If not, why?
(A)Making use of the opportunities
Learning from accommodation situations
When Sharon stayed in the flat, if the flatmate could not understand her English, the flatmate would tell Sharon directly. Then, Sharon would write down the words or sentences to let her flatmate correct the mistakes and pronunciation. However, Sharon did not think that she had learned English from her host family (S/int.2/04jun06).
Learning from work
Sharon used to listen to her colleagues’ conversations, which she thought very useful for learning English especially in relation to pronunciation and accent. ‘I listening and I think about their pronunciation. Understand some….’ (S/int.1/20nov05/p26). She also picked up a lot words from her colleagues’ conversations and learned them. Sometimes at work, if she heard some customers
talking and she could not understand, she would go to her colleagues and ask them to explain to her.
Use in accommodations
As described in 4.2.2 Accommodation, Sharon would try to talk to the host families, her housemate and her flatmate, although with the first host family she ended up not talking to them because of the landlady’s cold responses. According to Sharon, compared with the second host family, she talked about a lot more topics with her flatmate (S/int.fin/20jun06).
Use at work
When the café was quiet, there was time for Sharon and her colleagues to chat together. In the beginning Sharon was quiet most of the time because of her limited language ability and unfamiliarity with the topics her colleagues were discussing. After a few months of passive attitude, Sharon started to join in her colleagues’ conversations more actively. During her second interview, she told me an interesting story: because her colleagues talked about their boyfriends a lot and sometimes talked to her about their relationship problems, she decided to make up a story. The story was about a boyfriend she had in Korea and how they broke up; however, this story was untrue. Through this she also told them about the ‘couple ring’, which is part of Korean culture. She told me that in Korea a couple would usually buy the same type of rings to wear. It is interesting to see that her approaches and attitude had changed. Topics might be still important to her, but instead of finding existing topics, she started to make them up.
Sharon went out once with one of her colleagues but realised they did not have common topics to talk about. This may have limited Sharon’s use of English.
(B)Not making use of the opportunities
As I mentioned in Chapter 2, it is believed that the target language community can offer language learners a lot of opportunities to learn and use the language. Nevertheless, with Sharon’s case, the opportunities were not fully exploited and sometimes were dismissed deliberately by Sharon herself.
No topics, did not know the topics, did not like the topics
It seemed very often that Sharon did not make use of her interpersonal contacts to use or learn English due to topical issues, e.g. lack of topics, unfamiliar topics or uninteresting topics. They were also problems Sharon faced in the host country. I will discuss them in detail in section 4.4.6.
Lazy, exhausted, no need to learn
Although Sharon told me she would pick up words from her colleagues’ conversations and then learn them, she also said ‘they usually speak to me new words, but… I never tried to memorise them’ (S/int.fin/20jun06/p16). The reasons she gave me were that she was lazy and she was not desperate to learn English. It looked like ‘laziness’ had stopped her making an effort to use the opportunities to learn and use English. (She did not want to go out with a Polish student from school because she said she was lazy.)
Before Sharon went back to Korea, she stopped making efforts to learn new words from her colleagues because she was soon to go home and she felt exhausted by many things (S/int.fin/20jun06). Perhaps she thought she would not need English after she went back to Korea, so it was not necessary for her to learn more. Nothing special
In our dinner gathering, she told me she would not go to the school party held the following week. This kind of party is usually a good opportunity for learners to meet their fellow students and at the same time talk to school teachers informally. In her opinion, the school party, which she had attended twice already, was ‘nothing interesting’, ‘nothing special’, or ‘every time is the same’ (S/d/10feb06/p36 & 43). Preferred to stay alone
Sharon’s personality may have also affected her use of the opportunities to learn and use the language. She told me she preferred to stay alone in her room when she went back to her accommodation. ‘… some distance between me and flatmate that’s better than closed, and just stay alone my room is more comfortable than stay with them.’ (S/int.fin/20jun06/p12). From my observation during my contacts with her, it seemed that she was not very open to her real feelings. We can see that personality affects her willingness to communicate.
Others
Going out with non-Korean people could have been a good opportunity for Sharon to use and learn English. Apart from those topical issues, other reasons why she did not want to go out with them included ‘they are couple’, ‘I can’t speak English very well’, ‘if they are friend, I will go with them… they are just flatmates’ (S/int.1/20nov05/p21 & 22) or ‘just lazy’ (S/int.2/04jun06/p47). Her ‘not my friend(s)’ attitude appeared to affect her willingness to build up social relationships.