Role of pupil agency in a second language classroom

Abstract

This article is about my experience as an English teacher in South Korea and in Finland and it points out the importance of teachers and researchers to listen to young language learners. To be specific, I will firstly share my professional career as an English teacher who has taught mostly in junior high schools in South Korea (the learners’ age level was 11–13) for about 15 years. Then I will describe how I came to recognize the importance to delve into young learners’ agency through my own teaching experience and decided to exercise my academic journey with the view on pupils as agentive sense-makers here in Finland.