Lee, Kathy. 2018. An Analysis of English Teachers' Metalinguistic Discourse. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(2), 195~223. In this paper, I examine an effort by the South Korean Ministry of Education (MOE) called the “Teaching English in English” (TEE) policy, which is still in practice today. In 2001, the MOE enacted TEE to improve the proficiency of Koreans through English instruction, with the implicit acknowledgement that 40 years of traditional teaching methods had not produced competent English users. To understand this policy's implications for teachers, I draw on ethnographic observations and interviews at a government-sponsored center, where Korean teachers of English participated in an intensive English course. Approaching this policy from a language ideological framework, I pay attention to their metalinguistic discourse about English. Analysis of the findings reveals that teachers challenged but also reproduced dominant language ideologies that prevented viewing themselves as legitimate English teachers. Based on these teachers' language ideologies, it is not helpful to view problems in English education as due to teachers' lack of English skills or confidence. The findings illustrate the importance of understanding the social and language practices of the local community when designing a well-informed language policy that can effectively transform language education and challenge ideologies that view Koreans as poor English speakers or English as a language of the Other.

Many instructors new to teaching English composition at the college level feel frustrated with what to teach and how to teach it. To learn about the context of support for these instructors, this small scale pilot study asked current ESL composition instructors in a large Midwestern research university to respond to a questionnaire aimed at revealing how experienced teachers give advice to new teachers. The participants included 16 experienced English composition instructors— eight teachers with five or fewer years of teaching experience and eight teachers with more than five years of experience. From each open-ended question response, emerging themes were coded and counted; additional data were qualitatively analyzed. Results showed that no differences in the number of themes per response were found between the two groups; however, similarities and differences regarding the orientation and content of advice given were found. Based on what was learned from this study, the researcher discusses how experienced teachers can better mentor new L2 composition teachers.

This study investigated how pre-service English teachers develop and use MICT (mobile information and communication technology)-TPACK (technological pedagogy and content knowledge) to select and use mobile applications for their micro teaching in a pre-service teacher training program. Although mobile technology has rapidly developed with the adoption of mobile multimedia devices and applications, the use of pre-service teachers’ TPACK is still limited to lower-level searches and to a mere tool for content presentations. The participants were nine students in a pre-service teacher training course in a four-year women’s university. Several research methods such as surveys, participant observations, micro teaching and interviews were utilized. The results of the study show the concept of TPACK needs to be extended to MICT-TPACK in this mobile age. The use of pre-service English teachers’ MICT-TPACK impacted and changed their concept of pedagogy to heutagogy. The teachers used mobile applications to facilitate their students’ inquiry-based learning of English as a subject as well as a medium of digital literacy. In order to select mobile applications for their lesson, the teachers developed a modified version of quality criteria for mobile applications. This study suggests there should be well-developed quality criteria for evaluating affordances of mobile applications.

This study investigates the core competencies required of Korean secondary-school English teachers and how they perceive these competencies in terms of importance, applicability, and teachers’ competency level ahead of implementing the 2015 revised national English curriculum in secondary schools. After the literature research, interviews, and expert review processes, five core competencies were extracted: curriculum and content reorganization competency; learner-centered teaching competency; innovative assessment competency; multicultural (intercultural) education competency; and information literacy and ICT use. From the results of a survey administered to 93 secondary school English teachers, it was found that the perceived competency level was lower than required, but it was higher than applicability. Overall, teachers felt insecure about how to apply the required competencies to their lessons. There was also a difference between middle school teachers and high school teachers in the self-rating results. These results provide implications for teacher preparation and the direction of teacher education toward the successful implementation of the 2015 revised curriculum.

As emphasis has increased on English as an international language and on the globalized image of universities, the number of native English speaker teachers (NETs) has also increased in Korean universities. From the poststructuralist view, teacher identity is constructed through participation in valued activities of the community of practice, and it is not fixed but constantly negotiated through the interaction of the context (Wenger, 1998). While previous studies focused on nonnative English speaker teachers’ identity construction, little attention has been paid to NETs in the EFL context. Considering the need to explore teacher identity from recent theoretical perspectives, the present study investigates how NETs negotiate conflicting identities and construct their teacher identities in the Korean university context. The findings show the NETs constructed multiple identities of an English educator, a collaborative volunteer, a non-tenured instructor, and a cultural and linguistic outsider, and they legitimize their professor identity through their participation in the present and imagined community of competent teachers. The findings support the claim that teacher identity is embedded in the sociocultural context that interacts with the individual agency in making sense of who they are. Implications and suggestions of the study are addressed based on the findings.

