As many students worldwide receive second language (L2) English private tutoring (EPT) that shadows school curricula, examining student perceptions of it is essential to understanding their L2 learning. From the L2 Motivational Self perspective, students' "ideal L2 self," "ought-to L2 self" and "L2 learning experience" are linked to student enjoyment of EPT. This study explores these links via analysis of survey responses of 2,216 Secondary Six (Grade 12) students who attended a company's L2 EPT lectures in Hong Kong. Most of these students (80%) enjoyed EPT. They were more likely to enjoy EPT if they perceived more financial resources in their families, attended schools taught in Chinese (students' first language), had internalized instrumental goals, liked English, were not influenced by advertisements to attend EPT, attended face-to-face tutoring (rather than video tutoring), had a specific tutor, or liked their EPT tutor more than their English teacher. This study offers theoretical implications and directions for further research in EPT and L2 motivation. Copyright © 2023 SAGE Publications.

Previous studies on English private tutoring (EPT) have mainly focused on students and tutors who directly engaged in it. However, as EPT is a paid service and it is usually provided outside of school, parents are also important stakeholders of EPT, but EPT research has so far focused less on them. This chapter examines Chinese parents’ agency in their children’s English learning in EPT. Fourteen parents from Hong Kong and 11 from Nanchang participated in two studies respectively. These two studies adopted similar research methods by collecting data through semi-structured interviews which, from an ecological perspective, provide further evidence of the complex nature of parents’ agency in their children’s learning. Although all the parents in the two studies supported their children to attend EPT programmes, they enacted their agency differently, depending on the affordances and constraints they perceived in the situated contexts. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Access to private tutoring, or shadow education, significantly contributes to the increasing disparities in the attainment of language learners from different family backgrounds worldwide. In ESL/EFL contexts, many students subscribe to English private tutoring (EPT) in hopes of getting good English results in high-stakes examinations to secure a university place. This longitudinal narrative inquiry investigates the experiences of a financially disadvantaged student who managed to pay the tuition to subscribe to an EPT class in Hong Kong. Multiple sources of data collected throughout the year from six rounds of in-depth interviews with the student; three reflective essays; classroom observations and interviews with the student's tutor, schoolteacher and parent yielded thick description of the student's narrative. Informed by Norton Pierce's notion of investment, the analysis reveals how the participant invested in EPT to overcome existing educational inequalities. The tutorial class was perceived by the student as a place to expand her social network with students from prestigious schools, with a hope to ultimately gain the economic capital for escaping poverty. This study has implications regarding the effects of inequalities of educational opportunities in affluent societies. It indicates the need for further research on language learners' experiences in the shadow education context. Copyright ©Routledge.