Korean Pre-Service English Teachers’ Attitudes toward English as an Academic Lingua Franca

Abstract

In the current literature, Korean pre-service English teachers’ attitudes toward English as an academic lingua franca (ELFA), have been underexplored even though they are considered an influential group in terms of social acquisition of English in South Korea. This paper is to explore pre-service English teachers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions regarding the use of English as a lingua franca in the South Korean academic setting. A survey method was used to collect data from 65 pre-service English teachers in a comprehensive university in Seoul. The results showed that the participants showed high intrinsic motivation but displayed relatively lower extrinsic motivation. In addition, it was found that they had ideologies of native English (NE) and provided relatively positive behavioral attitudes and intentions regarding the use of ELFA. Further analysis revealed a strong correlation between intrinsic motivation and ideologies of NE. This result indicates that despite their open-mindedness to ELFA, they still considered the native speaker model to be a norm of learning English. The findings of this study would shed light on the English language policy of higher education institutions in South Korea.