earticle

영어

Korean ESL students tend to have a desire to have American friends and improve their spoken English skills (Kang, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011). In order to understand the motives behind this desire, this qualitative case study explored Korean ESL students’ perceptions about benefits that they would obtain from American friends. The participants were nine Korean students studying in an intensive English program at a university in the US, five of whom later became regular students in an undergraduate program and a masters program. The findings of this study reveal that the Korean ESL students perceived that they would have four types of benefits from interactions with American friends: (a) improving their English speaking skills (b) learning American culture, (c) getting useful information for their life in the US, and (d) having social support. Among the four benefits, Korean students put the most emphasis on improving their English speaking skills. The findings also show that over time there was a change in Korean students’ perceptions about each benefit. Korean students’ perceptions of improving their speaking skills weakened after experiencing interactions with Americans. In contrast, Korean students’ perceptions of experiencing culture and getting useful information from their American friends strengthened as they stayed in the US longer and interacted with their American friends.