Seeing the Global in the Local: Civic ESP Fieldwork in Gwangju
Seeing the Global in the Local: Civic ESP Fieldwork in Gwangju
By Maria Lisak EdD (How to cite this)
Abstract
This study examines how localized fieldwork within an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course develops students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity in their own civic environments. Conducted with sixty-one welfare administration undergraduates in Gwangju, South Korea, the project invited students to role-play as foreign visitors and civic consultants assessing cultural accessibility across public sites. Through multilingual information searches, field observations, and written recommendations, students engaged in structured defamiliarization—learning to see their familiar city as a space where global and local forces intersect.
Analysis of student consultant reports revealed three emerging capacities: recognition of previously invisible international presence (78% observed international visitors; 41% expressed surprise at barriers), analysis of structural barriers to linguistic and social access (80% identified consequences; 46% reached structural thinking), and civic imagination of inclusive solutions (100% adopted consultant voice; 100% proposed institutional partnerships). These findings suggest that globalization awareness is not merely content knowledge but a learned perceptual ability shaped through place-based inquiry.
The study introduces Civic ESP as a pedagogical framework that extends beyond traditional ESP (focused on workplace skills) and critical ESP (focused on interrogating power) to emphasize civic contribution through professional English use. The pedagogical mechanism—pedagogical defamiliarization through role-play combined with scaffolded analysis—offers a scalable alternative to study abroad for developing intercultural awareness. The study demonstrates that ESP pedagogy can extend beyond communicative competence to cultivate critical civic literacies, offering a replicable model for contextually grounded, socially engaged English learning.
Keywords: localized ESP; globalization awareness; civic inquiry; defamiliarization; welfare administration education; critical pedagogy; translocal learning
Introduction
In many regional Korean universities, students tend to imagine globalization as something that happens elsewhere—in Seoul, in major "global cities," or through overseas experiences. Yet the global is already woven into their own surroundings: international students walk the same campuses, cultural tourists explore nearby sites, and migrant workers sustain local economies. What is missing is not the presence of globalization, but the capacity to perceive it.
This perceptual gap has significant implications for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) pedagogy, particularly in contexts where students are preparing for civic professions. Traditional ESP courses emphasize professional or academic communication skills—teaching students how to write reports, give presentations, or navigate workplace discourse. Critical ESP scholars have pushed the field further, encouraging students to interrogate whose voices are centered in professional communication and whose interests are served by institutional language practices (Benesch, 2001; Pennycook, 2001). Yet both approaches often treat globalization as a topic to learn about rather than a phenomenon to learn to see.
This distinction matters. When students regard globalization as distant or abstract, they miss the ways it shapes their immediate civic spaces—signage, accessibility, public events, and the social interactions that link local life to global mobility. For students preparing to work as social workers, community organizers, and welfare administrators, this perceptual blindness carries professional consequences: they may design programs that inadvertently exclude international residents, provide services only in Korean when diverse linguistic communities are present, or fail to recognize how global migration patterns shape local welfare needs.
The Civic ESP Intervention
This study introduces and tests a pedagogical approach we term Civic ESP—an orientation that positions English for Specific Purposes learning as civic inquiry rather than purely skill acquisition. Civic ESP combines three elements: (1) localized fieldwork in students' home environments, (2) professional role-play that creates analytical distance, and (3) authentic civic tasks that require evidence-based recommendations.
The study examines a fieldwork assignment implemented in an ESP course for sixty-six welfare administration undergraduates at a university in Gwangju, South Korea. Students were asked to investigate cultural accessibility in their city by adopting two roles: first as foreign visitors searching for cultural information in multiple languages, then as consultants writing needs assessments for an international organization developing a multilingual app.
This dual role-play created what we call pedagogical defamiliarization—a structured process of making the familiar strange in order to perceive it critically. By temporarily inhabiting the position of non-Korean speakers, students encountered their city as linguistically opaque. Signage they had passed daily without thought suddenly became notable for its monolingualism. Museums they had visited as insiders became sites where they observed foreign visitors struggling to understand exhibit contexts. The city they knew intimately revealed itself as a space of linguistic inclusion and exclusion—a site where globalization was already present, but unevenly accessible.
The consultant framing then positioned students not as language learners reporting to a teacher but as professionals conducting needs assessments. This authorized students to analyze what they observed, identify systemic patterns, and propose evidence-based solutions—transforming fieldwork from an observational exercise into civic inquiry.
Research Question and Significance
This study asks: How does localized ESP fieldwork develop students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within their own civic environment?
The question focuses on capacity development rather than attitude change or content knowledge acquisition. We examine whether and how students learn to:
Recognize international presence and linguistic barriers they had previously overlooked
Analyze structures of accessibility—moving from description to systemic understanding
Imagine themselves as civic contributors who can propose evidence-based solutions
The study makes three contributions to ESP scholarship:
Empirically, it demonstrates that localized fieldwork—when structured through role-play and scaffolded analysis—develops students' globalization awareness in contexts where study abroad is not feasible. The findings reveal what students learn, what analytical sophistication they achieve, and what civic capacities emerge.
Conceptually, it introduces Civic ESP as a framework that extends beyond traditional ESP (focused on professional skills) and critical ESP (focused on interrogating power) to emphasize civic contribution. Civic ESP positions students as professionals-in-training who use English not merely to participate in workplace discourse but to analyze civic problems and propose solutions.
Pedagogically, it identifies pedagogical defamiliarization as a mechanism for developing perceptual capacity. Unlike study abroad programs that relocate students physically, this approach uses role-play to create the cognitive distance necessary for critical perception—offering a scalable, cost-effective alternative for developing intercultural awareness.
Structure of the Paper
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews literature on globalization literacy, the evolution from traditional to critical ESP, and fieldwork as defamiliarization pedagogy, positioning Civic ESP as an extension of these traditions. Section 3 briefly describes Gwangju as a research site—a regional city with significant cultural infrastructure and growing international presence, making it ideal for localized fieldwork. Section 4 details the research design: the course context, the three-part fieldwork assignment, and the qualitative analysis of sixty-six student consultant reports.
Section 5 presents findings organized around three developed capacities: recognition (students perceiving international presence and barriers), analysis (students moving from description to structural thinking), and civic imagination (students positioning themselves as consultants proposing evidence-based recommendations). Section 6 discusses how the pedagogy works—explaining the mechanism of defamiliarization plus scaffolded analysis—and articulates the Civic ESP framework with its principles and implications for ESP curriculum design. Section 7 concludes by arguing that globalization awareness is not merely content knowledge but a learned perceptual ability, and that ESP pedagogy can cultivate this ability through localized civic inquiry.
Reframing ESP: From Skill to Perception
At its core, this study challenges ESP to expand its scope. Learning English for professional purposes need not be limited to mastering genres, acquiring vocabulary, or navigating workplace discourse—as essential as these skills remain. ESP can also develop what we might call professional vision: the capacity to observe, interpret, and analyze the environments where language matters.
