Alphabet Soup

This weekend I visited Gong-gu (공주) for the first annual UKETA conference. I'm not even sure what UKETA means, but I am sure that it's something about Korean English Teachers' Association. It was sponsored by ETAK and at least I know what that one means... English Teachers Association in Korea.

It was a good conference with lots of different speakers from all over Asia. The keynote speaker was Richard Day from the university of Hawaii. His speech was short (just 45 minutes), but informative.

There was also a speech by Kwon O-ryang (권오량) who is very well-known in English education circles here in Korea. I was happy to hear him echo something I've been saying for a long time. Namely, that Korea is overly dependent on first-language (native) speakers of English.