English Language Study and Goals: An East Asian Perspective

• Published in: English Language Teaching Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 85 - 112
• Main Authors: Suwako Uehara, Jean-Pierre Joseph Richard, 민수정, 정보현
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 팬코리아영어교육학회 01.03.2014
• Subjects: 영어와문학
• ISSN: 1226-6566; 2671-9460
• DOI: 10.17936/pkelt.2014.26.1.005

This paper reports on an East Asian perspective of English language extracurricular study andgoals. The authors focused on learners’ responses to approaches to study for perceived strongestand weakest language skills, and experience abroad; and English-language goal orientations,composed of two measures: a written form and a 50-item scale. World English expanding circlerepresentatives from Japanese and Korean universities (N = 644) were divided into lower andupper groups based on vocabulary size scores. Their responses were coded, then ANOVA andFactor Analysis were used. Learning an L2 requires continuous effort but results showedstudents may be inconsistent in their efforts - avoiding extracurricular study especially in theirweakest skills. Implications are that students might need guidance in self-regulatory learningand training educators in advising these learners could be beneficial. Students with highervocabulary scores were more likely to study their strongest and weakest skills, have taken partin overseas study experiences, and are career-goal oriented. Four factors were identified for bothlower and upper groups, and internal consistency for each factor ranged from .83 to .95. L2English goal orientations are likely to be a dynamic process; however, similar rankings of thefour factors across two sub-populations appear to show that the 50-item survey is robust. KCI Citation Count: 1