A student who majors in computer engineering said, “Since it is hard for me to study English during the semester, I usually make time for TOEIC studies when I am on vacation. I wish I had started to study English when I was in the lower grades in college.
  From taking English liberal arts to getting public English scores for a job, studying English is indispensable for university students. We can see a lot of battered English books in the linguistic section of libraries, which shows how often students use those books. The desks in the reading room are filled with a variety of English books and advertisements for English courses. In addition, we can easily see many students carrying English books and going to English institutes. All of that evidence indicates how important English is to university students.
  It is especially hard for Korean freshmen to study English because they have studied only the parts of English that were suitable for the Civil Services Aptitude Test(CSAT), such as reading and listening comprehension, when they were in high school. However, while attending university, they are required to study all parts of English, including speaking and writing comprehension. Therefore, the CBNU Office of International Services has prepared two programs for CBNU freshmen who are afraid of studying English.
  A program was designed to help CBNU freshmen to develop their English abilities. In fact, this program was made especially for the students who are supposed to enter CBNU this year. The program provides them with quality English courses for free. In total, 31 students took part in the program. From January 9th to 19th, they took a regular class that lasted for 6 hours a day. In addition, they spent an hour sharing what they have studied with other students in a group. The regular class consists of TOEIC studies and English conversation. The class for TOEIC studies started in the morning, while the class for English conversation started in the afternoon. All the students took the TOEIC class together. On the other hand, in the case of the English conversation class, they were separated into different classes depending on their test scores.
  In order to ascertain whether the program was really helpful to the students or not, all the students took a test both at the beginning and at the end of the program. As a result, the official who was in charge of the program said, “Although I can’t tell you someone’s exact score, their English abilities has improved remarkably.”
  On the other hand, the program named ‘Spec-up’ will be abolished this year. This program was made in 2015 for CBNU freshmen. It usually accepted applications from CBNU freshmen in March and provided them with both on-line and off-line English courses for a year. The students who applied for this program could take any of the courses whenever they wanted. According to the official, a new English program starting this year will be quite different from the old one that included courses only for tests, such as TOEIC, TOEIC Speaking, and OPIC. However, the new one is mainly composed of courses for practical English.
  When it comes to learning a language, we need to study steadily. With the help of these programs, I hope CBNU freshmen will no longer have a hard time learning English, and I hope they will enjoy their campus life.

By Lee Seong-ho
shl36@cbnu.ac.kr
By Lee Ju-yeon
jy37@cbnu.ac.kr