Catering to Minority Students’ English-learning Needs in an EFL Environment (66339)
Session Chair: Akiko Kano
Friday, January 6, 2023 (16:15)
Session: Session 5
Room: 317A
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
The recent surge in globalization has brought several changes to South Korean universities. For example, the incoming freshman population no longer comprises a homogeneous group of L1-Korean students who come with uniform years of English instruction prior to attending college. Instead, it includes a sizeable number of students from neighboring countries who are easily recognizable because of their appearance and the various languages they speak. In addition, there is another group of students that often go unnoticed—these are North Korean refugee-background students who defected to South Korea. They may look Korean and speak a Korean variety, but they are strikingly different from mainstream South Korean students as they come with unique backgrounds and enter college with varying degrees of disrupted education. The current presentation examines North Korean refugee-background students’ experience of learning English at a South Korean university in order to better understand their English-learning needs and challenges. Data were collected as part of a larger project which examined students’ struggles with English classes at the tertiary level. This presentation prioritizes the participants’ voices by focusing on the qualitative data collected from the students (n=19) and English instructors (n=2) who have taught them. The results are discussed in light of the students’ efforts to acquire English as valuable capital to successfully integrate into South Korean society and the ramifications that ensued as they experienced challenges in their English-learning endeavor. The presentation concludes with pedagogical suggestions which highlight an asset-based approach in catering to minority students with nontraditional backgrounds.
Authors:
Eun Sung Park, Sogang University, South Korea
About the Presenter(s)
Professor Eun Sung Park is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Sogang University in South Korea
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