This study explored how South Korean primary school students approach
learning English, using the notion of an ‘imagined community’. Twenty students
from two primary schools were selected for semi-structured interviews. The
data analysis shows that the construction of South Korean students’ imagined
communities seems to be influenced mainly by their learning experiences outside
school which involve private lessons, English test systems, and parental attitudes
towards English, and an emphasis on grammar teaching and learning. The
students’ imagined communities are far from the one presented in the national
primary curriculum, which focuses on communicative language teaching (CLT).
This gap results in students’ poor engagement in the classroom when taking
English lessons at state schools. This indicates that educational reform such as
CLT needs to be implemented with recognition of students’ learning outside
school and the imagined communities envisioned by students

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Perpustakaan FITK Pusat

Tersedia

• EFL young learners: their imagined communities and language learning

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