Teachers’ job satisfaction is a crucial factor to determine the quality of education in that it affects their dedication and participation. While teachers’ job satisfaction in general has been widely investigated, subject-related job satisfaction has been sparsely explored. Thus, this study investiaged both general and subject-related job satisfaction and compared them. A total of 117 secondary English teachers in Seoul participated in a survey which measures job satisfaction in terms of seven factors: relationship with people, job duties, work environments, opportunities for professional development, compensations, administration systems, and recognitions. Overall, the participants showed a modest level of satisfaction in both general and subjet-related jobs. Yet, subject-related job satisfaction was higher than general job satisfaction. They were particularly satisfied with their relationship with students and teachers. They also showed high satisfaction with recognition they receive as a teacher as well as an English teacher. In contrast, they were dissatisfied with compensations and workloads in general, and the number of students in charge and administrative support in teaching English. Finally, their job satisfaction was affected by gender, school type, position, and marriage. Based on the results, suggestions to enhance secondary English teachers’ job satisfaction were made.

The induction experiences of novice teachers are receiving increasing attention within the subject field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).The process of beginning to teach is acknowledged to be complex and often fraught with tensions and anxieties for newly qualified teachers who may experience significant disjunction between the realities of classroom and institutional life and what they have been taught on pre-service training courses. Research has also shown that novice teachers can be helped to make a successful transition from the teacher-training environment to the school through well-designed induction programs which provide structured support and professional development with access to resources beyond the school itself. This article seeks to uncover whether these elements of well-designed induction programs are replicated for teachers of English in the Korean school system. Using data gathered in interviews with recently graduated teachers, the article examines the experiences of teaching in the early years and documents teachers’ own perceptions of their induction into teaching. The article discusses the place of the teachers within the social network of the school and, in so doing, hopes to foreground how individuals come to terms with the new and complex roles inherent in ‘being a teacher’ within this framework. This is a perspective particularly necessary for TEFL as a discipline where methods are so often deemed paramount in learning to teach, rather than an understanding of what it means to be a teacher of English as a foreign language in a particular socio-educational context.

The study explores the identity construction of non-regular English conversation teachers (non-RECTs) in an elementary and a middle school in Korea. Drawing on positioning theory and the notion of community of practice, the study illustrates how non-RECTs resist, modify, and reconstruct their teacher identity through positioning themselves and others, and different modes of participation in the school contexts. It is a three-year longitudinal study with two female non-RECTs. The primary data gathered through interviews and informal talks, documents, and e-mails were also included for triangulation purposes. The findings suggest that the non-RECTs self-positioned themselves as qualified teachers who can effectively implement communicative language teaching into the classroom, but their positioning was challenged and rejected by regular teachers. The participants resisted their marginalized positions as temporary instructors and claimed their legitimacy by establishing themselves as positive contributors to the communicative curriculum. The findings show the non-RECTs’ identity construction is a struggle between the different views on legitimacy and a negotiation among multiple and conflicting identities.

The present study has investigated teaching motivation and demotivation factors on itinerant English teachers for pre-school children. A total of 119 itinerant English teachers were asked to answer a questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale, which had 32 items for teaching motivation and 14 items for demotivation. They also responded to 8 items asking about personal background information, which were used to examine the direct influence on teachers’ (de)motivation. Factor analyses were conducted to explore (de)motivation factors. As a result, five factors emerged regarding teaching motivation: altruistic motivation, intrinsic motivation, interpersonal motivation, monetary reward, and self-improvement motivation. Four teaching demotivation factors were also identified through factor analysis: burnout, lack of self-confidence, insufficient external support, and lack of autonomy. The result of t-test and one-way ANOVA indicated that teachers’ age, marital status, and teaching experiences have influenced teaching motivation, whereas their undergraduate major and age contributed to the level of teaching demotivation. This study implies that it is necessary to provide them with systematic pre- and in-service teacher training programs in order to develop the comprehensive knowledge of early childhood education as well as to improve their overall English proficiency.

