한국 대학생 영어학습자들의 학습동기와 정체성에 관한 연구

Korean college students' Engli sh learning motivation and their learner identities

Drawing on Norton's (2000) notion of imagined communities and imagined identities, the present study attempted to describe how Korean college students construct their imagined identities and how the imagined identities influence their English learning motivation. Twenty college students who had achieved a relatively high success in English and had been selected as exchange program students participated in the study. Individual interviews were conducted on their English learning experiences, goals, perceptions of English, and ideal images of them The findings show that tile participants wanted to identify themselves as a professional career-person in an English-speaking community and perceived that English is a critical tool to gain access to their imagined community. The participants' imagination of the imagined identity helped them sustain their motivation and investment in learning English The results indicate til at learning a second language is a process of forming new identities and learners' motivation is closely related to their imagined identities. Future studies need to address the construction of learners' imagined identities in different sociocultural milieu.