Research into the implementation of English-only pedagogies in South Korea has focused on teacher
perceptions of English-only government policies (Kim, 2002), the different language functions of English
and Korean in the classroom (Kang, 2008, 2013; Liu et al., 2004; Rabbidge & Chappell, 2014), the role of
teacher commitment in language teaching (Moodie & Feryok, 2015), as well as the futility of trying to ban the L1 in South Korean English classrooms (Kelleher, 2013). Research on the beliefs behind teachers’ classroom actions as well as the socio-historical elements that are responsible for the formation of these beliefs has been little more than an afterthought in most studies. This report comes from a larger study which explores why South Korean elementary school English teachers use the TL and the L1 the
way they do.