For welfare administration students in Gwangju, professional vision means learning to see their city as a site of linguistic accessibility and exclusion, recognizing international residents as part of their future client base, and understanding that decisions about translation and multilingual services are not merely logistical but civic justice issues. This perceptual capacity—developed through structured fieldwork—prepares students for the increasingly mobile, multilingual contexts they will navigate as professionals.
The findings suggest that when students learn how to look differently at their home environments, they discover the global in the local. And in that discovery, they begin to imagine themselves not as peripheral actors in someone else's globalization story, but as civic professionals with the capacity to shape more inclusive communities.
2. Literature Review
This study builds on three intersecting bodies of scholarship: research on globalization literacy in language education, the evolution of ESP pedagogy from traditional to critical orientations, and fieldwork-based pedagogies that use defamiliarization to develop perceptual awareness. Together, these literatures establish the foundation for Civic ESP.
2.1 Globalization Literacy in Regional Contexts
Globalization literacy extends beyond knowledge of global facts or English as an international medium. It involves the ability to perceive and interpret the entanglement of global and local dynamics in everyday life. Appadurai's (1996) framework of "scapes"—ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes—foregrounds the multiple flows that shape how people experience globalization differently depending on context. Similarly, Rizvi and Lingard (2009) argue that globalization literacy entails recognizing how one's own community participates in transnational flows, rather than viewing globalization as distant or abstract.
Massey's (1994) concept of a "global sense of place" provides a useful corrective to assumptions that some places are "more global" than others. She argues that all places are constituted through connections to elsewhere—through movement of people, ideas, capital, and culture. Regional cities are not "less global" than capitals; they are differently global, with specific patterns of international connection shaped by local institutions, migration, and tourism.
For students in regional contexts, this reframing is crucial. If globalization is understood as happening only in capital cities or through overseas experience, students may position themselves as peripheral observers. Developing globalization literacy therefore requires pedagogical approaches that help students recognize international presence and global-local entanglements in their immediate environments. Yet study abroad—the dominant model for developing intercultural awareness (Jackson, 2008; Kinginger, 2009)—remains inaccessible to many students. Localized fieldwork offers an alternative: students develop perceptual awareness by investigating their home environments through structured inquiry.
2.2 From Traditional ESP to Critical ESP: Toward Civic Engagement
Traditional ESP emerged from the recognition that language learning must respond to specific occupational or academic contexts (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). Needs analysis identifies target communicative situations, while curriculum focuses on relevant genres, vocabulary, and discourse conventions (Hyland, 2006). Success is measured by learners' ability to perform effectively in professional discourse communities.
However, scholars such as Pennycook (2001) and Benesch (1993, 2001) have argued for a critical turn, emphasizing that language use is never neutral. Critical ESP asks students to interrogate professional discourse: Whose interests does this language serve? Who is excluded? What assumptions are embedded in these genres? Benesch's work with immigrant students exemplifies this approach: learners become researchers of their own conditions, questioning institutional discourses rather than simply assimilating to existing norms.
Recent scholarship extends this critical orientation toward civic dimensions. Belcher (2012) calls for ESP pedagogy engaging authentic community issues, while Keles and Yazan (2023) demonstrate how critical analysis develops awareness of whose perspectives are centered. This study builds on critical ESP while adding a constructive dimension we term Civic ESP: students not only interrogate structures of power but also propose solutions using professional genres and analytical frameworks of their disciplines.
For welfare administration students—future social workers and policy implementers—this civic dimension is particularly relevant. These students will design programs and provide services in increasingly diverse communities. Their professional responsibilities are inherently civic: recognizing who is excluded by current systems, understanding how linguistic barriers affect access, and advocating for equity. Civic ESP provides early professional socialization, positioning English as a tool for the civic work students will perform throughout their careers.
2.3 Fieldwork as Defamiliarization Pedagogy
Fieldwork transforms everyday environments into objects of inquiry. In ethnographic traditions, fieldwork requires suspending familiar assumptions—what Shklovsky (1917) called ostranenie or "making strange"—disrupting automatized perception to render visible what habit had made invisible. Mason (2002) adapted this principle for teacher education, developing the "discipline of noticing": through structured observation, teachers learn to notice classroom dynamics they would otherwise overlook. Noticing, Mason argues, is not natural talent but learned skill.
Linguistic landscape (LL) research applies these principles to public signage and multilingual texts, examining whose languages are visible or invisible in shared spaces (Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Shohamy & Gorter, 2009). When adapted for pedagogy, LL fieldwork invites students to document and interpret local signage to understand patterns of inclusion and exclusion (Malinowski, 2015; Piller, 2016).
Both approaches emphasize observation as epistemological practice. Students develop perceptual awareness—learning to see social structures and inequities embedded in everyday environments. This is especially important where students study in home regions: familiarity breeds blindness. Fieldwork creates conditions for recognition.
However, observation alone does not guarantee critical insight. Freire (1970) distinguished between naive consciousness (recognizing problems without understanding causes) and critical consciousness (analyzing structural conditions). ESP fieldwork must guide students from description toward analysis—from "I observed X" to "X happens because..." to "X could be addressed by..."
This study combines defamiliarization with pedagogical scaffolding through role-play. Students adopt two roles: foreign visitors searching for information, then consultants evaluating accessibility. These roles create cognitive distance (defamiliarization) while providing analytic structure (professional framing). The foreign visitor role makes students' familiar city linguistically strange; the consultant role authorizes them to analyze observations and propose solutions. By merging observational awareness with professional analysis and civic contribution, the pedagogy develops what Freire called praxis: reflection paired with action.
2.4 The Present Study: Civic ESP Through Localized Fieldwork
The literatures above establish that globalization is embedded in local environments (Appadurai, 1996; Massey, 1994), ESP can develop critical awareness and civic capacity (Benesch, 2001; Belcher, 2012), and fieldwork creates conditions for perceptual learning through defamiliarization (Shklovsky, 1917; Mason, 2002). Yet few studies examine how these principles operate together in practice. Most ESP research remains classroom-based; most fieldwork research examines study abroad contexts; and most globalization literacy research addresses attitude change rather than perceptual capacity.
This study examines a localized fieldwork assignment in an ESP course for welfare administration students. The assignment positioned students as foreign visitors and consultants investigating cultural accessibility in Gwangju—their home city. Through online research, site visits, and written needs assessments, students engaged in structured inquiry that made the familiar strange while developing professional genres.
The study asks: How does this pedagogy develop students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity in their own civic environment? What do students learn to recognize? What analytical sophistication do they achieve? How do they position themselves as civic actors? By answering these questions, the study demonstrates what Civic ESP looks like in practice and establishes pedagogical principles for developing globalization awareness through localized inquiry.
3. The Gwangju Context: A Translocal Regional City
Gwangju, located in South Jeolla Province, is South Korea's sixth-largest city with a population of approximately 1.5 million. While widely recognized for its democratic heritage—particularly the May 18 Democratic Uprising of 1980—the city has more recently cultivated a robust cultural infrastructure that positions it as a regional hub for contemporary art and intercultural dialogue.
