Lessons learned from college freshmen’s participation in a new college English program.

Abstract

This case study examines two college freshmen’s learning experience in a newly implemented college English program whose primary goal was to enhance learners’ English oral-proficiency. As an effort to meet the needs stated by the learners and instructors, in a Korean university, a task-based, blended college English program was developed and implemented (Kim & Kim, 2010). In order to explore how the program is actually implemented and perceived in classroom contexts, the researchers observed two freshmen learners’ participation in the program and documented data from different sources (i.e., classroom observation, interview, etc.) over one academic year. The collected data were analyzed following the principles of qualitative content analysis (Dörnyei, 2007). The findings reveal that the two learners’ perceptions of the program and their classroom participations are in reciprocal relationship, constructing each other. That is, changes and no changes in each learner’s class participations and perceptions triggered transformation in their actions and perceptions. The findings also tell that these changes in learners’ experience are closely related with personal, institutional and social factors. The implications for a similar language program design and its implementation are lastly discussed with the suggestions for future research.