English Classes in Slumber: Why Korean Students Sleep in Language Education

This book explains why some Korean high school students sleep during English classes in spite of the emphasized value of English in their society. It examines how this sleeping-in-class phenomenon can be understood by means of such marginalized students’ emic outlooks on themselves, the target language, their teachers, schools, and society/culture; and by means of the views of teachers who have experienced such in-class sleepers. To understand the phenomenon more holistically, it pursues a multi-disciplinary approach drawing on studies of demotivation and amotivation, psychological needs, and student experiences of schooling, as well as sociocultural theories of learning and agency and of interpersonal dynamics, among others. On the basis of a multi-modal analysis of interview data from the student and teacher participants, it theoretically interprets the phenomenon at the classroom (‘micro-’), school (‘meso-’) and society-culture (‘macro-’) levels. Taking a humanistic/existential approach to education, it subsequently presents a number of cultural actions that it advocates implementing in a situation-sensitive manner to help in-class sleepers and their educational institutions awaken from their chronic slumber. Lastly, it presents practical and theoretical implications for more humanistic pedagogy, and global studies of student disengagement, in English-as-a-foreign-language classes.