A Day with a Korean Kid!

This is Laang and I know him for past three years. He is 5 years old now and these pictures were taken in December, 2008. He is surely worthy of a post because he is among those rare breed of kids who are gifted. He could read newspapers fluently since he was 3 years old. He also learned classical Chinese and had a vocabulary of 300 words which is growing by every passing day. He can speak good English which is considered a relatively difficult language here and is considered a skill. He is excellent with numbers - as all Asian kids usually are ( I have seen their parents doing number games almost all the time and don't let these brains rest even for a second.)

Korea spends over 10 billion dollars a year on programs to develop and enhance English language proficiency among the students at all levels. This amount does not include the spendings made by parents who usually send their children to the English speaking countries to learn English from the native speakers during their summer and winter breaks. Apart from this, they take special classes organized by the schools as well as by private academies  also called cram schools or Hakgwon (학관) where teachers from the US, Canada, Australia, UK, Newzealand and South Africa come and teach them.

Even though a lot of efforts are underway  to learn English in Korea, Japan and China, it  is something that is giving them a hard time but not this kid.