Understanding the EFL Teacher
An Interview with Ian Moodie, Teacher, Researcher, Fisherman
If you live in the Mokpo area, go to ELT conferences, or look through language teaching journals, you are familiar with Ian Moodie. Ian is a tenure-track associate professor in the Department of English Education at Mokpo National University, where he teaches linguistics and English education courses to local preservice teachers. Although he is originally from Canada, he has a PhD in linguistics from the University of Otago in New Zealand and an MA in applied linguistics from the University of New England in Australia. He is also a lifetime member of Korea TESOL. In this interview, we discuss some of his recent research on English teachers in Korea, about teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) here, and a bit on the fishing connection. — Ed.
Interviewer: Thank you, Dr. Moodie, for taking the time for this interview. Your research has always been of interest to me, so I have quite a number of questions to ask. Shall we get started? It seems to me that a substantial majority of English language teaching (ELT) research is student-focused: efficacy of teaching methods and techniques, learning strategies, etc. But most of your research is ELT teacher-focused. What piqued your interest in this area?
Ian Moodie: Good question. Looking back, before I got into doing research, I had taught English in Korea for many years. When I started, I was just thrown into a classroom. Despite my best efforts, I soon noticed how ineffective I was, so I spent a lot of time studying how to teach on my own over the years. I suppose that is the root of my interest in the type of research that I have done with English teachers in Korea, whether it be with local teachers or expat teachers.
Interviewer: Some of your research has been devoted to commitments and motivations for teaching English in Korea. What have you found? Is there much variation among teachers?
Ian Moodie: Yes, for example, I have done a couple studies in this area with local elementary school teachers. What I have found is that people want to teach English for many reasons, and, yes, sure, there is variation among teachers, but I suppose the key finding was demonstrating how elementary school teachers’ commitment to teaching English is regulated by the teacher rotation system. With this system, teachers switch grades and schools with some regularity, and it has led to a situation where teachers generally only teach English for a short time, say, a year or two, and then return to homeroom teaching. The biggest drawback of this system is that it has really inhibited the development of ELT expertise in Korean elementary schools.
Interviewer: Many EFL programs in Korea that include native English-speaking teachers (NESTs), such as the EPIK program, are designed to employ co-teaching with a Korean counterpart. Why is it that such co-teaching does not seem to work out very well?
Ian Moodie: This one would take a long time to answer sufficiently, and each participant in these programs might have a slightly different view, but overall, I would say that there are structural problems with how the programs are implemented that make authentic co-teaching pretty challenging to pull off. For instance, there is a big gap in the power/authority and qualifications between the local teachers and expat teachers, which presents a barrier to collaboration. Communication is also often an issue, and the textbooks and curriculum are not necessarily designed with co-teaching in mind.
I could go on and on, but I want to flip this question and talk about what is good. It is pretty clear that these programs are popular with students, and in Jeonnam in particular, these programs provide the opportunity for many local children to interact with someone from another country for the first time. That can be a transformative experience. It can be quite motivating for students to take up English. So, to anyone working as a co-teacher or TaLK scholar, I suggest that they consider even the little things, like greeting the students in the hallway, talking to them on the playground after school, getting to know their names; those are important parts of these programs, too, insofar as creating a positive experience for students and stimulating or sustaining a motivation to learn English.
Interviewer: The current National Curriculum for teaching English in Korea, and earlier ones as well, states that communicative language teaching (CLT) and teaching English through English (TETE) shall be instituted in classes, but especially at the high school level, this does not appear to be the case. How do teachers feel about this?
Ian Moodie: Well, I would say that most local teachers feel ambivalent about this. On the one hand, many teachers know it is what is asked of them to do and that CLT and TETE are nice concepts in theory, but the status quo tends to win out. CLT was never really given a proper chance here. Although the curriculum recommends it, the materials are not amenable to it, and the extreme focus on testing is not ideal for student-centered, collaborative classrooms.
Interviewer: That brings me to another question. One of the issues that concerns you is what you call “the hard problem” for Korean ELT (i.e., “finding solutions to the tremendous negative washback caused by language testing in Korea”). Could you expound on this for us?
Ian Moodie: Sure. Yeah, in my view, this is the overarching problem for English education in Korea. Many of the other problems stem from how testing is done (avoiding CLT, inauthentic co-teaching, using Korean as the language of instruction, etc.). The suneung (college entrance exam) is the biggest culprit. The English portion mainly tests for decontextualized knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, and it is designed so that students can cram for it and actually get high marks on it without having much functional proficiency at all. It is pretty shocking to me that, even after more than two decades with the new curriculum, so many college students cannot even do a basic greeting exchange or negotiate meaning in English. (But I digress.) So, the suneung is the biggest problem, but testing is also a big problem for local teacher education. To become a full-time public school teacher, applicants need to pass an extremely difficult and extremely competitive employment exam. Because of this, potential teachers have no choice but to intensively study academic terminology. Often people spend three years after graduation studying for the exam. However, learning to teach is a practical endeavor, requiring lots of classroom experience, ideally with feedback from an informed expert. Yet, the practicum for secondary school teachers is only four weeks, and shockingly some candidates get almost no opportunities to teach during that time. Thus, if candidates are lucky enough to succeed on the employment exam, to no fault of their own, nearly all of them lack the sufficient teaching experience to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom. Because of this, the first year or more tends to be a struggle, and the more idealistic elements of the curriculum tend to fall by the wayside.
