Authority, gender and language: A qualitative study of a college-preparatory, English-medium high school in South Korea.

摘要

Students around the world are studying English to capitalize on its instrumental value, yet few studies examine the social processes that influence how these students learn and achieve. In South Korea, as the English language has become a necessity to become successful, many Korean students take private lessons or study after school at privately owned English academies. In addition, while they are changing quickly, hierarchical authority roles driven by cultural conventions still affect the students' learning and their academic success in Korea. By examining a college-preparatory, English-medium high school, this study adds to existing literature on whether and how hierarchical authority plays a role in an English-medium environment. By drawing on participant observations, interviews, online reflections and document collection, this study focuses on how school moral order shapes and is shaped by hierarchical authority relationships as they are mediated by language use and gender.;The findings suggest that teacher-as-authority is legitimized by the school moral order of preparing students for college entrance. This moral order, which is shared by the teachers, school administrators, and students in the school, gave rise to a test-preparatory and teacher-centered curriculum that further strengthened the authority of teachers. Based on the online reflections posted by the focal students, the study also revealed that language plays an important role in defining their hierarchical position. The role of language in authority is found to be rather convoluted, for the students faced dilemmas in using different languages under different circumstances. Although Korean was the favorite choice of language for many of them in informal settings, many students believed English to be the suitable language for academic and professional use. Moreover, the students' decisions to use English were motivated by its status in the context beyond the school.;This study also finds that gender mediates authority relationships and is possibly linked with educational inequity. Although the study reveals no significant difference in academic achievement between boys and girls, the girls were found to assign themselves to subordinate roles more so than the boys.