Teaching and Learning English in Private Supplementary Tutoring: A Sociocultural Perspective

Abstract

While private supplementary tutoring has become increasingly popular worldwide and research in this field has recently received more attention, the study of private supplementary tutoring in English (PST-E) has been rather limited in English language education and applied linguistics. This study investigates the situation of English teaching and learning of senior secondary education in a large-scale tutorial centre in Hong Kong from a sociocultural perspective. A questionnaire survey of over 1,000 respondents who enrolled in English courses in the tutorial centre was conducted to elicit their biographical background information and their reasons for learning English and participating in PST-E. Among them, 100 respondents were selected for one-to-one phone interviews for more in-depth inquiry and for the researcher to select participants for case studies. Twenty participants were selected for the first face-to-face interviews and were asked to write a reflective essay about their English learning experience. The data from the learners’ perspective were compared with those from their three tutors’ perspective through interviews and classroom observations. The presentation will report on the findings from both quantitative and qualitative data and explained with Dörnyei’s (2005, 2009) L2 Motivational Self System as a theoretical framework. The study aims to challenge the taken-for-granted necessity of participating in PST-E for academic success as a sociocultural norm and seeks to unveil the situation of PST-E as an out-of-class learning activity which policy makers and English language educators should take into account because of its significant impact on the mainstream education system.