, and Japan. The college entrance examinations of these countries are the single most important factor for the learners who want to study English. Additionally, the tradition of the Grammar-Translation Method is still very strong, even though some efforts have been made to incorporate Communicative Language Teaching (CTL) methods. In the present chapter, the situations of English language teaching (ELT) in these countries are described from a critical perspective in an effort to identify the systematic and practical problems persisting in the ELT profession. This chapter will start with an overview of the characteristics of ELT in these countries, move on to the discussion of the general problems, and then deal with the teaching methods, teacher training, and “Tesological” research and researchers. The chapter concludes that, if these countries are going to improve ELT, the basic concept of English learning/teaching should be changed from its current “subject learning/teaching” to “language learning/teaching”.
