Korean students’ stories from an Aotearoa New Zealand high school: perceived affordances of English and Korean language use

Abstract

This article is informed by van Lier's ecological approach to linguistics in considering the affordances Korean-born students perceived in using Korean or English language in an Aotearoa New Zealand high school setting. Here, I regard affordances as the students’ perceptions of their languages as linguistic resources enabling them to act, or constraining them from acting. The data suggest transitioning to high school is a critical time when Korean students are perplexed at the loss of their primary school's invitational culture of learning through interaction. Their reduced repertoire of interactions has implications for these students as they develop and learn to use and live in their languages. There are broader implications for multicultural schools in Aotearoa New Zealand where curriculum rhetoric envisages higher-level interactivity within the school environment with benefits for learning, both social and academic. This article draws on ethnographic data from a large study and employs linguistic ethnography's finely grained techniques of discourse analysis.