Paju English village

So today, instead of the usual grind of class time phonics and reading, we went to Gyeonggi English village on a field trip. The place is modeled on a quaint sort of Koreanised nineteenth century streets of London. Very different from the rest of Korea, that's for sure.



So the kids have to go through "immigration" and answer some English questions, after which we walked with them past the castle gates to the various role-play shops, post offices, banks and city hall. We ate a suitably Western lunch, where the Caucasian-looking waitress addressed us with "vat do you vant...?" which made me realise that not all the employees of the English village come from English-speaking countries!




We watched "A Long Time ago in Africa" theatre show which was fun for the kids and reinforced the vocabulary they have been learning. The English villages in Korea have been criticised for not being authentic villages, but merely simulations, and because they are so expensive to build and maintain and entertain the kids rather than educate them with useful English skills.



However, if the English village helps our kids to picture a world where not everyone speaks Korean and thus inspires them to study English and travel abroad... then it is fulfilling an important function.