The English Majors’ Expectations, Experiences, and Potentials: Inputs Toward Korea’s Globalization

Abstract

This paper determined the English majors’ a) expectations in terms of class contents, teaching methodology, and teacher's professional/personal traits; b) experiences in terms of English classes, outside school socialization, and dealings with foreign professors; and, c) potentials in terms of critical thinking-driven and communicative activities. Results revealed that there is a discrepancy between their expectations, experiences, and potentials in achieving communicative competence due to cultural aspects, amount of communicative outputs, limitation of critical thinking, teaching and learning orientations, and English education system. However, the researcher still believes that Korean students majoring English still have the potentials to excel in communicative challenges towards Korea’s globalization by putting up more international schools that are affordable and English conversation clubs on campus, by implementing CLT-based approach more meaningfully, by integrating culture in the curriculum but use effective techniques to draw out student’s attention to communicate, and by designing a curriculum training program for English teachers and English majors more meaningfully.