A Course Book for EFL Cosmetology Students

Eunjee Ko (International Graduate School of English, Seoul) in Lecture
Theatre 1

at The MATSDA/University of Liverpool Conference: Authenticity and Materials
Development for Language Learning

There are four major reasons why it is urgent to develop a course book
for EFL cosmetology students in Korea: 1) 1,451,257 foreign residents in Korea
2) the popularity of Korean beauty products 3) the enactment of regulations for
beauty business promotion in 2010. To develop the course book, a needs analysis,
an existing materials analysis and a review of literature were done to answer
the following two research questions: 1) What are the critical elements that the
course book should include to correspond to the learner’s wants, lacks, and
necessities? 2) What are the cultural factors that cause miscommunication
between Korean professional beauticians and English speaking customers in
salons? The result showed that both students and language instructors think
listening and speaking are essential to working with foreign customers and they
should enhance vocabulary. In addition, cultural factors that need to be taught
were decided by the result of interviews with 58 foreign residents in Korea,
such as different concept of personal space and asking too many personal
questions. After taking all these considerations into account, a course book was
developed and piloted and a survey was conducted to see if learning motivation
had increased. I will be presenting the results of this survey.