Faculty's attitudes toward EFL education at a Korean engineering school

Abstract

In the 2000s Korean universities have adopted an English-medium instructional policy, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is at the forefront of the English-medium education, stressing the need for strengthened EFL education. The aim of this study is to investigate faculty’ attitudes toward EFL education and improve EFL education by reflecting their opinions and suggestions. A series of faculty interview and questionnaire surveys were conducted. According to the results of the study, the faculty respondents and interviewees saw the need for more EFL classes for both undergraduate and graduate students, but the largest percentage of them indicated that the current number of credits for EFL courses and the amount of EFL instructional hours were appropriate, showing contradictory attitudes toward EFL education. They also wished to improve their classroom English skills, presentation skills, and pronunciation, but the duration for such training that they preferred most was a one-day session during summer vacation. These survey results reveal KAIST faculty’s contradictory tendencies where they saw needs for the improvement of EFL skills for both themselves and their students but did not see or want to admit the need for extensive investment of time and effort. In order to solve this problem, the school needs to undertake the process of reaching a consensus on its English-medium policy, for the policy was adopted abruptly and has been met with harsh criticisms, and restructure school curricula to provide the levels of EFL education required to execute the consensus most effectively and systematically.