Critical perspectives of world Englishes on EFL teachers’ identity and employment in Korea: an autoethnography

Abstract

Drawing upon Kubota’s perspectives on critical multiculturalism and second language education, and by adapting Canagarajah’s autoethnography for research methods, this article describes an EFL teacher candidate’s biased views on world English in her first exposure to English varieties in the United States, and the prevalent favorable views toward native English speakers from inner circle countries in English language teaching (ELT) practice in Korea. The author explains that one’s desire to learn English from Anglophone native English-speaking (NS) teachers arises from the imagined world in which one assumes that speaking native-like English would play a key role in one’s success in Korean society. Critiquing this, the author argues that ELT in Korea and the employment of NS teachers needs to be contextualized by taking learners’ goals and global society’s demands for English learning into consideration. The article also provides pedagogical implications on EFL teacher education.