How Koreans Teach Basic Math
By Sun Kyu Bae |
Published September 14, 2009 |
Articles |
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Here's a glimpse of how different teaching addition and subtraction are in Korea compared to the U.S.!
Hi everyone.
Last summer, my family had one of my cousins come visit with her 2 sons from Korea. It was the first time that Ryan and Lauren got to experience how to interact and play with their native-Korean relatives. And since they were about the same age as our kids, well, let's just say that it was fun, exhilarating, and utterly exhausting all at once (I don't know how you folks with more than 2 kids do it!).
As everyone with kids already knows, the approximate mess that kids leave behind after playing is 1.5 x actual number of kids frolicking in that given environment. So, in our case, let's see…1.5 x 4 kids = a mess equivalent to what 6 kids create on any given day. Add Lauren and Ryan's 2 cousins into the mix and we arrived at a royal sum of 1.5 x 6 kids, or carnage close to what 8 kids can make in a single day!
Now don't get me wrong, the kids had a fabulous time, one big summer party. In fact, knowing a bit about the tough education system in Korea that my cousin's kids were facing, I really tried to go easy on the "let's clean this mess up!" department. And believe me; the concept of education is taken to a whole new level of seriousness there, almost to a religious level. Just to give you an example, the overall best-selling book in Korea last summer was "Siwon School Basic English", a reference book on (you guessed it) learning English. In fact, this book was the overall #1 best seller for 3 weeks in a row last summer!
But before I go on, I want to profess (confess?) that I'm not an expert in the Korean education system. Furthermore, my information about Korea's educational system came from one person, my cousin. So, if anything, please treat this information as a glimpse into one mom's view (i.e., my cousin's view) regarding how basic math is taught to Korean 1st graders these days.
And why do I think that writing about the Korean approach into teaching basic math is worthy of an article? Well, Korean kids have consistently scored well on math in international tests in the past several decades and, correct me if I'm wrong here, but these Korean kids have always scored higher than our own kids here in the good 'ole US of A. So, I think this article will give you a brief snapshot of what it takes to be a Korean student just as she enters into the first 1st grade math class. Fair enough? Ok - let's see what Korean basic math is all about.
Just like our country, Koreans begin teaching math starting with the basics - counting, adding, subtracting. But the way that adding and subtracting is taught already diverges from the very beginning.
Addition
Let's take addition. Addition is, literally, taught as a definition for how things are counted into a total number. Nothing strange about that. But here's where it gets a bit different. Aside from endless drills and practice sets of simple problems, the focus on the very first set of literally hundreds of practice problems is the mastery of the number "10". So for example, the student will solve endless simple addition problems with "10" in them, whether it's 10 plus another number or a seemingly endless set of problems in which one number plus another number equals 10.
Why this fascination with this double-digit number? Because once the student realizes that there are different combinations of numbers galore that add up to 10 AND that any single digit number plus 10 is just the "0" in the "10" replaced by that single digit number that is being added to the "10", then the student can be introduced to solving these simple addition problems by performing…subtraction.
Huh?
That's absolutely right. The objective for the student to be able to solve these addition problems related to the number "10" in her sleep is to start realizing that certain addition problems can also be solved by performing some subtraction! Here's how this concept would be taught (and please realize this is taught after the student has mastered all sorts of addition problems related with the number "10"):
Let's assume that the addition problem is 16 + 8. First, we need to address the ones digit to add the 6 and 8. Start at the larger value (i.e., 8) and ask yourself, "how many more do I need to make this 8 into a 10?" 2. Now the "8" will turn into a "10". But you needed to borrow the "2" from the other ones digit (i.e., 6), because borrowing a number MUST come from another number. Therefore, the "6" decreases to a "4". Now, the problem is rewritten into: 10 + 4. Since the student has done "10 + x" problems ad-nauseam by now, the student can just arrive at 14 in her head.
Did you see the subtraction problem that happened within this addition problem? It was when the student had to reduce the 6 into a 4 because she borrowed 2 from the 6.
By intuitively learning how to subtract before the concept of subtraction is introduced, this method, although it takes longer to learn than the trusty "fingers method" that I learned back in day, enforces the concept that math problems can be solved in many different ways. In other words, an addition problem can be solved by applying subtraction techniques.
Another interesting tidbit - because of this way of teaching addition, my cousin's sons think of subtraction to be easier than addition, which is usually the exact opposite thinking in the U.S. (i.e., addition is intuitively easier than subtraction).
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