This study aimed to examine educational connoisseurships of the 3rd and 4th year pre-service elementary school teachers (PSTs). Twenty eight 3rd year and 28 4th year PSTs were asked to write a critique on a video-taped elementary English lesson. Their comments were categorized and examined to see if there were any outstanding characteristics. It was also investigated whether the different amounts of coursework the two groups of PSTs had completed were reflected in their critiques. Many PSTs were found not to have developed their educational connoisseurships to examine whether a lesson was designed to maximize learning, and the functions of the target expressions were practiced and learned in a meaningful way. Two most common perspectives in their critiques were to examine whether the students were interested in the learning activities, and whether the learning activities helped students learn the target expressions. Some differences in the views on classroom English and differential learning activities were found across the two groups.

This study compares native English teachers (NETs) and non-native English teachers (NNETs) in their perceptions of errors as well as their actual feedback. Studies comparing NETs and NNETs have focused on actual feedback practice (Green & Hecht, 1985; T. Kobayashi, 1992), with very few studies relating this feedback to their actual perceptions of error correction (Hyland & Anan, 2006; Kim, 2007). In order to better understand this phenomenon, 26 NETs and 24 NNETs completed a questionnaire and provided feedback on a sample academic essay. The results reveal that while both groups showed differing degrees of perceptions, they did not significantly differ from each other in actual feedback, except that NETs preferred coded feedback than NNETs by explaining errors. This study implies that NNETs are as reliable as NETs in correcting errors, but that they differ in how they give feedback.

This study aims to investigate English teachers’ anxiety at three different school levels in Korea with special attention to situations where anxiety is generated. A mixed method was adopted to explore English teachers’ anxiety. Quantitative data from 912 English teachers was obtained through an online survey and qualitative data was collected from focus group interviews which were conducted with three different groups of primary (n=4), middle (n=3), and high school (n=3) teachers. Quantitative data analysis showed that there were no significant differences in the level of anxiety according to three school levels, although the anxiety of English teachers gradually increases from primary to high school. On the whole, there were significant differences in anxiety according to teaching experience; teachers with less than three years of teaching experience showed the highest anxiety. Three themes emerged from the analysis of the qualitative data: fear of negative evaluation, different sources of anxiety relating to teaching experiences in the three school levels, and classroom English vs. spontaneous English. These three themes showed that English teachers’ anxiety needs to be understood in the context of anxiety-provoking situations where they are being evaluated by their colleagues about their teaching methods and English language proficiency. Pedagogical implications are discussed based on the findings of the study.

The goal of the present study is to examine EFL English teachers' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its relation to their English language proficiency (LP). Data was collected from 81 in-service and pre-service Korean English teachers (N=81) who participated in an one-month overseas training program in the U.S.A. The participants were asked to diagnose their own levels of ICC and LP through the questionnaires whose reliability and validity were confirmed by the factor analysis. The major findings from analyses were as follows: 1) in general, participants appeared to consider themselves possessing a high level of ICC, showing an average score of 3.99 out of 5.0 on the ICC questions, 2) participants' willingness and readiness to engage in different cultures/speakers were found to be in a higher level than the other four factors of ICC, such as an ability to interact in intercultural situations, an ability to identify an importance of ICC, a degree of acceptance by other cultures/speakers, and a degree of contribution to mediating intercultural situations, and 3) chi-square, correlational, and regression analyses showed significant associations between ICC and LP of the participants. Pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to gauge the opinions of parents and teachers of English for the primary and secondary schools. It seeks to discover the implications for English education and provide referential data necessary to run a better English policy in school. A survey was conducted on a total of 3,294 particpants including 2,040 parents of public schools and 1,254 English teachers in primary and secondary schools. The questionnaire consists of 12 questions about the policies of TEE (Teaching English in English) and the NEAT (National English Ability Test). We used the SPSS 20.0 software to perform chi-square and t-tests. The results showed that teachers and parents were in agreement about the necessity of both TEE and the NEAT. In particular, the majority of parents thought that teaching English in English is important, and that the NEAT should be used for practical English improvement.