3.1 Cultural Infrastructure and International Engagement
Over the past two decades, Gwangju has developed major cultural institutions that attract international visitors, artists, and cultural workers. The Asia Culture Center (ACC), opened in 2014, serves as a multidisciplinary cultural complex hosting exhibitions, performances, and residencies featuring artists from across Asia and beyond. The Gwangju Biennale, established in 1995, is one of Asia's oldest and most prestigious contemporary art biennials, drawing curators, collectors, and art tourists from around the world. Additional institutions including the Gwangju Museum of Art and numerous local galleries contribute to a cultural ecosystem that intentionally positions the city as a site for international artistic exchange.
This cultural infrastructure creates genuine international presence. The Biennale brings thousands of foreign visitors annually (as there is an Art Biennale and a Design Biennale that alternate years); ACC hosts traveling exhibitions and international conferences; university museums receive foreign scholars; and cultural districts attract tourists interested in Korean art, cuisine, and history. Local universities now host hundreds of international students, while nearby industrial zones employ migrant workers from Vietnam, China, Uzbekistan, and other Asian countries. The city also welcomes cultural tourists attracted by its art festivals and democratic heritage sites.
3.2 The Linguistic Landscape: Partial Accessibility
Despite this international engagement, Gwangju's public information and services remain primarily monolingual. Major institutions like ACC provide multilingual websites and some on-site English signage, but smaller venues, neighborhood cultural sites, and public spaces often operate exclusively in Korean. Social media content, event announcements, and interpretive materials frequently exist only in Korean, even when promoting internationally-oriented exhibitions and festivals.
This mismatch between Gwangju's international image and its limited multilingual accessibility creates what might be called partial inclusion: international visitors can physically navigate major institutions but often cannot access deeper contextual information, participate in educational programming, or engage cultural sites beyond surface-level observation. The city welcomes international presence while maintaining infrastructure primarily designed for Korean speakers.
3.3 Why Gwangju Works for Localized Fieldwork
For pedagogical purposes, Gwangju offers ideal conditions for localized ESP fieldwork. The city is international enough that students can meaningfully investigate accessibility and diversity—there are real international visitors to observe, genuine linguistic barriers to document, and authentic civic questions about inclusion and access. Yet Gwangju remains regional enough that students perceive it as their own civic environment rather than an abstract "global" space like Seoul.
Most participating students grew up in Gwangju or neighboring areas, allowing them to conduct research within familiar settings. This familiarity is pedagogically valuable: students are not observing a distant or exoticized "other" but revisiting their own city through a new professional and linguistic lens. The assignment asks them to defamiliarize the familiar—to see their hometown as a foreign visitor might see it—creating cognitive distance without requiring physical relocation.
Moreover, Gwangju's specific characteristics make it representative of broader patterns in regional Korean cities. Like many provincial capitals, Gwangju is experiencing increasing internationalization driven by university recruitment, labor migration, and cultural tourism, yet its linguistic infrastructure has not fully adapted to this demographic shift. Students investigating Gwangju's accessibility are therefore examining challenges they will likely encounter throughout their professional careers as welfare administrators in regional contexts: how to serve increasingly diverse populations when institutional systems assume linguistic homogeneity.
Finally, Gwangju's cultural identity—rooted in civic participation and progressive values stemming from its democratic movement history—creates a receptive context for civic inquiry pedagogy. Students are encouraged to think critically about inclusion, equity, and public accessibility as civic values, not merely technical or logistical issues. The city's self-presentation as a space of democratic engagement and cultural openness invites critical questions: Who can actually participate in this cultural life? Whose languages are accommodated? What does genuine inclusion require?
In short, Gwangju embodies what this study terms a translocal space: a regional city that is not peripheral to globalization but differently connected to global flows—international students in universities, migrant workers in industries, cultural tourists at festivals, digital visitors accessing content online. The city's international presence is structural, not incidental, yet often remains invisible to residents who navigate primarily in Korean. This makes Gwangju an ideal site for teaching students to perceive the global in the local—to recognize that globalization is not something happening elsewhere but a condition already shaping their home communities.
4. Methodology
4.1 Research Design
This study employs qualitative document analysis to examine how localized ESP fieldwork develops students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within their own civic environment. The research follows an interpretive approach, treating student assignments as evidence of learning processes and capacity development rather than merely evaluating linguistic competence. The central research question—How does localized ESP fieldwork develop students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within their own civic environment?—requires examining multiple dimensions of student learning: what students notice (recognition), how they interpret observations (analysis), and what solutions they imagine (civic agency). These dimensions cannot be captured through quantitative measures alone; qualitative content analysis allows examination of perceptual shifts, analytical sophistication, and civic positioning as they emerge in student texts.
4.2 Course Context and Participants
The study took place in an undergraduate course titled "English for Welfare Administration: Theory and Policy Basics" at a university in Gwangju, South Korea, during Fall 2024. This required ESP course serves second-year students (sophomore level) in a Welfare Administration degree program. The class enrolled 61 students, the majority Korean nationals with ages ranging from 20 and 28.
Students' English proficiency levels varied widely, ranging from lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate, reflecting non-leveled placement common in Korean universities. Course design therefore emphasized structured, scaffolded tasks enabling participation across proficiency levels. By Week 7—when the fieldwork assignment occurred—students had completed foundational modules on welfare terminology, administrative communication, and report writing, positioning them well for applied work requiring independent fieldwork and written analysis.
Pedagogically, the course sought to bridge theory and civic application. While grounded in welfare administration theory, it encouraged students to view their field as living practice shaping accessibility, inclusion, and public well-being. English served as the medium for professional reasoning—for articulating observations, making recommendations, and connecting local phenomena to global policy discourses.
4.3 The Fieldwork Assignment
The Week 7 unit, titled "Finding Art and Culture in Gwangju," was designed as a short-term localized fieldwork assignment integrating qualitative observation, professional writing, and civic analysis. The overall aim was to help students investigate how accessible Gwangju's cultural and civic spaces are to non-Korean speakers and reflect on what this reveals about globalization and inclusion in their city.
Assignment Structure
Students completed two main field tasks:
Step 1: Online Research (Foreign Visitor Role)
Students were instructed: "Imagine you are a foreign visitor planning to visit Gwangju for art and culture events. Search for information about Gwangju cultural sites in at least two languages other than Korean (e.g., English, Chinese, Japanese)." Students documented what information they found, which platforms provided useful content, and what barriers they encountered. This step created initial defamiliarization—students who routinely search in Korean experienced the city as linguistically opaque.
Step 2: Field Visit (Observer Role)
Students visited a cultural or civic site in Gwangju (museum, gallery, cultural center, public art installation) and documented: What languages were visible in signage? Were staff able to communicate in multiple languages? What information was available to non-Korean speakers? Did they observe any international visitors, and if so, how did those visitors navigate the space? Students took field notes documenting observations.
Step 3: Consultant Report (Professional Role)
Based on their findings, students wrote a 200-300 word environmental scan and needs assessment, framed as if advising an international organization interested in developing a multilingual app for Gwangju's cultural scene. Reports were evaluated on clarity, evidence use, and feasibility of recommendations.
