This article explores the niche occupied by transnational English teachers within the context of Korean ELT. Employing intersectionality theory as an analytic framework, the study examines the lived experiences of Leo (pseudonym), a German national who taught English in Korea circumventing legal restrictions against non-native English-speaking…

Each year, multitudes respond to the demand for native English speakers to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Asian countries, particularly China, Japan, and South Korea. These EFL transnationals are often young, new to living abroad, and inexperienced as educators. When they arrive, they often find a community, and an identity waiting…

From a critical ecological linguistic perspective, this paper argues that South Korean English-language-policies are constraining students' agency. Since the millennium, as a legacy of neoliberalism universities of non-English-first-language contexts have implemented EMI (English-Medium Instruction) courses top-down to further internationalise.…

This study investigates the social construction and continual (re)production of the cultural "Other" through educational materials, focusing on Korean middle school English textbooks. Twelve middle school English textbooks from four publishers were collected and analyzed, with a focus on how they (mis)represent cultures and practices of…

This study examined teachers' claims of entitlement in collaborative teaching sequences where the non-leading teacher enters into the domain of another teacher's ongoing instructional business. The data involves video recordings of second-grade elementary Korean and American teachers co-teaching math and science lessons. The analysis reveals that…

The present study examines the influence of social distance and power factors on the use of internal and external mitigating devices and strategies in the production of requests by Korean learners of Russian. The data was collected by using a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) containing twelve situations that varied in the facts of power and social…

Drawing from a larger ethnography of North Korean young adults learning English in Christian educational programs in South Korea, this article explores the power relations between evangelicals and minority people and the political economy of missionary English teaching. This article follows Christian educational programs that provided various…

To maximize the advantages of virtual learning, the present study highlights the potential for Internet meme design and creation in English language learning (ELL) courses as an innovative activity that raises student agency, increases multimodal literacy, inculcates intercultural communication, and teaches idiomatic expression. Memes resonate a…

Unexpected conflicts, or eruptions, in class during discussions of controversial issues are not uncommon in the field of English language teaching (ELT). This can be especially true for critical English language teachers who hope to address social justice issues in their classrooms. Existing literature of these events often mentions emotional…

Purpose: This paper aims to identify challenges in a first attempt at teaching the Youth Lens in a secondary English classroom in South Korea. Design/methodology/approach: This paper includes the author's observations of a senior English class in an international school in South Korea. Findings: The author advocates that intersections of time,…

The main goals of this paper are to identify race in Korean language classrooms; articulate the connection between Korean language learners' racial identities and Korean language learning; and discuss implications for Korean language educators. In order to do this, I first examine literature on English language education to glean themes related to…

Grounded in poststructuralist understandings of language and identity and Davies and Harré's (1990) positioning theory, this paper explores one South Korean student's educational experiences in her English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, specifically related to subject positions and identity construction pertaining to language. Using a…

This study investigated the willingness of 14 English-speaking EFL instructors living and working in South Korea to invest in practices connected with learning and using the Korean language. A model of investment for the "new world order" (Darvin, R., and B. Norton. 2015. "Identity and a Model of Investment in Applied…

In a more complex and dynamic world, it is important to have knowledge of research methods in order to understand our internal and external environments. This paper aims to outline different ways of approaching research into language studies and mainly provides an introduction to one of them, the interview. As interviewing is one of the main data…

This paper looks at South Korea as an example of a collectivist society having a rather large power distance dimension value. In a traditional Korean classroom the teacher is at the top of the classroom hierarchy, while the students are the passive participants. Gender and age play a role in the hierarchy between students themselves. Teaching…