This qualitative case study explored how the lesson planning experience of eight EFL preservice teachers in a content class on critical literacy was intricately related not only to their reconceptualization of lesson preparation and teacher work, but also to the development of their pedagogical competence. Data were collected from multiple reflection papers, a one-time interview, the final lesson plan, and the researcher’s reflection log, and were qualitatively analyzed. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers’ engagement with lesson preparation promoted a renewed understanding of lesson planning as a complex and dynamic process requiring coherent pedagogical reasoning on the part of a teacher, building on an initial conception of technical knowledge alone. Devising a lesson plan further served to enrich their theoretical understanding of critical literacy and improve their abilities as critical readers. In addition, throughout the lesson planning phase, the preservice teachers engaged in an active process of searching for effective ways to represent the content for students’ successful learning, which contributed to the development of their pedagogical content knowledge. The findings of this study highlight the importance of engaging preservice teachers in planning practice during their initial teacher education to enhance their professional knowledge base.

The study investigated effects of peer feedback used in business email writing classes for EFL college students. To this end, the 18 students were asked to fill out a questionnaire on feedback two times before and after the course and six students from three different English proficiency levels were interviewed to take a close look at what was happening in classes. The findings demonstrated they generally had positive perception on peer feedback, but providing and receiving feedback itself made no significant differences in perception of peer feedback. However, the results could imply that students’ perception was moving from teacher feedback toward peer feedback. With regard to types of feedback, feedback on the content was getting more frequent with students experiencing peer feedback whereas the students provided feedback about surface-level features in the first writing task, ‘introduction’ task. In revising the text, the numbers of the revision were almost same in each writing task, but the types of revision varied from task to task. In ‘introduction’ task, deletion was the most common, but in ‘invitation’ and ‘complaints’ tasks they used adding and rearranging types more to express the exact meaning.

Responding to the need of empirical research on the use of mobile phone applications (apps) for language learning in the current literature, the present study conducted a comparative study using a smartphone flashcard app and a traditional vocabulary learning tool, a paper-based flashcard, in order to determine if the new learning tool, flashcard app, presented effectiveness on learner development of vocabulary knowledge. Two college EFL classes in Korea were participated in this study. One EFL class of the experiment group (n=43) studied their target vocabulary using the smartphone flashcard app while the other EFL class of control group (n=40) studied the same vocabulary words on paper-based flashcards. The mixed research methods that combined both quantitative (e.g., a pre- and post-test, and a questionnaire) and qualitative approaches (e.g., a semi-structured interview) were employed. The results showed that the learners who used the flashcard app outperformed the learners who studied the paper-based flashcard in vocabulary growth. In addition, the learners showed an overall positive attitude and perception toward the use of the flashcard app for their learning. This study suggests that the flashcard app is useful to develop learners’ vocabulary knowledge and can be a new effective vocabulary learning tool in the classroom.

This study examines patterns of narrative discourse by intermediate- and advanced-level learners of English, focusing on their use of progressive. The study observes various examples of progressive occurrences to address how learners encode the background information by relating it to the functions of progressive. Analysis of L2 English narrative data by Korean ESL/EFL learners revealed that these learners use progressive to indicate various discourse functions, including scene-setting, description of an element, temporal framing, simultaneous action, and intensification. The more advanced group displayed a greater diversity in the use of progressive than the less advanced group, suggesting that the transition to advanced level of proficiency involves an increase in the range of functions of progressive use as well as an increase in the amount of progressive use. Following detailed analysis of the functions of the progressive, pedagogical implications are offered. The study argues that L2 curricular should incorporate activities that promote L2 narrative skill development, particularly how to use progressive for description in narration, which are critical for assessment purposes and for interaction with target language speakers.

Competency-based curriculum has been a world trend in educational reform, and 2015 national curriculum employed the competences in general guidelines and subject-specific areas. In line with the competency-based national curriculum, various research has been conducted on the alignment of the competences in general guidelines with those in subject curriculum, interconnectedness of competences among the components in the national curriculum, appropriateness of the unified content matrix format in each subject in terms of applicability of the competences, and degree of specified description of the competences. In fact, some aspects of the 2015 national curriculum has been criticized regarding the lack of respecting for the characteristics of individual subject. The purpose of this study is to draw implications for raising applicability of national curriculum into local schools through analyzing general guidelines and English curriculum in two countries, Finland and Singapore, both of which employed competency-based national curriculum. The results of this study draw three main implications based on the analysis of the curricular; classification and specification of competences, emphasis on how to teach with what to teach, and respect for subject-specific characteristics. Further research is provided for raising applicability of the curriculum to schools through more in-depth international curriculum analysis.

This study investigated the effects of a project-based digital storytelling program utilizing a video-editing platform with 124 college students in a General College English program. A web-based video-editing platform was employed to help the students create digital stories in small groups and thereby improve their language proficiency. In order to analyze the students’ perceptions of language improvement and learning attitudes towards the digital storytelling program, this study administrated a pre- and post- survey questionnaire, as well as a practice TOEIC Speaking test. For an in-depth research, the researcher observed the classes and interviewed the students about their experiences with the digital storytelling program. The t-test results showed that there was a statistically significant improvement in their speaking skills. The students perceived their linguistic skills were significantly improved for writing and reading, but not for speaking. Another gap was noted between the students’ perceptions of the language improvement and the reality of their improvement. The students showed positive attitudes towards collaboration, creativity, and the use of technology. The students enjoyed creating a digital story with the help of peers within a small group and with the instructor’s feedback. The pedagogical implications of the findings are proposed for a wider implementation of project-based digital storytelling program in the EFL context.