Scaffolding Modules
Two follow-up modules guided students through analytic and civic reasoning processes:
Module 16: Pattern Recognition
Students reviewed their field notes and categorized observations as "helpful features," "neutral aspects," or "barriers to accessibility." They then identified the most common patterns across categories, developing skills in data synthesis and pattern identification.
Module 17: Fact vs. Interpretation
Students practiced distinguishing factual observation ("The museum had Korean-only exhibition labels") from interpretation ("This excludes international visitors from understanding artwork context"). This meta-cognitive exercise scaffolded analytical thinking, helping students move from description to consequence to structural analysis.
4.4 Analytical Framework
Analysis focused on three dimensions of capacity development, each operationalized through specific indicators observable in student texts.
Recognition: Perceiving the Global in the Local
Did students perceive globalization and diversity they had not previously noticed? Indicators included: explicit mentions of observing international visitors, language suggesting discovery or surprise ("I realized," "I didn't know"), expressions of empathy for foreign visitors' difficulties, and recognition of linguistic barriers as exclusionary rather than merely inconvenient.
Analysis: From Description to Structural Thinking
Did students move beyond description to interpretation? Three progressive levels were coded:
Level 1 (Description): Lists observations without explaining significance ("There was no English")
Level 2 (Consequence): Connects observations to impacts ("Lack of English makes it difficult for visitors to understand")
Level 3 (Structural): Explains why barriers exist through institutional or systemic reasoning ("Museums prioritize Korean content because they assume domestic audiences")
Additional indicators included identifying specific stakeholders, recognizing resource constraints, and understanding temporal or information hierarchies.
Civic Imagination: Positioning as Capable Contributors
Did students position themselves as civic actors capable of proposing solutions? Indicators included: adopting consultant voice, providing specific (vs. vague) recommendations, demonstrating realistic thinking about feasibility and constraints, proposing institutional partnerships, and using evidence from fieldwork to support recommendations.
4.5 Data Collection and Analysis
The primary data source consisted of 66 homework submissions (after removing duplicates) collected via Google Form. Each submission included online search documentation, field notes from site visits, and a 200-300 word consultant report.
Analysis followed qualitative content analysis procedures (Mayring, 2014; Schreier, 2012). I developed a codebook based on the analytical framework, creating codes for each capacity dimension. Working systematically through all 66 consultant reports, I marked presence/absence of each code and extracted representative quotes. The coding process involved multiple passes to ensure consistency and allow for inductive refinement as emergent patterns revealed nuances not captured in the initial deductive framework.
Due to resource constraints, analysis was conducted using spreadsheet software (Google Sheets) rather than dedicated qualitative analysis software. Each row represented one student; columns captured codes with corresponding quotes. While less sophisticated than QDA software, this method allowed systematic coding and frequency counting.
4.6 Positionality and Limitations
As both course instructor and researcher, I occupy a dual role that shapes data interpretation. This position offers advantages—intimate knowledge of pedagogical context, ability to interpret student work with awareness of classroom dynamics—but also creates potential biases. Students might write what they perceive I want to see; I might overestimate learning due to investment in the pedagogy's success.
To mitigate these concerns, I employed several strategies: analyzing all submissions rather than selecting exemplars, reporting both successful and unsuccessful learning outcomes, presenting thick description with extensive quotations allowing reader assessment, and acknowledging when interpretations remain uncertain. My goal is not to "prove" the pedagogy works uniformly but to understand what students learned, acknowledging complexity and variation.
Additional limitations include: single coder without inter-rater reliability checks, lack of control group for comparison, single observation point limiting longitudinal perspective, and in-class materials (Modules 16-17) not digitized for systematic analysis. These constraints mean findings represent my interpretations of student texts at one moment in time, not validated longitudinal claims about transformative learning.
Despite these limitations, the methodology provides credible evidence that localized fieldwork, when structured through role-play and analytical scaffolding, develops students' capacity to perceive and analyze globalization within their familiar civic environment. The thick description and frequency reporting in the findings section allow readers to assess whether interpretations are warranted by evidence.
4.7 Ethical Considerations
In presenting findings, I use student pseudonyms to protect anonymity, and report aggregate patterns alongside individual examples to avoid overreliance on particularly articulate students.
5. Findings
The analysis of 61 student consultant reports reveals that the localized fieldwork assignment developed three interrelated capacities: recognition (perceiving globalization in the local), analysis (understanding structures of accessibility), and civic imagination (proposing solutions). Each capacity is examined below with quantitative patterns and illustrative examples.
5.1 Recognition: Perceiving the Global in the Local
The fieldwork assignment prompted students to adopt the perspective of foreign visitors searching for cultural information in Gwangju. This structured defamiliarization enabled students to perceive international presence and linguistic barriers they had previously overlooked.
Discovering International Presence
Nearly three-quarters of students (78%, n=48) explicitly mentioned observing or considering international visitors in Gwangju. Prior to the assignment, many students appeared to conceptualize Gwangju as primarily "regional" or "domestic." The fieldwork revealed otherwise:
"I didn't know tourists came to [Gwangju Museum of Art]... I could see foreigners having a hard time finding their way." (Student 2)
"During the holiday, I also noticed foreign visitors coming in family groups, which I had not seen on previous visits." (Student 15)
"I saw a group of foreign visitors. From what I observed, they seemed to enjoy the exhibitions without much difficulty." (Student 61, Gwangju National Museum)
This recognition extended beyond merely "seeing" foreigners to understanding who visits Gwangju and why accessibility matters:
"I searched online for the number of foreigners living in Gwangju, and found that they were living in the order of Vietnam, China, and Uzbek... most of them may not be familiar with the environment translated into English." (Student 32)
Students discovered that Gwangju hosts not only tourists but also international students, migrant workers, and business travelers—populations whose presence makes multilingual accessibility a practical necessity rather than theoretical concern.
Recognizing Previously Invisible Barriers
More than one-third of students (41%, n=25) used language indicating they had become aware of barriers they had not previously noticed. The assignment made visible what had been invisible:
"If I were a non-Korean, I thought it would have been difficult to locate or grasp information." (Student 8)
"I realized that there were many parts that were more difficult to understand intuitively than I thought... I wondered whether foreign visitors who spoke other languages would be able to fully understand the contents of the exhibition." (Student 13)
"I never thought about how difficult it would be for tourists... As a Korean speaker, I take for granted [access to information]." (Student 4)
This recognition was not merely intellectual but often carried emotional weight. Students expressed surprise (24%, n=15), disappointment, and even embarrassment:
"I felt embarrassed that my city doesn't accommodate international visitors." (Student 8)
Notably, surprise was less common than empathy (95%, n=58), suggesting students approached the assignment analytically—carefully observing and documenting—rather than simply reacting emotionally. The pedagogical structure (search → visit → report) scaffolded systematic observation over spontaneous reaction.
