Elementary school students’ four-nights-and-five-days experience at an English village
The main goal of this study is to examine elementary school students’ four-nights-and-five-days experience at an English village in Seoul, focusing on what English learning experiences they had and what kind of changes had been made in their attitudes towards learning English. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted to examine their learning experiences in the village and the changes in their attitudes toward learning English. About 350 students participated in the pre- and post-surveys and additional ten students also participated in an interview with the researcher to draw more detailed information about their experiences in the English village. Descriptive statistics and paired samples t-tests were conducted to answer the main research questions. The results revealed that despite the short term of residence at the English village, the students seemed to have had relatively active engagement in learning both listening and speaking skills, but not as much in learning reading and writing skills. Also, although the village could possibly provide students with rich opportunities to have an active engagement and interaction with peers and English speaking teachers, it seemed that there existed some limitations in having such experiences inside and outside of the classrooms. Finally, students showed some changes in their attitudes or strategies toward learning English after the short term of residence, saying that they wanted to have more diverse engagement with English, such as 'having a conversation with foreigners on the Internet’, ‘keeping a journal in English,’ ‘having a conversation in English with other peers,’ and so on.