The issue of text appropriation is rarely explored in EFL classrooms where the teachers are native speakers of English. In this study we highlight how the ideology of NESTs influences students’ feedback practices. Two Korean EFL students seemingly welcomed teacher comments into their texts to make their revision process more manageable. By relinquishing their control, they welcome the appropriative behavior the teacher brings as the native English speaker. They believe that appropriating the behavior of the native English-speaking teacher is not only beneficial, but necessary in shaping their English discourse. Nonetheless, the students struggled in the feedback and revision cycles to negotiate between their hegemonic beliefs and the expectations of their native English-speaking teacher. In this sense, EFL students’ writing is always in foreclosure from the native English-speaking teachers, as EFL students are overshadowed by the ideology of NESTs.

The present study explores the relationship between teacher-efficacy and selected teacher variables, such as teachers’ demographic variables, self-efficacy, English proficiency, and teacher training experiences, of Korean English teachers. The study employed four questionnaires including Sherer et al.’s (1982) General Self-Efficacy Scale, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy’s (2001) Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale, Chacon’s (2002) Self-Reported English Proficiency Scale, and background information. The participants of the study were 120 Korean English teachers. The main findings of the study indicate that the participants’ standardized English proficiency scores exerted no significant influence on their teacher-efficacy. Yet, the teachers’ self-assessed English proficiency levels accounted for a significant amount of additional variance of their teacher-efficacy after controlling the variance explained by their self-efficacy, suggesting the significant impact of teachers’ positive assessment of their own English proficiency on their teacher-efficacy, regardless of their actual English proficiency. The study results also suggest that teachers’ professional training experiences generally contribute to their teacher-efficacy. Discussions and suggestions for future research are provided.

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary school teachers’ and students’ experience of teaching and learning English grammar and how they perceive English grammar education with regard to its role in learning English and the need and ways of including grammar instruction into the curriculum. Questionnaires were administered to 123 teachers and 1513 6th grade students. In addition, written interviews with 20 teachers were done through e-mail. Major findings from the analysis of this survey are three-fold. First, most of the teachers and the students had experiences of teaching and learning English grammar and they perceived that English grammar knowledge plays a positive role in learning English. Second, majority of both the teachers and the students believed that grammar instruction should start in 5th grade, but there is a gap between the teachers and the students with respect to grammar teaching approaches; the teachers prefer the inductive method, while the students prefer the deductive one. Third, many teachers considered that grammar instruction would not have a negative effect on English classes based on the communicative language teaching approach, but they believed that activities for grammar instruction should be well designed in order to keep students interested in learning English. Based on these results, several suggestions for improving English education in elementary schools are made.

This study delves into the temporary English teachers’ identities through at their reflective journals and interviews, grounded on Norton’s (2000, 2013) and Wenger’s (1998) conceptions of identity. In taking second/foreign language teacher education course at a TESOL MA program, 16 teachers’ reflective journals and interviews were analyzed qualitatively for emergent themes, in terms of the three modes of belonging in identity formation (Wenger, 1998). The analysis revealed that the participants represented the identities of the controller, the diverse teaching program participant. the teaching activity sharer, the negative future dreamer, and the language expert. Moreover, most of the participants, as non-regular teachers, concerned themselves about their future career as part-timer. To empower non-regular teachers’ voices, this study discussed and suggested how to strengthen temporary teachers’ identity for their professional development.

This study aims at exploring the theoretical perspectives and research related to second language teacher identities. In particular, this paper focuses on the studies on the identities of English teachers in the Korean educational system. Major findings are as follows: First, based on the previous literature on teacher identities, teacher identities are defined as dynamic, multidimensional, and changing, as they continuously interact with individual, social, and cultural contexts. Second, it was found that studies have focused on (1) the meta-analyses of English teacher identities, (2) native-speaking English teacher identities, (3) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers co-teaching with native-English-speaking teachers, (4) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers including pre- and in-service teachers, and (5) teacher identity development through teacher education activities. Lastly, this paper brings up issues and suggestions on the formation and development of English teacher identities. It also offers directions for the future research on professional identities of second language teachers.