Defamiliarization Through Role-Play
The role-play strategy—"imagine you are a foreign visitor"—created the cognitive distance necessary for critical perception. By temporarily "becoming" tourists searching in English, Chinese, or Japanese, students experienced their city differently:
"When I searched in Vietnamese, only unofficial websites appeared, and access was limited. On Instagram, searching in Vietnamese showed only one post, and no posts appeared in Mongolian." (Student 9)
"Even if people use the website in their own language, Korean words are sometimes mixed in... Japanese and Chinese people who don't like English will have problems." (Student 27)
This perspective-taking was not abstract. Students documented specific moments of exclusion: untranslated posters, Korean-only reservation pages, staff unable to communicate beyond basic English. The assignment transformed what might have seemed like "normal" monolingual signage into recognized barriers to participation.
5.2 Analysis: From Description to Structural Thinking
Recognition alone—"there's no English"—does not constitute analysis. The modular scaffolding (M16: patterns; M17: fact vs. interpretation) supported students' progression from observation to consequence to structural explanation.
Three Levels of Analytical Sophistication
Level 1: Description Only (20%, n=12)
A small minority remained at the descriptive level, listing observations without interpreting significance:
"There were many things only in Korean and English, so it was difficult to read and understand the explanations." (Student 2)
"Most signs and guides were only in Korean and English." (Student 22)
These responses catalogued barriers but did not explain why barriers exist or what effects they produce beyond generic "difficulty."
Level 2: Identifying Consequences (80%, n=49)
The majority of students progressed to identifying consequences—connecting observations to impacts on visitor experience:
"non-Korean speakers may find it challenging to navigate and fully appreciate the exhibitions." (Student 4)
"Foreign visitors often relied on translation apps, which reduced engagement and understanding of local culture." (Student 6)
"I was able to visually appreciate the work, but it was almost impossible to understand in-depth content, such as the artist's intention or the background of the work." (Student 10)
These students articulated a crucial insight: foreigners can physically navigate cultural spaces but cannot intellectually or emotionally engage without linguistic access to context, interpretation, and deeper meaning.
Student 60 developed this analysis most fully:
"The current system welcomes foreign visitors to Korea's rich cultural heritage while simultaneously guiding them to experience it only on a superficial level. They are able to see history with their eyes, but they are effectively deprived of the opportunity to fully understand its context."
Level 3: Structural Analysis (46%, n=28)
Nearly half reached the most sophisticated analytical level: explaining why barriers exist through systemic or institutional reasoning.
Identifying institutional priorities:
"Museums lack English information because they prioritize Korean domestic tourists." (Student 6)
"some of these websites seem to focus more on merely providing a 'language switch button' rather than ensuring high-quality translated content, resulting in poor practical language accessibility." (Student 7)
Recognizing resource constraints:
"the exhibition information was primarily in Korean—likely a cost-saving measure—given that Gwangju, unlike other regions, has relatively few foreign tourists." (Student 26)
Understanding systemic patterns:
"when I changed it to Korean, I saw much more diverse categories and details. As a result, non-Korean visitors are exposed to relatively little information compared to Korean speakers." (Student 10)
These students moved beyond blame ("the museum should translate everything") to structural understanding: institutions allocate resources based on perceived audiences; websites prioritize visual design over functional translation; Korean-language content receives more investment because it serves the majority population.
Stakeholder Identification
All students (100%, n=61) identified specific actors responsible for or capable of addressing accessibility issues. They named museums, city government, tourism organizations, universities, international centers, and local businesses. This stakeholder awareness indicates students understood cultural accessibility as a civic infrastructure issue requiring coordination among multiple institutions, not simply a translation problem solvable by individual museums.
The most frequently mentioned stakeholders were:
Asia Culture Center (ACC) (68%)
Gwangju City Government / Tourism Department (45%)
Gwangju Cultural Foundation (23%)
Gwangju Museum of Art (18%)
Local universities (12%)
Gwangju International Center (8%)
Student 47 exemplified this systems-level thinking by proposing multi-institutional collaboration:
"Collaboration with institutions like the ACC and Gwangju Museum of Art would ensure accuracy and sustainability. Partner with ACC and expand to other Gwangju cultural institutions to build an integrated platform."
Similarly, Student 22 demonstrated understanding of the need for governmental coordination:
"Partnering with the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju City Government, and local universities could ensure accurate translation and continuous updates. Such collaboration would enhance Gwangju's global image as an inclusive cultural city."
These responses show students recognized that sustainable multilingual access requires institutional partnerships spanning cultural organizations, municipal authorities, and educational institutions—not ad-hoc solutions by individual venues.
5.3 Civic Imagination: Positioning as Capable Contributors
The consultant role-play positioned students not as language learners but as experts conducting needs assessments. This framing had striking effects: every single student (100%, n=61) adopted a professional consultant voice, and the overwhelming majority (96%, n=59) recommended developing the multilingual app.
Universal Adoption of Consultant Voice
Without exception, students wrote in a consultant register:
"As a research consultant for an international organization, I conducted an environmental scan..." (Student 3)
"Based on these findings, I recommend developing a multilingual cultural information app..." (Student 6)
"This report summarizes findings from both online research and a field visit..." (Student 11)
Students used professional discourse markers: "environmental scan," "needs assessment," "evidence-based recommendations," "strategic partnerships." They organized reports with clear sections (Online Research / On-Site Observation / Analysis / Recommendations) and adopted an authoritative tone. This universal adoption suggests the role-play successfully authorized student expertise—they were not writing "as students" but "as consultants" advising an international organization.
Specific, Actionable Recommendations
Most students (85%, n=52) provided concrete, actionable recommendations rather than generic suggestions:
Vague (21%):
"it would be good if the explanations needed to navigate the place were written in more diverse languages." (Student 2)
Specific (79%):
"develop a mobile app or QR code-based multilingual guide system. Features should include artwork descriptions, exhibition maps, and audio guides, with English as the primary language, and optional Chinese or Japanese." (Student 4)
"place QR codes next to each artwork, which would direct visitors to a mobile-friendly webpage with a full description in English. To manage the translations, the museum could collaborate with the English departments of local universities like Chonnam National University, offering students valuable experience." (Student 10)
"introduce an AI chatbot function that allows visitors to ask questions and receive instant answers in multiple languages." (Student 14)
Specific recommendations named technologies (QR codes, mobile apps, AI chatbots), identified content types (artwork descriptions, maps, event calendars), specified languages prioritized, and proposed implementation strategies.
Realistic Thinking About Feasibility
Just over three-quarters of students (78%, n=48) demonstrated awareness of constraints and feasibility:
"A much simpler and more effective solution would be to place QR codes next to each artwork... To manage the translations, the museum could collaborate with the English departments of local universities... with a minimal budget, the museum can become a much more welcoming and enriching place." (Student 10)
"Language barriers can be sufficiently addressed with translation tools or staff assistance. Therefore, the app should be strategically managed to attract foreign tourists, focusing on features that allow easy reservations and offer booking benefits." (Student 26)
Students balanced idealism (what should exist) with realism (what can feasibly be implemented). They recognized budget constraints, proposed cost-effective solutions (university partnerships, volunteer programs), and acknowledged that comprehensive multilingual infrastructure may not be immediately achievable but incremental improvements are possible.
