Taekyoung Lee /201521584

May 18, 2016

Essay 2
Prof. Vincent Gilhooley

Cause-Effect Essay

When was your first time learning English? In Korea, most people start learning
English before they go into elementary schools. Since we are living in a globalized world, the
importance of English is constantly increasing. Especially in Korea, English has become very
essential so that many parents spend tremendous time and money on teaching their children
English at the youngest age. In reality, the number of English kindergartens has increased
considerably since 2012. (Kwon 1) As almost every child in Korea gets an early English
education at the youngest age, despite of positive effects, we should recognize that there are
negative effects of early English education.
Firstly, early English education can cause parents severe financial burden. Korea is
very competitive in educating English and lots of parents tend to compare their children with
others. In order to make their children best students in schools, parents educate children
before the entrance into schools and depend more and more on private educational institute.
However, compared to the public educational institutes, most of the private educational
institutes require much money. For example, some of the English kindergartens one-year
tuition fees are three times as expensive as national universitys one-year tuition fee. (Lim 1)
Like this case, many private educational institutes keep raising their tuition fees excessively,
leading to parents serious financial burden. In some severe cases, some parents spend more
than half of their income on the early private English education. Almost every middle class
parent who has young children cannot afford to pay excessive amount of money on children

education. Due to these phenomena, the new word Edu Poor was made. Edu Poor means
the family who lives poorly due to excessive expenditure on childrens education. (Lee 1)
Secondly, when children get the early English education, it can hinder their language
development. Not only parents send children to the private educational institutes, but they
also try to teach them English at their home. Many Korean parents play the audio files which
tell fairy tales in English, or play English cartoon films, even before the children learn their
native language. This process can hamper language development and even bring the
confusion to young children. At the age of 3 to 6, making children experience various things,
take etiquette lessons, and get moral education is important because the frontal lobe, which
improves overall thinking skills, gets developed during that period. However, if children get
English education excessively at 3 to 6 and do not get those educations that they need,
nervous breakdown can be caused. It is because the speech center, which improves function
of language, does not get developed at the age of 3 to 6. (Hong 1) Also, young children
cannot learn native language properly if they are exposed to this early education system. They
should learn the power of logic or numerical abilities naturally from learning and speaking
mother tongue due to its grammatical structure. If children get the early English education,
however, they might not get those abilities at the proper age and it can interrupt language
development.
Lastly, early English education is not directly related to the ones English ability. The
most important reason of early English education is to make young kids proficient at English
like native speakers. Even though early English education might be helpful in some parts
such as pronunciation and accent, it does not directly affect ones high English ability. For
example, the Secretary-General of UN Ban Ki Moons English skill is highly evaluated by
many native speakers. He did not get any early English education when he was young, but he
started studying English at a later age. Just like Ban Ki Moon, if one puts great effort, he or

she can get high English skills even if after young age. In addition, there are many devices
and technologies that help to overcome a language barrier. The most commonly used device
today is an electronic dictionary. As it pronounces the words, people can repeat them and
practice pronunciation and accent efficiently. Even though they did not get the early English
education, people can overcome English limitations by using newly developed devices and
putting efforts to achieve better English proficiencies.
A survey shows that the largest number of parents starts educating their children
English before the age of three. (Kim 1) Many young children get early English education for
better lives, but we should be aware of the disadvantages of early English education such as
financial burden and hindrance of language development. As a result, we have to constantly
make efforts to educate young kids English wisely by considering and fixing these negative
effects of early English education.

Works Cited
Hong, Sung Cheol. "Boom of Early English Education, When Should We Start." Donga
News

3 Sept. 2003. Web. 23 May 2016.

Kwon, Hyung Jin. "After Nuri System English Kindergarten Students Increased 31%."
News1. 15 Jan. 2016. Web. 23 May 2016.

Lee, Se In. "Have to Intensify Public Education to Stop Edu Poor." JungBoo News 4 Jan.
2016.

Web. 23 May 2016.

Lim, Ki Hoon. "The Maximum Fee of English Kindergarten 22.86million Won...Overs Three
Year Tuition Fee of National University." Korea Economy 16 Oct. 2014. Web. 23
May

2016.

Kim, Eun Nam. "The Easiest Thing, Education." Sisa In Live 23 Oct. 2015. Web. 23 May
2016.