Content area
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between studying abroad experience and identity through the lived experiences of Korean overseas students who have studied in Canada. The issue is approached from Sociocultural and critical perspectives of language learning and identity. This study was an intensive exploration of a limited number of personal cases. It concerned the nature and significance of four Korean overseas students' studying abroad experiences and how the experiences have interacted with the individual's identity de/re/construction process. Through informal and open-ended conversational interviews, this qualitative study examined major characteristics of their intercultural/linguistic experiences and how their identities have been de/re/constructed across cultural and linguistic settings and over time. Also, the study explored affective, socio-cultural, historical, religious factors associated with their changing understanding and practices of identities before and during cross-cultural/linguistic contact.
Conversations with each participant were reconstructed into four narratives. Then Common themes were extracted from the narratives and discussed under the two categories: (1) Identity Formation/Background in Korea and (2) Identity De/Re/ Construction in Canada.
Common themes in identity Formation/Background in Korea include, (a) Academic/social success as a key basis of identity; (b) English/studying abroad as a key means to social/academic success; (c) Admiration for the West: Cultural hegemony: Each participant's motivation for coming to Canada shared some common beliefs or anticipations: All participants believed that studying abroad/English would provide them with better opportunities for academic or career success, which was the key basis of their perception or understanding of self-identity in Korea. From this perspective, each participant's motivation for studying abroad/English learning could be seen as their efforts to seek “a better self and future”, as one of participants expressed in one interview. This was evidently imbued with their admiration for the West, which was nurtured through the media or parents in their upbringings.
Common themes in Identity De/Re/Construction in Canada include, (a) English and identity struggles; (b) Desire for belonging; (c) Frozen futurism; (d) Spirituality and Identity reconstruction: However, the participants' experiences in Canada show that their perception of linguistically/culturally hegemonic notions have attributed a deficient identity to them in terms of their English learning process and academic studies. Also most of them have experienced constraints on their pursuit for interpersonal and intercultural belonging, which derived from the complexities and contradictions associated with their personal, social, and ethnic identities. While going through these linguistic and social struggles, they have also realized their own frozen futurism. Through the disillusionment of frozen futurism and their struggles involved in the cross-cultural lives, most of the participants experienced identity reconstruction or a discovery of new meaning. For some of them, their spiritual life has played a big role in this process.
The findings indicate that although my participants' coming to study abroad was motivated by their desire to seek “a better self and future” in terms of academic/social success, they have undergone some modification or reconstruction in terms of their ideas of “better” during their intercultural learning. Through experience after experience, they gradually realized what more deeply mattered to one's self and redefined their own “good”. In this regard, my participants' experiences suggest that their pursuit of “a better identity” has been, after all, a task “to be realized” rather than to be sought. Some obstacles interfered with this task. The hakbol (educational credentials)-oriented culture in Korea, associated with the demand of “English for social mobility” derived from the recent globalization discourse, bred the participants competitive spirit, privileging self-achievement over self-cultivation. They tended to idealize life “over there” in their future while finding fault with life “here and now”.
This study provides recommendations for how intercultural experiences could be the power of experience not only for educational achievement but also for a meaningful process of self-recovery and agency-enhancement.