Partnership-Oriented Solutions
The overwhelming majority (100%, n=61) proposed institutional collaborations:
"Partnering with institutions like the ACC and the Gwangju Cultural Foundation would ensure content accuracy and broaden outreach." (Student 11)
"Collaboration with the Gwangju Tourism Organization and the ACC could ensure reliable content. International students could help with translation and usability testing. Local artists and event organizers might share updates and events." (Student 8)
"through cooperation with the Gwangju Tourism Foundation and local universities, continuous content update and technical maintenance can be guaranteed." (Student 32)
Students understood that sustainable solutions require partnerships among cultural institutions, government agencies, universities, and community organizations. This partnership thinking demonstrates sophisticated civic understanding: solutions to public problems require coordination, not individual action.
Evidence-Based Argumentation
Nearly all students (95%, n=58) supported recommendations with specific observations from fieldwork:
"I saw a foreign visitor struggling to understand the text. Although English translations were partly available, the museum did not provide any official multilingual guide service." (Student 14)
"Most of the sellers of the flea market were Koreans, and the payment method and price information were only displayed in Korean, so it seemed difficult for foreign visitors to use it." (Student 49)
Students cited quantitative observations (2 of 10 exhibition rooms had English), behavioral observations (visitors using translation apps, asking staff for help), and system-level observations (Korean websites updated more frequently than English versions). This evidence-based reasoning transformed personal opinion into professional assessment.
5.4 Summary: Three Developed Capacities
The data reveal clear capacity development across the three dimensions:
Recognition - Students' ability to perceive globalization and diversity that was already present but previously invisible to them. This includes noticing international visitors in Gwangju, recognizing linguistic barriers they'd overlooked, and understanding their city as a translocal space.
Analysis - Students' ability to move beyond simple description to interpret why things are the way they are. This progresses through three levels:
Level 1: Description only ("There's no English")
Level 2: Identifying consequences ("This makes it hard for visitors")
Level 3: Structural thinking ("This happens because institutions prioritize Korean audiences and face resource constraints")
Civic Imagination - Students' ability to position themselves as capable civic actors who can propose evidence-based solutions. This includes adopting professional consultant voice, making specific actionable recommendations, thinking realistically about feasibility/constraints, and proposing institutional partnerships.
These three capacities work together: Students first learn to see what was invisible (recognition), then learn to understand why it exists (analysis), then learn to act as professionals who can propose solutions (civic imagination).
The localized fieldwork assignment successfully developed students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within Gwangju. Through structured defamiliarization and scaffolded analysis, students learned to see their city as a translocal space, understand the structural mechanisms of linguistic exclusion, and imagine themselves as capable contributors to civic solutions. This represents not merely language learning but the development of globalization literacy—the capacity to read one's environment for global-local connections and to act as informed civic participants in an internationalized city.
6. Discussion
This study examined how localized ESP fieldwork develops students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within their own civic environment. The findings reveal that structured observation in Gwangju—a city students perceive as "regional" rather than "global"—successfully cultivated three interrelated capacities: recognition (perceiving international presence and linguistic barriers), analysis (understanding structures of accessibility), and civic imagination (proposing evidence-based solutions). This section interprets these findings, explaining the pedagogical mechanisms that enabled this learning, articulating the Civic ESP framework, and considering implications for ESP curriculum design.
6.1 How the Pedagogy Works: Defamiliarization Plus Scaffolding
The most striking finding is that 100% of students successfully adopted a consultant voice, and 95% demonstrated empathy for foreign visitors—outcomes suggesting the role-play strategy fundamentally shifted students' perspective on their familiar environment. This pedagogical mechanism operates through what Shklovsky (1917) termed ostranenie, or defamiliarization: making the habitual strange in order to perceive it anew.
By instructing students to "imagine you are a foreign visitor looking for art and culture events in Gwangju," the assignment created cognitive distance from their everyday experience. Students who routinely navigate Gwangju in Korean suddenly confronted the city as linguistically opaque. Student 8 wrote: "If I were a non-Korean, I thought it would have been difficult to locate or grasp information." Student 13 reflected: "I realized that there were many parts that were more difficult to understand intuitively than I thought." These responses mark perceptual shifts—something previously unremarkable (Korean-only signage) becomes noteworthy.
This aligns with Mason's (2002) pedagogy of noticing: the assignment scaffolded observation by requiring students to document specific barriers before interpreting their significance. The role-play frame ensured they looked for what was missing, not merely what was present.
However, defamiliarization alone does not guarantee analytical depth. The pedagogical design pushed students beyond observation through two mechanisms. First, the consultant framing positioned students as experts conducting needs assessments, authorizing analytical rather than merely expressive discourse. Second, the modular scaffolding (M16: pattern identification; M17: distinguishing fact from interpretation) structured analytical progression. The result: 46% of students reached structural analysis—explaining not just what barriers exist but why.
Student 26 reasoned: "the exhibition information was primarily in Korean—likely a cost-saving measure—given that Gwangju, unlike other regions, has relatively few foreign tourists." This demonstrates systemic understanding: institutions allocate resources based on perceived audiences. Student 7 went further: "some of these websites seem to focus more on merely providing a 'language switch button' rather than ensuring high-quality translated content"—distinguishing performative from functional multilingualism.
The combination of defamiliarization and scaffolding produced not just awareness but systemic perception—understanding how, why, and with what consequences linguistic exclusion operates.
6.2 Civic ESP: A Pedagogical Framework
The study's findings provide empirical support for what we term Civic ESP—a pedagogical approach that extends beyond traditional ESP (focused on professional skills) and critical ESP (focused on interrogating power) to emphasize civic contribution through professional English use.
Defining Civic ESP
Civic ESP combines three elements:
Localized inquiry: Students investigate authentic civic issues in their home environments rather than studying abstract or distant contexts
Professional role-play: Students adopt professional identities (consultants, policy advisors, researchers) that authorize expertise and analytical stance
Civic tasks: Students produce work that addresses community needs—needs assessments, policy recommendations, public proposals—using professional genres for authentic civic purposes
Traditional ESP focuses on preparing students for workplace communication: writing business emails, delivering presentations, participating in meetings. Success is measured by students' ability to perform in target discourse communities. Critical ESP adds interrogation of power: whose voices are centered? Whose interests are served? Success includes students' ability to recognize and articulate inequities in professional discourse.
Civic ESP adds a constructive dimension: students use professional English to analyze civic problems and propose solutions. The finding that 100% of students adopted consultant voice and 100% proposed institutional partnerships demonstrates that undergraduate ESP learners, when positioned as consultants conducting needs assessments, can produce sophisticated policy recommendations grounded in evidence and attentive to stakeholders, resources, and feasibility.
Why "Civic" Matters for Welfare Administration Students
This civic dimension has particular significance for the study's participants—future social workers, community organizers, and welfare administrators. These students will design programs, allocate resources, and provide services in increasingly diverse communities. Their professional responsibilities are inherently civic: they must recognize who is included or excluded by current systems, understand how linguistic barriers affect access to services, and advocate for policies that promote equity.
The assignment provided early professional socialization: students practiced the analytical and communicative work of needs assessment, evidence-based recommendation, and stakeholder engagement. By framing their ESP learning as civic contribution rather than mere language acquisition, the pedagogy positions English not as a skill divorced from disciplinary identity but as a tool for professional and civic action.
