Abstract
This research reports an ethnography of English underachievers from a Korean middle school. Studies in education view academic achievement as an individual and private matter, attributing learning difficulties mainly to individual psychological factors, such as a lack of motivation and/or anxiety. This study takes an ethnographic approach to understand to what extent English classes in school support underachievers’ academic progress. The study findings are as follows: 1) academic streaming provided little support for underachievers to prepare for school exams by which their academic progress would be judged; 2) underachievers experience marginalization in after-school class because its test-oriented practice did not address their linguistic needs. Challenging the assumption that input-oriented English education policy should address student underachievement, this study calls for a new understanding of underachievement as part of working-class youth culture.
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