Korea's society is now phasing into a multicultural society where diversity and differences coexist. Thus, there is an increased interest in intercultural beliefs that aim for a peaceful coexistence among cultures while focusing on relationships with ...
Korea's society is now phasing into a multicultural society where diversity and differences coexist. Thus, there is an increased interest in intercultural beliefs that aim for a peaceful coexistence among cultures while focusing on relationships with others. This trend is seen in Korean education classes where diverse cultures get mixed up and collide with each other.
Since the current Korean education system is concentrated on communication skills, culture has become the means to communicate, which creates the problem of over-emphasizing the study and imitation of the target culture to the learners. This type of education opens up the possibility for learners to have a narrow-minded view about culture, which may create the danger of making learners feel superior or inferior to culture.
Therefore, this research will provide intercultural education as a response to help Korean learners maintain relationships and peacefully overcome difficulties while they live in today’s multicultural reality. Furthermore, by analyzing the intercultural competence of Korean teaching materials and grasping how much intercultural perspectives are reflected in them, this research will seek ways to improve Korean teaching materials.
In the second chapter, the categories were mainly divided into Korean language education and cultural education, and intercultural education to take a look at the theoretical background. In the former part, the research talked about the necessity of cultural education and the flow of cultural education in Korean classes. In the latter part, the research talked about the idea and characteristics of interculturalism, and through the explanation of interculturality, the concept of interculturalism was made clearer. Then, the chapter went on to mention the arising background and methods of intercultural education. Lastly, the capacity of interculturalism and its components were stated.
In the third chapter, this research analyzed the intercultural perspective shown in the culture sector of Korean teaching materials for foreigners. Korean teaching materials were classified into four different groups – immigrant workers, marital immigrants, foreign students, and teenagers with multicultural backgrounds. This research made use of the five components of interculturalism that were proposed by Byram and divided those components into three sections, including knowledge, skills, and attitudes. As a result, it was found that although efforts were made to adhere to the intercultural perspective in some materials, generally, it was clear that the importance of intercultural perspectives was very low. By putting together such results, improvement plans for Korean teaching materials for intercultural education were made.
In the fourth chapter, which is the conclusion and proposal, a summary of the research was made. In the chapter, the following are the proposals for the culture sector of Korean teaching materials. First, a correct understanding of intercultural education is needed. Second, the intercultural perspective must be more actively portrayed in Korean teaching materials.
In this research, as the analysis was constrained to the culture sector of the teaching materials, the research fails to reflect the intercultural perspective in the whole of teaching materials. But this research can be a turning point to be considered as a trend of cultural education in the Korean language education from various perspectives. It is also significant that this study reconsider the recognition of interculturalism in making the Korean teaching materials in the future. Futhermore, I hope this intercultural approach and intent for change may contribute to the Korean language education in the multicultural society. The purpose of the study.