초등학교 이중언어 학습자들의 양 언어에 대한 태도

Attitudes towards Korean and English Acquisition for Students Learning Both Languages

Numerous studies have argued that a learner’s attitude toward a target language is one of the most important factors in determining how well the learner can acquire the language. This is particularly true of young students learning a foreign language. Several years ago, the current Korean government announced a plan to implement school curriculum instruction in English across Korea and yet withdrew it right away because of the tremendous social opposition to the plan, including concerns about possible damage to the status of the Korean language. Strangely, the opposing ideas have not been seriously examined in Korea. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to investigate the attitudes that young Korean learners of English have towards English and Korean learning. To achieve this aim, two questionnaires were administered to 197 elementary school students enrolled in two institutions that conduct curriculum instruction in English. Their responses were analyzed using repeated measures MANOVA and structural equation modeling. Surprisingly, the results show that English learning does not negatively affect the students’ attitudes towards learning their mother tongue, Korean. Furthermore, the students showed more positive attitudes towards learning Korean than that of English. A possible explanation is that the social power of the Korean language upheld in the Korean context is at least as strong as, or probably stronger than, that of English. These results rebut the concerns about the deterioration of the status of the Korean language due to English learning experience in Korea.