Korean High School Students Reading Experiences in an Adapted Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction Program in Korean EFL Context

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to adopt Concept-oriented Reading instruction (CORI) for teaching English in a Korean EFL context. While Guthries CORI was designed originally for English speaking students to aid their reading literacy, this study hopes to adapt it to meet the needs of Korean EFL learners. With the awareness of the need to teach reading for information to Koreas EFL students, an adapted version of CORI program was implemented and examined in Chungdam High School, located in Gangnam area of Seoul. Eight students participated in the adapted CORI program for two weeks, experiencing its motivational support techniques and being explicitly taught reading strategies. Results showed that advanced students, who had lived abroad or attended private English academies for an extended period of time, enjoyed the benefits of the CORI program most, exhibiting positive changes and improvement in reading behaviors. Mid or low level students seemed to struggle to fully follow the instructions, mostly due to language barriers. To lower the barriers, Korean-speaking English teachers are viewed by this study to be best suited to teach an adapted CORI course in Korea. Overall, the present study found that the adapted CORI course is worth being introduced to the Korean EFL context as a supplementary instructional method of teaching English reading for Korean EFL students in order to encourage them to become life-long English readers.