Establishing a Korean language programme in a European Higher Education context: Rationale, curriculum and assessment procedures

Abstract

A growth in interest in Korean contemporary culture in Europe has benefitted Korean language studies in Higher Education. This article describes an innovative Korean language programme in the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Since its establishment as a pilot project in 2010, the Korean programme has become a successful part of the university's institution-wide language provision. The authors present the university's approaches to teaching Korean as a Foreign Language within a project-based curriculum over the first three years of its journey from a pilot project to a more firmly embedded component of the university curriculum. Traditionally, the content and delivery of Korean as a Foreign Language programmes have not been adapted to learners' needs or the learning context, with a focus on memorizing word-lists, translation and reading dialogues in class. One result of such an approach is that student learners are unable to communicate appropriately and meaningfully within their own peer group. The article explores the selection and design of learning materials and the development of communicative, intercultural, orthographic and orthoepic competences in language learners, including Korean honorifics and speech levels. The programme's formative and summative assessment procedures use the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as a means of specifying and designing the programme's projects, along with an end-of-module test composed of a dictation and C-tests. Finally, the authors reflect on four recommendations to improve and extend the provision of Korean language learning in Europe.