Student 10's recommendation exemplifies this integration:
"place QR codes next to each artwork, which would direct visitors to a mobile-friendly webpage with a full description in English. To manage the translations, the museum could collaborate with the English departments of local universities like Chonnam National University, offering students valuable experience."
This student is thinking as a welfare professional would: identifying a problem (inaccessible artwork information), proposing a feasible solution (QR codes), considering resource constraints (translation costs), and imagining partnerships (university collaboration) that benefit multiple stakeholders. The consultant role-play authorized this kind of civic problem-solving thinking within an ESP course.
Key Principles of Civic ESP Pedagogy
Based on the study's findings, I propose the following principles for Civic ESP curriculum design:
Principle 1: Ground inquiry in students' actual civic environments
Rather than studying distant or hypothetical contexts, students investigate accessibility, inclusion, and diversity in the spaces they inhabit. This makes globalization perception concrete rather than abstract.
Principle 2: Use professional role-play to authorize student expertise
Positioning students as consultants, researchers, or policy advisors—not as language learners reporting to teachers—creates the conditions for analytical thinking and evidence-based argumentation.
Principle 3: Structure defamiliarization through perspective-taking
Role-play as foreign visitors, international students, or other marginalized populations creates cognitive distance necessary for critical perception without requiring physical relocation.
Principle 4: Scaffold progression from observation to structural analysis
Explicit instruction in pattern recognition and fact-vs-interpretation distinction helps students move beyond description to systemic understanding.
Principle 5: Frame tasks as authentic civic contributions
Students should produce work that could inform actual policy decisions—needs assessments, environmental scans, recommendations—using professional genres for real-world purposes.
Principle 6: Emphasize evidence-based argumentation and stakeholder awareness
Require students to support recommendations with fieldwork observations and identify institutional actors capable of implementing solutions.
6.3 Theoretical Contribution: Globalization Awareness as Perceptual Capacity
The finding that 78% of students recognized international presence in Gwangju challenges assumptions about "regional" cities as peripheral to globalization. Students discovered their city is not "less global" than Seoul or Busan but rather differently global—a finding that resonates with Massey's (1994) notion of a "global sense of place."
Discovering the Translocal
Gwangju participates in multiple global flows: international students in universities, migrant workers in industries, cultural tourists at festivals and museums, digital visitors accessing online content. Students documented these flows empirically. Student 32 researched: "foreigners living in Gwangju... in the order of Vietnam, China, and Uzbek." Student 14 observed: "I saw a foreign visitor struggling to understand the text." Student 9 noted: "speakers of less common languages, such as Mongolian, have difficulty accessing relevant content."
These observations reveal Gwangju as a translocal space (Appadurai, 1996): a node in global networks of education, labor, tourism, and culture. The city's international presence is not accidental but structural—produced by university internationalization policies, cultural tourism strategies, and labor migration patterns. Yet this presence remains linguistically unmarked: infrastructure assumes Korean monolingualism despite demographic diversity.
The assignment challenged students' mental geography. Many initially conceptualized Gwangju as "regional" (contrasted with "global cities" like Seoul) and therefore assumed international accessibility was less relevant. The fieldwork disrupted this binary: students discovered their city already participates in global cultural circuits, even though linguistic infrastructure has not adapted to this reality.
From Content Knowledge to Perceptual Capacity
This reframing has theoretical significance. The study demonstrates that globalization awareness is not merely content knowledge (learning facts about migration, trade, cultural exchange) but a learned perceptual ability—the capacity to notice international presence, recognize linguistic hierarchies, and interpret structures of inclusion and exclusion in everyday environments.
As Rizvi and Lingard (2009) argue, globalization literacy requires recognizing how one's community participates in transnational flows, not viewing globalization as happening "elsewhere." For students in regional cities, this perceptual shift is especially important: they must see themselves as inhabiting spaces shaped by—and contributing to—global processes, even when surrounded by apparent linguistic homogeneity.
This study contributes the concept of translocal awareness: the capacity to perceive global-local entanglements in familiar environments. Unlike study abroad programs that develop intercultural awareness through immersion in unfamiliar contexts, localized fieldwork develops awareness through defamiliarized observation of the familiar. This approach has particular value in ESP contexts where students cannot access international travel, will work in regional settings, or need to understand how global forces shape local professional practice.
6.4 Pedagogical Implications and Transferability
While the findings demonstrate clear pedagogical success, several considerations emerge for instructors adapting this model to other contexts.
Transferability Across Contexts
The core mechanism—defamiliarization through role-play, combined with structured observation and professional genre—remains constant across adaptations. However, the specific civic issues investigated should reflect local needs and disciplinary relevance:
Business ESP: Students could investigate workplace accessibility for international employees, multilingual customer service, or corporate social responsibility initiatives
Medical ESP: Students could assess healthcare accessibility for non-native speakers, evaluate patient education materials, or propose interpretation services
Engineering ESP: Students could examine technical documentation accessibility, international collaboration challenges, or technology transfer barriers
Tourism/Hospitality ESP: Students could evaluate tourist information systems, assess hotel/restaurant multilingual services, or propose destination marketing strategies
The assignment structure (online research → site visit → needs assessment report) adapts readily to these contexts while maintaining the pedagogical principles: localized inquiry, professional role-play, civic contribution, evidence-based argumentation.
The Importance of Scaffolding
The modular sequence (M16: patterns; M17: fact vs. interpretation) proved essential for moving students beyond description. The data show that 80% identified consequences (Level 2), but only 46% reached structural thinking (Level 3). This suggests that while most students benefited from scaffolding, some needed additional support.
Future iterations might enhance scaffolding by:
Providing model analyses showing progression from description to structural thinking
Conducting class discussions that practice causal reasoning ("Why might institutions prioritize Korean content?")
Requiring students to identify at least one structural explanation in their reports
Creating peer review exercises where students evaluate each other's analytical depth
The 21% who provided vague recommendations might have benefited from explicit instruction in policy recommendation conventions: identifying stakeholders, specifying actions, considering feasibility, proposing partnerships. While the assignment prompt provided some genre guidance, more explicit modeling could support weaker students.
Assessment Considerations
The study highlights a tension in ESP assessment: evaluating language versus content. Students' consultant reports varied significantly in English fluency, grammatical accuracy, and vocabulary sophistication—but also in analytical depth, civic imagination, and evidence use.
Traditional ESP assessment privileges linguistic accuracy. However, the pedagogical goal—developing globalization awareness and civic capacity—requires valuing analytical and civic growth alongside language development. Consider two student responses:
Student A: "Museums in Gwangju need to provide more information in English and other languages for foreign visitors."
Student B: "Museums prioritize Korean content because most visitors are domestic. However, Gwangju's international student population create demand for multilingual access. University partnerships could provide cost-effective translation service."
While Student A writes with fewer grammatical errors, Student B demonstrates structural analysis (institutional priorities), stakeholder awareness (university partnerships), and realistic thinking (cost-effectiveness)—evidence of deeper learning despite less polished English.
