Korean language learning demotivation among EFL instructors in South Korea
Journal Title: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching - Year 2019, Vol 9, Issue 1
Abstract
Studies investigating the motivation of L1 speakers of English to learn the national language of the host society they currently reside in remain rare, despite the exponential growth of such individuals residing in these nations this century. Previous such studies in South Korea have concluded that learning Korean as a second language (L2) is largely perceived as difficult, unnecessary and is therefore accompanied by experiences of demotivation and amotivation (see Gearing & Roger, 2018). However, these studies did not explicitly address demotivation and amotivation when examining experiences that affect the motivation to learn Korean of 14 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors working in South Korean university language education centers (LECs). Therefore, this study investigates which learning experiences resulted in the amotivation of participants and how two participants who experienced demotivation employed strategies to remotivate themselves. Coding of semi-structured interviews and optional diaries found that despite intent, most participants displayed symptoms of both amotivation and demotivation. The main implication of this study is that in the absence of perceived necessity, affected individuals with insufficient internal motivation or vision to acquire Korean consequently attribute externally related demotivating experiences to pre-existing or resulting amotivation.
Authors and Affiliations
Nigel Gearing
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP489408
- DOI 10.14746/ssllt.2019.9.1.9
- Views 81
- Downloads 0
Re-telling a story in a second language: How well do adult learners mine an input text for multiword expressions?
Adult second language (L2) learners have often been found to produce discourse that manifests limited and non-native-like use of multiword expressions. One explanation for this is that adult L2 learners are relatively un...
Korean language learning demotivation among EFL instructors in South Korea
Studies investigating the motivation of L1 speakers of English to learn the national language of the host society they currently reside in remain rare, despite the exponential growth of such individuals residing in these...
Strategies and interlanguage pragmatics: Explicit and comprehensive
Explicit instruction in strategies for interlanguage pragmatic learning is fundamental to the development of a comprehensive set of pragmatic abilities in the target language. In this article, we begin by providi...
Unscrambling jumbled sentences: An authentic task for English language assessment?
Jumbled sentence items in language assessment have been criticized by some authors as inauthentic. However, unscrambling jumbled sentences is a common occurrence in real-world communication in English as a lingua franca....
The role of attitudes in the development of Russian as a foreign language: A retrospective study
The article reports the findings of a retrospective study which looked at Hungarian learners’ attitudes towards Russian people, the Russian language and teachers of Russian. Mixed-methods sequential explanatory design (I...