TESLer’s Mission&Passion
TESL Educational Objectives
- Foster wide and deep understanding of humanism and liberal arts in order to figure out various factors and relations of individual human beings, societies and history involved in communication, and
- Be informed of the relations between and among the languages and cultures as well as promote bilingual communication abilities of Korean and English in order to accommodate and take advantage of new trend of multilingualism and multiculturalism happening around the World and Korea, and
- Acquire Professional knowledge and abilities in order to practice our specialties in each field of English education and its relevant areas.
Specifics in TESL
Since it was founded in 1948, School of English Language and Literature(ELL) of Sookmyung Women’s University with long history of 115 years has produced women leaders and professionals working in various areas domestically and internationally. The School of ELL, which has played a leading role in society, made a historical attempt again in the midst of globalization in 1990s. That is, it developed the first TESOL graduate in Korea in order to meet the social demands for improving the nation’s practical English language skills. Ever since, it has successfully carried on its mission to produce English education specialists as the best educational institution. The school of ELL has indeed made a substantial contribution to the enhanced quality of English education in Korea by providing innovative programs including 100 percent English lectures.
The Sookmyung TESOL graduate program, which includes the Master program and Young Learner certificate program, is now recognized as one of the most prestigious TESOL programs in Asian countries. Multimedia-Assisted Test of English(MATE), which was developed alongside the TESOL programs, has gained its status as the certified national English proficiency test. More recently, MATE has further turned out one of the best English proficiency tests by playing a major role in the development of speaking and writing tests and rater training programs for national English proficiency test that the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology took charge of.
On the basis of such academic, practical experiences that the TESOL program as the first and the best English education program has accumulated for the past 16 years, the Division of ELL has finally decided to introduce the TESL major. It is expected that the TESL major, along with the Sookmyung TESOL graduate program, will yield synergy effects. More specifically, the TESL major will promote the status and the countries, and at the same time advance English teaching methods and approaches developed in English-speaking countries. It will also provide general but unique English education theories, teaching methods, and research methodology. The TESL major will thus be publicly recognized as the birthplace, which creates new paradigms of English education. To achieve these goals, the TESL major focuses on the following 7 specifics with the mission of producing renowned English education specialists.
3+1 Academic System
Combined Degree
The TESL curriculum seeks to help its graduates to work as an expert in a wide variety of English education-related areas. Through the combined degree of BA-MA programs, the TESL major systematically guarantees its graduates opportunities to work as an MA holder or further progress their development by studying at a Ph.D program. In other words, TESL majors are expected to go beyond the degree, which is currently regarded as the requirement of an expert. English education is one of the fields rapidly expanding its scope. Now this field requires new perspectives and theories evolving based on the existing theories, teaching methods, and research methodology for different learner groups. The combined degree of BA-MA program enables the TESL students to meet such a demand in a timely manner and thus work as an expert with their MA degree.
The goal of the combined degree of BA-MA program is to help students to become leading experts in the ever-expanding English education area by studying at graduate schools in various disciplines, such as English language and literature, International Relations Studies. The TESL intends to take full advantage of various excellent master programs of Sookmyung and thereby provide in-depth English education programs which surpass any other programs in domestic and overseas universities.
In the 5th academic year of the combined degree of BA-MA program, the TESL students can study with an award of Excellent Alumni Scholarship. At Sookmyng, students with above 4.5 GAP will becom recipients of Excellent Alumni Scholarship, which gives tuition fee redemption and other scholarly benefits during their master’s study. The TESL, which is equipped with the best educational program and scholarship, provides the optimal academic, financial environments for students who have a vision to grow as an English education expert.