Assessment rubrics should explicitly value:
Recognition: Evidence of perceiving previously invisible phenomena
Analysis: Progression from description to consequence to structural explanation
Civic imagination: Specific, feasible, partnership-oriented recommendations
Evidence use: Grounding claims in fieldwork observations
Professional voice: Adopting consultant register and genre conventions
This requires ESP instructors to develop content expertise (understanding accessibility issues, language policy, civic engagement) alongside linguistic expertise—a demanding but necessary evolution of the field.
Limitations and Considerations
Several limitations warrant acknowledgment. Students observed as Korean speakers pretending to be foreigners, not as actual foreigners experiencing real barriers. Their empathy, while genuine, remains vicarious. Student 19 acknowledged this: "As a Korean observer researching the accessibility of Gwangju's cultural information for foreigners, I found that the Asia Culture Center is one of the most foreigner-friendly spaces in the city." The phrase "as a Korean observer" marks awareness of positional difference.
Future iterations might partner with international students or foreign residents as co-researchers or informants. Students could interview international community members, conduct usability testing with non-Korean speakers, or collaborate with international student organizations. This would add an experiential dimension to the current observational design, potentially deepening both empathy and analytical sophistication.
Additionally, the study documents immediate learning (capacities demonstrated in homework assignments) but cannot assess durability or transfer. Longitudinal research could follow students beyond course completion to examine whether perceptual capacities persist, whether students apply globalization awareness in later coursework or professional practice, and whether the assignment produces transformative learning or merely situational understanding confined to the assignment context.
6.5 Conclusion: ESP as Perceptual Pedagogy
This study challenges ESP to expand its scope beyond mastering genres and workplace discourse. ESP can also develop professional vision: the capacity to observe, interpret, and analyze the environments where language matters.
For welfare administration students in Gwangju, professional vision means learning to see their city as a site of linguistic accessibility and exclusion, recognizing international residents as future clients, and understanding that translation decisions are civic justice issues. Through pedagogical defamiliarization and scaffolded analysis, students learned to see their city as a translocal space, understand structural mechanisms of linguistic exclusion, and imagine themselves as capable contributors to civic solutions.
The findings suggest that when students learn how to look differently at their home environments, they discover the global in the local. And in that discovery, they begin to imagine themselves not as peripheral actors but as civic professionals with the capacity to shape more inclusive communities. This is what Civic ESP offers: a pedagogy that positions English not as a neutral skill but as a tool for perceiving, analyzing, and transforming the civic environments students will serve throughout their professional lives.
7. Conclusion
This study set out to answer the question: How does localized ESP fieldwork develop students' capacity to perceive globalization and diversity within their own civic environment? The evidence shows that students' capacity was most powerfully developed through structured defamiliarization and civic inquiry, enacted via role-plays of foreign visitors and consultants engaging with their familiar surroundings.
Through a fieldwork assignment investigating cultural accessibility in Gwangju, sixty-six welfare administration students learned to see their home city differently. By temporarily adopting the perspective of non-Korean speakers, they discovered international presence they had overlooked, recognized linguistic barriers they had previously ignored, and understood their regional city as a translocal space—not peripheral to globalization but differently connected to global flows of students, workers, tourists, and cultural exchange.
The study demonstrates that localized fieldwork develops three interrelated capacities. First, recognition: 78% of students explicitly noted international visitors in Gwangju, and 41% expressed surprise at barriers they had not previously noticed. The assignment made visible what familiarity had rendered invisible. Second, analysis: 80% of students moved beyond description to identify consequences of linguistic exclusion, and 46% reached structural thinking—explaining why barriers exist through institutional priorities and resource constraints. Third, civic imagination: 100% adopted professional consultant voice, 85% provided specific actionable recommendations, and 100% proposed institutional partnerships. Students positioned themselves not as language learners but as civic actors capable of evidence-based policy proposals.
These findings carry significance for ESP pedagogy, particularly in regional contexts where students cannot access study abroad but will work in fields requiring globalization awareness. The study introduces Civic ESP as a pedagogical framework that positions localized fieldwork as civic inquiry. Unlike traditional ESP (focused on workplace skills) or critical ESP (focused on interrogating power), Civic ESP emphasizes constructive civic contribution: students use professional English to analyze community problems and propose solutions. The consultant role-play authorizes this expertise, transforming ESP from skills training into professional vision development.
The pedagogical mechanism—pedagogical defamiliarization—offers a scalable alternative to study abroad for developing intercultural awareness. By creating cognitive distance through role-play rather than physical relocation, the approach makes globalization perception accessible to students in linguistically homogeneous regions. The combination of defamiliarization (making the familiar strange) and scaffolding (guiding analytical progression through pattern recognition and fact-vs-interpretation exercises) produces not merely awareness but systemic understanding.
The study also contributes the concept of translocal awareness: the capacity to perceive global-local entanglements in familiar environments. Students learned that their regional city participates in global cultural circuits, hosts international populations, and faces accessibility challenges common across contexts experiencing internationalization without corresponding linguistic infrastructure adaptation. This perceptual shift challenges deficit narratives positioning regional cities as "less global" and repositions students as professionals capable of addressing globalization challenges in their home communities.
For ESP curriculum design, the study suggests several principles: ground inquiry in students' actual civic environments, use professional role-play to authorize expertise, structure defamiliarization through perspective-taking, scaffold progression from observation to structural analysis, frame tasks as authentic civic contributions, and emphasize evidence-based argumentation with stakeholder awareness. These principles transfer across disciplinary contexts—business students investigating workplace accessibility, medical students assessing healthcare language services, engineering students examining technical documentation—while maintaining the core mechanism of localized civic inquiry.
Limitations warrant acknowledgment. Students observed as Korean speakers role-playing foreigners rather than experiencing barriers directly. The study documents immediate learning but cannot assess whether capacities persist beyond the course. Future research should examine longitudinal outcomes, test the model across diverse contexts, incorporate partnerships with international community members, and establish whether Civic ESP produces transformative learning or situational understanding.
Yet the core insight remains: globalization awareness is not merely content knowledge but a learned perceptual ability. Students do not simply learn facts about globalization; they learn to see differently—to perceive international presence, linguistic hierarchies, and structural exclusion in environments they previously experienced as linguistically homogeneous. This perceptual capacity, developed through structured fieldwork, constitutes globalization literacy in practice.
The global, students discovered, was always there. The city wasn't changed by the pedagogy—what changed was students' capacity to see. Through this pedagogy they came to notice patterns they had taken for granted, to analyze how and why these patterns exist, and to imagine civic responses. That capacity—to perceive diversity, to analyze structures of access, to imagine solutions—is what globalization awareness looks like in practice.
In challenging ESP to expand beyond communicative competence toward perceptual capacity, this study offers a vision of English language education as civic preparation. When students learn how to look differently at their home environments, they discover the global in the local. And in that discovery, they become better able to act as responsible, globally-aware civic actors—professionals who can perceive, analyze, and contribute to more inclusive communities. This is the promise of Civic ESP: positioning English not as an abstract skill but as a tool for civic engagement in an increasingly mobile, multilingual world.
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