English Language Study and Goals: An East Asian Perspective

This paper reports on an East Asian perspective of English language extracurricular study and goals. The authors focused on learners' responses to approaches to study for perceived strongest and weakest language skills, and experience abroad; and English-language goal orientations, composed of two measures: a written form and a 50-item scale. World English expanding circle representatives from Japanese and Korean universities (N = 644) were divided into lower and upper groups based on vocabulary size scores. Their responses were coded, then ANOVA and Factor Analysis were used. Learning an L2 requires continuous effort but results showed students may be inconsistent in their efforts - avoiding extracurricular study especially in their weakest skills. Implications are that students might need guidance in self-regulatory learning and training educators in advising these learners could be beneficial. Students with higher vocabulary scores were more likely to study their strongest and weakest skills, have taken part in overseas study experiences, and are career-goal oriented. Four factors were identified for both lower and upper groups, and internal consistency for each factor ranged from .83 to .95. L2 English goal orientations are likely to be a dynamic process; however, similar rankings of the four factors across two sub-populations appear to show that the 50-item survey is robust.