초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The study investigated how low level Asian EFL learners in one EFL English program become active participants of an English community of practice. Many Asian English programs do not situate EFL learners as discourse users, but only as language learners, especially when students are low level English speakers. 29 Korean students and 11 foreigners participated in a special program that increased students’ responsibilities and communication. A qualitative research design guided the analysis of these participants’ engagement in this emerging language community of practice. Video-recorded class interactions (32 class sessions), students’ artifacts (24 presentation transcripts, 24 worksheets for class activities), their conversation recorded with their foreign partners (12 three-minute conversation recordings) were collected for the data. The analysis demonstrated that an English discourse community of practice can emerge with designing activities that required gradual increase in using shared repertoire, English discourse. This should be accompanied by meaningful discussion that elicits mutual engagement and by completing joint enterprises that they should reply on each other. Careful design of programs was suggested to construct authentic EFL communities of practice.
