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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.498-515
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 21 May 2023 Revised 27 May 2023 Accepted 07 Jun 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202306.498

Examining Freshman English Majors’ Perspectives on Courses Taught by Native English-Speaking Instructors

Soyoung Kim ; Daniel Bailey
(First author) Graduate Student, Dept. of English Language and Culture, Konkuk University kimmy5049@naver.com
(co-author) Associate Professor, Dept. of English Language and Culture, Konkuk University dbailey0566@kku.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

South Korean universities have increased the number of native English-speaking lecturers/teachers (NEST) to assist students with their language learning goals, improve university rankings, and support cultural awareness. To better understand student perceptions of NESTs and how student perceptions can improve future teaching quality, this study investigates the beliefs of freshmen English majors pertaining to attitude and motivation when attending English courses taught by NESTs. Perceptions pertain to benefits, satisfaction, English self-efficacy, negative affect, and expected qualities with NESTs courses. The study followed a survey design on a group of 40 English majors attending their first year of university. Results showed that students held generally high levels of positive perceptions towards NESTs, with the highest levels relating to satisfaction and benefits with NEST taught classes. Contrarily, negative affect produced the lowest level among the measured variables. Satisfaction with NESTs showed statistically significant relationships with all variables of interest, except negative affect. Through rank-order analysis of the survey items, a more nuanced understanding of how students perceive NEST taught courses is provided. This study offers implications for NESTs and recommendations for implementing best teaching practices.

Keywords:

NESTs, teaching quality, EFL, attitude, motivation, English self-efficacy, satisfaction

Acknowledgments

This article is derived from the first author's original graduate thesis research conducted at Konkuk University Glocal Campus.

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