This interview study aims at exploring how two Korean college graduates strive autonomously to manage their English world before, during and after college-graduation. The participants were two very autonomous students out of 34 students the researcher met at a 15-week autonomy-based English Speaking/Writing class at a college in 2003. Two major findings emerged from the interview data collected in April 2005: (1) B"s initial interest in English came from teachers" urgings to get good test scores, but his visit to America and Australia made him more interested in learning communicative English; (2) S"s interest in non-Korean people and countries, inspired by her first English teacher, made her go abroad and practice English very actively in and beyond Korea. The findings shed light on a critical issue concerning the application of the learner autonomy theory with Korean students who learn English in Korean educational contexts: the limit and effectiveness of classroom-English-learning. Pedagogical implications of the findings are added at the end.

This study aims to investigate how some Korean primary school students practiced autonomous English-learning while they exchanged email letters with foreign friends for 20 weeks. In order to achieve triangulation of the study, the following data resources were used: email letters exchanged and uploaded at an Internet cafe, a survey implemented in April and July as an autonomy measuring instrument, the informants’ comments on keypal activities written in July, two times of individual interviews and the researcher’s observation report. One major finding emerged from the data is that there were four types of autonomy development. Some implications drawn from the study findings are added for future keypal-based English-learning autonomy development programs.