The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family will boost support for bilingual education for children and teens from multicultural families. Shown is a class in Cambodian at a family center in Seoul’s Guro-gu District. (Ministry of Gender Equality and Family)
By Lee Jihae
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on Aug. 2 announced stronger support for bilingual education for children and teenagers from multicultural families at family centers nationwide.
Since 2014, a ministry project has sought to create a bilingual environment for such families in which children can naturally learn the languages of their parents, each of whom has a different mother tongue, and develop bilingual skills.
From this year, the ministry has run bilingual courses by level for children aged 12 or under to meet the demands of multicultural families. Ahead of summer vacation that began last month, it also published and distributed guidelines on such classes to the country’s 210 family centers for use in bilingual education.
Provincial family centers have welcomed measures to boost support for bilingual education.
“Marriage immigrants in our region are from various countries and bilingual courses are in high demand, so we run night and weekend classes as well,” said Ma Hyeon-ji, a bilingual teacher at the family center in Hongseong-gun County, Chungcheongnam-do Province. “We expect a highly positive response if family centers offer courses in languages from a wider variety of countries.”
Choi Seo-yoon, 22, has consistently taken bilingual courses at the family center in Gumi, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. In November 2017, she won the grand prize at a national bilingual competition hosted by the province.
“The reasons I’m proud to be a child from a multicultural family is that I’m bilingual,” she said. “Understanding the cultures and languages of my parents’ countries is my identity and competitiveness.”
“Supporting children and teenagers from multicultural families so that they develop into world-class talent is a crucial national task of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration,” Minster of Gender Equality and Family Kim Hyunsook said. “We will actively support children from multicultural families to develop their bilingual strengths and help them become talented people of our society.”
jihlee08@korea.kr
