King Sejong created Korean characters so that the general public could express their thought freely in written communication. This is unique in the history of mankind, but as much of the vocabulary of our language consists of loan words from Chinese it must be confusing if we use only Korean characters because there will be no good ways for us to tell the difference between a great number of Chinese homonyms that we coined or borrowed. Therefore we have fostered a culture where we use both Korean and Chinese characters to minimize the possible confusion. A good look at the present Elementary School Curriculum will tell us that simultaneous teaching of Chinese characters is more or less optional, so we elementary teachers have had this option reflected on our classroom teaching. Entering a new age of simultaneous use of Chinese characters, we teachers need to know what actually happens in the classroom to teach Chinese letters and to indicate the directions for adequate teaching. The most important purpose of simultaneous teaching of Chinese characters at Elementary School levels is to help students exercise their brain, expand their thinking and know how to pick up exact words in the context, as well as inculcating good personality. No one will discount these benefits of simultaneous use of Chinese letters. Until recently, Korea has run its national system and nurtured its culture through the Chinese transcription. Therefore, passing on and developing the rich linguistic legacy will undoubtedly result in maximizing the potential of our nation. However, as the power system changed, our country`s literacy policy changed too often, which we know caused confusion. Also, in the dimension of national education, some narrow-minded policies led us to the path of localism. It is thus more than imperative that we teach both Korean and Chinese letters to our children since we live in the 21st century and in the Global Village. For the program to be successful, priority should be given to the awareness of the pedagogical importance by the principals and their assistants who are the managers of the education in the field as well as to the implementation by the teachers in the classroom aided by a variety of off-the-job training programs, seminars and symposiums. The government should establish an educational policy to get people to make use of Chinese characters which account for 70 percent of our day-to-day use of written language. In sum, starting from the Elementary School education, teaching Chinese Characters should be included in the regular curriculum and there must be a simultaneous use of this graphic system in the Korean textbooks, which will in time instill the notion of efficiency and economy.

• 張星河(慶北 榮州市 榮一 初等學校) | Jang, Seong-ha