The number of foreign residents in Korea has rapidly increased by economic development and the Korean wave. International students to study in Korea have gone up to 82,000 in 2013. However, international students are having a hard time getting used to...
The number of foreign residents in Korea has rapidly increased by economic development and the Korean wave. International students to study in Korea have gone up to 82,000 in 2013. However, international students are having a hard time getting used to Korean life because of the difficulty of the language even though they studied Korean in advance. In South Korea, searching information and learning over the Internet is becoming a common life as the Internet usage increased. But many foreigners are struggling with cultural differences and language barrier, and comparing international students with Korean concerning the access to internet and the usage of internet, digital divide is massive.
The purpose of this study is to focus on multilingual support services for foreigners struggling to adapt to Korea culture due to the lack of Korean language ability. Multilingual support services have started to eliminate difficulties of get the information due to the lack of Korean language proficiency. But academic approaches has not been attempted, like when and where these services are being use, how to use these services, how they think the service.
In this study, I want to examine how Korean language ability affects the Internet use and the method of getting information, based on the students who are relatively good at computer, internet and devices. Also I try to find out what the motives of their multilingual support services are and what the major factor of dissatisfaction about multi-lingual support services is.We set the subjects of research over a survey of 193 international students attending the major metropolitan universities as bellows.
Research Question 1.How does the difference of Korean ability affect the internet usage of foreign students?
Research Question 2.How does the difference of Korean ability affect the method of getting information?
Research Question 3.How do the frequency of internet use, the ability of internet use and the Korean ability affect the multilingual services?
Research Question 4. What are the motives of multilingual service of foreign students?
Research Question 5.What kind of dissatisfaction factors result from the type of those motives?
By the results of analysis, the correlation between the Korean ability and Internet use ability of foreign students is significantly higher, statistically significant differences have not been found.
Secondly, looking at the foreign student’s methods of getting information, most frequent methods are internet, Apps, acquaintances of homeland in case of academic information. And in case of the daily information, they are internet, Korean friends, the acquaintances of homeland.
Third, among the time of internet use, the ability of internet use, Korean ability, the first and the second factor influence statistically significant on multilingual services.
Fourth, the results off actor analysis for the motives of multilingual services, 4 major motivations are relaxation, the daily information, academic information, communication.
Finally, I examined the effect on the dissatisfaction factors in accordance with the motives of multilingual services. When they want to use the multilingual services, difficulties of access to the internet was the biggest factor. In case of the motive of relaxation, dissatisfaction for the contents and services was the biggest. When they want to search for the daily information and the communication, they were unsatisfied mostly with services,
In the case of foreign students, they are highly dependent on the Internet. The better they have korean ability, the better they use academic Information. Therefore korean ability is very important to get used to their school life.
Also, foreign students who are not fluent in Korean are not relatively social and seldom go to the support center because of difficulties of communication with employees of the center. So interpreters for foreign students are necessary in the support center. We also need to provide the various multilingual services not only for information but also communication and relaxation, for there are various motives for the multilingual services.
The biggest problem for those services is the difficulty in access, so we need to provide multilingual access for the foreign student.
I analyzed the motives of multilingual support services based on the uses and gratifications theory, and examined the dissatisfaction factors according to the type of motives. Based on the results from the study, I suggest as follows.
First, the government needs to provide daily and academic information in Korea on the website which is relevant to foreign students with various languages.
Second, the institutes have to hire employees with various languages in the foreign support center.
Third, the multilingual internet broadcasting needs to be activated for getting academic information and getting used to Korean life through internet.
The purpose of this study is to help the international students settle earlier in Korea and to help them understand exact information and Korean culture through the multilingual support service.
I hope this study can be a foundation for being more integrated society by continuous studying of multilingual support service, not to exist people who are isolated on account of language barriers.
，韩语论文，韩语论文 |
