Social Context and Language Learning

All formal education, like other human activities, takes place within a complex social context. In this essay, I define social context as the social forces that shape individuals’ daily experiences. These forces include a web of structures and processes, organizations and institutions, and interpersonal relationships. Together social context defines the parameters of individual daily life. For language learning and teaching, social context is important because it influences the choices that institutions and individuals make. For example, education authorities in most countries require pupils in school to learn one or more languages while offering others as options. The broader social context influences these decisions which, in turn, have a direct influence on the daily school activities of pupils. The history of language learning and teaching thus reflects changes in the social context over time. As H. H. Stern aptly put it, “[w]e cannot teach a language for long without coming face to face with social context factors which have bearing on language and language learning”.

A key component of social context is social attitudes, which can be defined as ways a society looks at phenomena in the world. This chapter is an investigation of social attitudes toward ‘school English’ in South Korea from 1970 to 1999 that addresses the following research question: “How did social attitudes affect the evolution of English education policies in South Korea during this period?”.