Academic biliteracy challenges: Korean scholars in the United States

Abstract

Studies on academic biliteracy have had a tendency to focus on multilingual scholars’ current status of academic biliteracy and not on their prior experiences in their home countries. However, these experiences are vital to understanding their current status of academic biliteracy because the multilingual scholars’ distinctive experiences in acquiring both first and second language literacy produce different attitudes and orientations towards each literacy development. This article examines how Korean scholars in the U.S. negotiate their multilingual literacy identities in the second language context, tracing their experiences back to their first and second language literacy experiences in their home countries. I analyzed narratives of four Korean scholars who were engaged in academia in various ways both in Korea and the U.S. The results indicate that the Korean scholars do academic writing mainly in English and use Korean writing for personal purposes. The complete distinction of Korean writing purposes from those of English not only comes from the scholars’ current social conditions but also draws on the values and meanings they attribute to their Korean writing ability in the home country. To help them develop academic biliteracy in the second language context, taking into account multilingual scholars’ experiences in the first language context is suggested.