Interviewer: I believe you are doing some research on language teacher well-being and commitment in ELT. What is your research showing? I would be interested to know if you have done any research in this area that has been pandemic-related.
Ian Moodie: Oh, yes, this is one of the things I am looking at now. I am doing some survey research with expat English teachers, many of whom are in Jeonnam, which is looking at the relationships between different factors of occupational commitment with well-being and turnover intentions – that is, people’s intentions to quit their job and/or quit teaching English altogether. Although the results are preliminary, one thing that I have found so far is that, I suppose unsurprisingly, there appears to be a relatively strong relationship between well-being and turnover intention. Not surprising, right? People who are not feeling valued at work are looking for work elsewhere.
And, to address the last part of your question, the timeline for data collection for the study is during the pandemic, so there are likely some particular factors related to that to tease out. Anyway, I have been invited to submit this study to a journal next year, so I have some time to figure it out. Probably some of your readers have already participated. However, if anyone reading this interview is an expat teaching English in Korea, whether it be in a private academy, school, university, or elsewhere, I would like to warmly welcome them to join this study. To participate, all one needs to do is fill out an online survey. It would be quite helpful to have a few more respondents!
Interviewer: We can place the survey link at the end of the interview. You have also stated that research itself is a prominent issue in Korea, that incentives are not sufficient for publishing high-quality research in Korea. Has that situation improved much in recent years?
Ian Moodie: Yeah, I did state this. It was part of the conclusion to a research survey study that I did with a colleague, Hyunjung Nam, from Dong-A University in Busan. It is hard to say if it is improved or not. On the one hand, most universities provide extra incentives to publish in international journals. Also, the local journals are quite thoroughly evaluated on a regular basis and need to meet certain benchmarks to stay certified. The problem is that there are just so many local journals that most research barely gets read. For instance, if I recall correctly, there were about 60 journals publishing ELT research in Korea, and we skimmed through about 1,200 studies on ELT that were published over a five-year period. To me, I think the most straightforward way to make all of this research more accessible would be for editors to call for more research surveys to be done in Korea. There is also potential for a journal dedicated to research reviews, I think, kind of like what Language Teaching does internationally. To me, that would be the best way to make sure that what is being done has a better potential to contribute to the knowledge base of ELT scholarship.
Interviewer: A journal dedicated to Korean research reviews – that is a great idea! Lastly, I see that you have published a study in a medical journal about walking prescriptions for type 2 diabetes management. Can you tell us how that came about? It seems quite unusual for a linguist or education researcher to be involved in such a study.
Ian Moodie: Oh, sure, that is an interesting story! Yes, this study was led by my close friend (and fishing companion), Andrew Reynolds, who is a medical researcher. His project was looking at the efficacy of a diabetes management protocol. While doing it, being a conscientious person, he was interested in looking at the human side of his participants’ involvement in the study. So, knowing that I had specialized in qualitative/narrative research, he asked me for some guidance in planning and designing this study, a study which looks at some of the factors that were helping or hindering the participants to maintain a regular exercise schedule. Yeah, so although I do not have any business giving medical advice whatsoever, it was an honor to be able to help my friend with the qualitative side of his project, and he was nice enough to credit my work with co-authorship.
Interestingly, since that time, he has also helped me with some of my statistical work, as has another good friend and fishing mate, Rens Meerhoff, who generated simulated data and did statistical testing for a study that was exploring the relationship between workplace commitment and student learning with expat English teachers in Korea. It is pretty cool that friendship and a mutual love of fishing eventually led to collaborating on research in pretty diverse fields. The next step, though, is to find a study that our whole fishing crew can participate in (shoutout to Joe Russell and Luciano Rigano!). That will be quite a challenge, as it would need to integrate applied linguistics, human health, physiology, plant microbiology, and elevator engineering somehow. Who knows? Maybe someday we can pull it off!
Interviewer: And maybe it could include some marine biology! [chuckle, chuckle] Well, thank you for your insights. Good luck with your future research, and good luck with your fishing excursions, too!
Interviewed by David Shaffer, vice-president of Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL and editor-in-chief of the Gwangju News.
Photographs courtesy of Ian Moodie.
Link to Ian’s ongoing survey: https://bit.ly/3lsE5kD
Link to Ian’s Google Scholar page: https://bit.ly/3lrsrXf