A practicalities and experiences of being non-native english teachers in korea by sardor akramov. A student of

participants was appropriate in that valuable data may be gathered 
from six subjects, provided they are reasonably homogeneous (Guest et 
al., 2006). Though language ability, not age and ethnicity, had been the 
relevant criterion when seeking participants, in the event they were all 
of a similar age, and all were White, and as such happened to fit the 

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image of the ethnically-ideal foreign English teacher prevalent 
throughout South-East Asia (Ruecker & Ives, 2015).All individuals 
participating in this research were given a verbal guarantee of 
anonymity that was audio-recorded at the time of the interview. 
Findings - Cultural and social access 
All participants expressed a desire, when setting out to learn, to 
acquire Korean language abilities for social purposes with 
Koreans, and/or as a means of accessing Korean culture, and all 
expressed a measure of success in doing so. All believed that 
Korean language ability is important and useful for making 
friends and maintaining good relationships with colleagues in 
Korea. Some participants stated explicitly that, in learning 
Korean, they were seeking respect from Korean native speakers 
for their cultural openness as demonstrated by learning, and in 
doing this they aspired to distance themselves from the 
negative collective image of closed-minded foreign teachers. 
For instance, Nigel described his view of the foreign teacher 
community who, in his experience, included people who would 
‘drink and… go to clubs, and that’s their entire life.’ For him, 
learning Korean was one way to demonstrate open-mindedness 
and sophistication, unusual for foreign teacher, as a result of 
which he gained greater respect from Koreans of his 
acquaintance: ‘…(my colleagues) treat me much more as a part 
of a team rather than a foreign entity, you know what I mean?’ 
All participants felt that they had received respect, acceptance, 
and otherwise positive responses from Koreans as a direct 
result of having learned Korean. For example, James felt he had 
received especially good treatment at a restaurant on account 
of a member of staff’s appreciation for his abilities: ‘...she 
started to give me some free chips sometimes… and, my guess 

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is that... She likes that I speak Korean... it makes me feel good 
that I have that, someone who... I've made a connection with. 
The most commonly expressed social advantage of speaking 
Korean was the ability to converse with Koreans who were not 
conversant in English, and access to particular social 
environments where the primary language was Korean.
For example: 
• ‘...being able to speak Korean lets you talk to a much wider 
variety of
• Jenny developed her Korean with friends in salsa and yoga 
classes.Korean ability allowed participants to converse with 
people who, whether they were capable in English or not, may 
have felt uncomfortable speaking in English, and 
‘relieved(James) or ‘relaxed’ (Jenny) at being able to use 
Korean, and in some cases this includedparticipants’ own 
students. Chris and James credited their Korean learning with 
giving them a greater understanding of their students’ language 
learning struggles, while also describing Korean as a useful 
classroom tool. In Chris’s case, he would ‘pepper’ hisclassroom 
speech with Korean, which he suggests helped to hold his 
students’ flagging attention, while for James knowledge of 
Korean provided a way to understand and join in with his 
students’ Korean conversations, which he used as an 
opportunity to help them develop their English conversation 
skills
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