Eun Sung Park

Eun Sung Park – Featured Speaker @ KOTESOL 2024

 Featured Session

Resilient Roots, Global Growth: Transnational Identities as Assets in the English Classroom

The recent surge in globalization has brought significant changes to South Korean universities. Our student population no longer comprises a homogeneous group of Korean-born individuals with uniform years of English instruction prior to college. Instead, we now have a diverse mix, including international students and heritage language learners who were born and/or educated in other countries. Unbeknownst to many, our student body also includes a sizable number of North Korean refugee students. While they may look Korean, they are strikingly different from mainstream South Korean students, as they enter college with varying degrees of disrupted education. In this featured session, I will provide a general overview of North Korean refugees in South Korean tertiary institutions and discuss their English-learning experiences across different transnational environments. Traditional stereotypes have cast these students as under-achievers lacking in various types of cultural capital, with research often highlighting their limitations and lack of resources. I will shift the focus to discuss experiences and achievements of students who have transformed their transnational backgrounds and identities into resources for learning English, and ultimately, for pursuing their dreams. The talk will also share pedagogical insights on helping minority students to leverage their transnational experiences and identities as assets in the English classroom.

 Biosketch

Eun Sung Park, PhD, is a professor of TESOL and applied linguistics at Sogang University. Before her tenure at Sogang, she taught in the MATESOL/TEFL program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, USA. Her research interests include instructed SLA, asset-based pedagogy for students with multicultural or refugee backgrounds, and ELF and translanguaging practices in K-pop. She has published articles in Applied Linguistics, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education; Language and Intercultural Communication; Language Learning; Language Teaching Research; and TESOL Quarterly, among other journals. She co-edited English Education at the Tertiary Level in Asia with the late B. Spolsky (Routledge, 2017) and authored Instructed SLA: A Practical Guide for Teachers (TEFLIN, 2020). She is currently co-editing a volume entitled BTS: K-Pop Transcending Language and Communication (with Routledge).

Select Sites
Eun Sung Park: A Citizen of the World (2005)
Eun Sung Park: Sogang University Profile
Eun Sung Park: ResearchGate.
Eun Sung Park: Academia.edu.
Eun Sung Park Interview in The English Connection.

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