귀국 대학생의 다중언어 습득과 제2언어 자아 변화 경험에 대한 내러티브 탐구 = A Narrative Inquiry into the Multilingual Acquisition and Second Language Self Change Experience of Korean Returnee University Students

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study was to conduct a narrative inquiry into the multilingual acquisition and second language self-experiences of Korean returnee university students and to understand the significance of their stories and experience. The “inquiry of the multilingual acquisition and second language self-experiences of Korean returnee university students” and the “significance of multilingual acquisition and second language self-experiences of Korean returnee university students” were set as the research puzzles for this study. Korean returnee university students are more simultaneous multilingual learners than being multilingual by learning an additional language other than their primary language. The identity of the languages acquired by the returnee university students is divided into the majority languages, which become the key to enter the mainstream society and the minority languages that represent their originality. The differentiated languages are each learned and used, leading to the creation of the second language motivational self in respect to the imagined communities and the imagined identities the returnee students wish for. Afterward, the students experience changes in their second language selves, which are an attempt to adjust the discrepancy with the motivational self, created through their second language motivational self system.
Narrative inquiry, the research methodology used in this study, is an approach used to study human lives in a way that respects and understands the study participants’ experiences. It was the most suitable method for this study as it can draw the true significance of the study participants’ experiences. More specifically, this study observed the following steps for this research; first by “being in the field,” transitioning “from field to text,” “and retelling of the intermediate research text into the research text.” Five university students who had spent 12 years or more years abroad attending elementary school, middle school, and high school and returning to Korea to enter Korean universities were selected for this study. The field text for this study was collected by conducting interviews with each participant and asking them to write their biographies on their language learning experiences. The participants reviewed the intermediate research text before the final research text was completed. The narrative inquiry on the second language self change experience showed that the participants had critical events that led to changes in their selves. For returnee university students, the critical event was the changes in time and space by moving to a foreign country and returning to Korea. Based on this finding, this study classified the multilingual acquisition and the second language self change experience of returnee university students into the temporal and spatial axis and the multilingual axis, and the conditions for generating such experiences were categorized into internal and external factors, previous experience, and predicted experiences to create the narrative.
In Chapter 5, this study compiled a research text on the significance of conducting a narrative inquiry on the experiences of Korean returnee university students. First, this study examined returnee university students’ abstract and personal experiences in the light of previous studies and theories. This study also identified the second language learning experiences that served as critical events that changed the second language selves of the returnee university students by closely examining the participants’ experiences. Furthermore, this study confirmed the characteristics of the Korean self, which are found in the experiences of the returnee university students and differentiate their experiences from the experiences of learners from different cultural backgrounds. By approaching the returnee university students’ Korean language learning experiences from the perspective of the second language self, this study confirmed that the Korean language capacity of returnee university students is not a result of the loss of knowledge but was due to a lack of experience. Finally, the study participants identified the motivational self meaningful in their history of language learning by meta-recognition of their experience through the narrative inquiry, and this inquiry process became a second language learning experience for the participants, allowing them to do so to set a new motivational self.
Lastly, this study confirmed the significance of narrative inquiry on the personal, practical, and social levels. First, on the personal level, the researcher also experienced a change of self from being a Korean speaker to becoming a Korean language education researcher by conducting this collaborative research for the dissertation. On the practical level, this study gave voice to the returnee university students and called for appropriate Korean education programs for them. On a social level, this study raised the necessity of understanding the unique experiences of the returnee university students, so that they could adjust to the Korean society and universities and maximize their potential as global leaders.