2022 Volume 24 Issue 2 Pages 99-106
Framing English immersion as a metadiscursive regime, this study examines the pragmatic structure of classroom discourse between teachers and students. It examines how the classroom discourse of English immersion classes, constituting a metadiscursive regime, works to rationalize and justify the marginalization of low achievers. Data for this study was drawn from a 15-month ethnographic study of the English learning experience of students in a Korean public middle school. The results of the study are as follows. First, neither the Korean teachers nor students perceived interest in or the need for classes to be taught in English by native English teachers. Second, teachers’ efforts to empower students using learner-centered learning resulted in low achievers’ developing greater dependence on feedback. Students’ reluctance to learn native-like English implies an inverted evaluation between native-like English and Korean-accented English. This study calls for a social shift in English immersion studies and the need to pay attention to the underlying ideologies that unwittingly widen the achievement gap among students.
