I teach in Japan at a private language school. The majority of our students are semi-fluent to fluent. The other students are learning for the first time and come once a week for 60 minutes. We use a regular kids' text. They seem to be progressing slowly.

I'm just wondering what the difference is between a school like ours in Japan and one in Korea. I've heard kids in Korea learn English easily and speak very well. I realize many of them attend English classes more than once a week, but for those that don't is their progress similar to Japanese kids.

Just wondering...and would like our kids to make more progress.

Juli

I am teaching in Korea. The kids I teach are aged 7-13 and the kids 11-13 generally are fluent speakers. I would say fluent in all aspects of the language for someone their level. their pronunciation is well enough to be understood, their grammar is 80% of the time correct, and their reading is obviously perfect. but for some reason it seems the kids 10 and below are the complete opposite. completely clueless and zero speaking capability. it is a very weird dynamic I am still trying to figure out. I have taught at 2 different locations and i have seen the same things at both.