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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.1066-1083
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 10 Jun 2025 Revised 23 Jul 2025 Accepted 05 Aug 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202508.1066

Making English Personally Meaningful: Meaning-Making Processes and Motivational Variability Among Korean EFL Learners

Youngmi Kim ; Tae-Young Kim
(First author) Research professor, Dept. of English Education, Chung-Ang University Tel: 02-820-5391 ymkim209@gmail.com
(Corresponding author) Professor, Dept. of English Education, Chung-Ang University Tel: 02-820-5392 tykim@cau.ac.kr


© 2025 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

This study explores how Korean university students in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context construct personal meanings around their English learning and how these meaning-making processes influence their motivational variability. A total of 33 Korean university students majoring in linguistics-related subjects wrote a reflective essay and created a bar chart visualizing their motivational trajectories. Based on average motivation levels and standard deviations, four focal participants were selected through scatter plot analysis. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining qualitative analysis of retrospective narratives and bar charts to trace learning experiences across school years. The analysis identified four types of personal meaning: Pre-relevance, Personal Association, Personal Usefulness, and Identification. Learners who developed personal meanings early and integrated English into their broader identities demonstrated stronger and more stable motivation over time. In contrast, learners who experienced delayed or fragmented meaning-making showed greater motivational instability. These findings highlight that early and sustained personal meaning construction is critical for maintaining motivation over time in compulsory learning environments.

Keywords:

English as a foreign language, second language learning motivation, personal meaning-making, motivational variability, mixed-methods research

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2024S1A5B5A16027380).

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