This paper describes a video exchange project between English classes in South Korea and in Japan. Korean and Japanese students worked in groups to make short videos in English which were then exchanged. After viewing their counterparts' videos, students e-mailed feedback to each other. This project was the third video exchange project between Korean and Japanese university students since 2001. However, it was the first time to try it with three universities together. Students from the different universities tried to compete with each other. It provided a better chance for students to improve their English. Most students expressed the importance of the video exchange project in developing their English proficiency and enabling them to use English in an international context. Many students agreed that the project was an educational, enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

College going students who are non-native speakers of English enrolled in English language programmes are not acquiring the needed academic writing skills. Many of these students do not have positive attitudes towards writing, thus forcing language instructors to look for ways of motivating students to write in order to improve writing skills. This action research project investigates the use of portfolio writing to improve writing ability among pre-university students. Research on the use of portfolio writing suggests that it is a useful way for developing interest in writing and for developing effective writing skills over a period of time. Portfolios support the best thinking in composition pedagogy in that it encourages process writing. Although the portfolio is considered a writing product, as a whole it is evidence of the students writing process. An important feature in using portfolios is that students are able to focus on their writing without constantly worrying about grades. Instructors have noticed that students make greater improvement in their writing when their focus is shifted from punitive feedback through letter grades to constructive feedback in the form of suggestions for further revision. This paper describes the use of writing portfolios as an effective means of teaching writing. The findings revealed that writing portfolios helped develop confidence in writing and decreased anxiety towards writing. (217 words)

This study investigates the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction by Malaysian Chinese ESL learners. It was conducted with the objective of finding out which of the two types of prepositions was more problematic to the L1 Chinese learners. The study also sought to investigate the effect of age and proficiency levels in English on the acquisition of the English prepositions of location and direction by these learners. Additionally, the study sets out to determine the extent to which the L1 Chinese learners have acquired the English prepositions of location and direction. This study involved three groups of Chinese ESL learners: elementary, intermediate and advanced. They were selected based on their age and their performance on a standardized proficiency test. The instrument used to collect data was a preposition test comprising 85 items. These items on prepositions of location and direction were randomly arranged in the tasks. The test required subjects to respond to multiple choice questions, match given sentences with appropriate prepositions, fill in blanks with the appropriate prepositions, judge given sentences to see if they are grammatical or ungrammatical and correct the ungrammatical sentence by providing the appropriate prepositions. The results indicate that age and proficiency levels of the learners made a difference in the acquisition of English prepositions of location and direction. The older learners with higher proficiency levels seem to fare better than the younger and less proficient learners. The results suggest that the prepositions of location arc slightly more problematic than prepositions of directions to the L1 Chinese learners. Our data also suggest that certain prepositions of each type are more problematic than others.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the improvement of students' interest and general proficiency of English through cultural understanding. To achieve this purpose, two classes of the 2nd grade in the informational high school were divided into the experimental class and the control class. The Grammar-Translation Method was used for the control class and a cultural learning - compare and contrast Korean culture and American culture - was taken for the experimental. After various cultural differences were studied, surveys of students' attitude and reading and listening test were taken. The results from this study were as follows: Firstly, students' interest in English was improved through learning the American culture that was related to the content of each lesson. Secondly, English reading and communicative skills were improved by learning about cultural aspects. Therefore, it can be said that teaching culture stimulates students' interest and motivation for learning English and helps students retain such affective attitudes. And English communicative skills were improved as well.

Although the language of Geoffrey Chaucer as part of late Middle English has been discussed by many studies, among which David Burnley (1983) seems to be most remarkable, some aspects of Chaucer's language still need to be better illuminated for a more thorough understanding of not only Chaucer's work and language but also the English language in the late Middle English period. This paper examines the English negation of Chaucer's language, shown especially in his Canterbury Tales, and explains how negation is used in his work, focusing on the three different types of sentence negation and the uses of or and and in the scope of negation.

The purpose of the present study is to explore effective ways of teaching English grammar, which is geared toward improving students' communicative competence. Grammatical competence is essential to communicative competence. Grammatical knowledge cannot be acquired unconsciously in an EFL environment such as in Korea. Therefore learners should be given grammar instruction. More importantly, they should be instructed in grammar so that they can develop their grammatical abilities which are the foundation of communicative competence. The following is proposed for the grammar instruction placing the focus on improving communicative competence. First, it is effective to explain the form, meaning and pragmatics of a grammatical rule to learners in Korean. Second, learners should be given instruction in grammatical patterns that deals with constructions and meanings together, which can enable them to produce sentences by themselves. Third, it should be taught to understand constructions and meanings on the basis of word orders. Then the following steps of grammar instruction are suggested. In the first step of grammatical instruction, students should be provided with the illustrations of grammatical structures which link communicative functions and grammar. In the second step, learners should be gotten to practice grammatical constructions repeatedly enough to use them unconsciously. Lastly, communicative activities such as description and role plays should be included in grammar instruction to integrate grammar practice and communicative language use.

As the world becomes a global village, national conferences become more frequent, and the language of choice to mediate the exchange of information is English. Accordingly, the purpose of this research is to find several methods to prepare L2 students for English communication at conferences. Various studies about discourse markers can be found in this study. Discourse markers are indicators of fluency in spoken language, and indicators of improvement from features of spoken English to more typical forms of formal writing. In this study the presentation styles of native speakers and Asian non-native speakers are compared, and the difference between efficient and non-efficient speakers at conferences are discussed. As a study of conference English teaching and learning method, this research targets suggestion and application of discourse markers for L2 speakers. As a result, the fact that discourse markers are very important in effective writing and conference English is found and accordingly we can see that developing the ability to use discourse markers in writing and speaking are essential for L2 speakers.

This paper critically reviewed the role of negative feedback in second language acquisition with a focus on recasts based on the findings of recent research investigating the effects of recasts on second language acquisition. First, recasts as negative feedbacks or negative evidence were reviewed in terms of Pinker's four criteria: the evidence of existence, availability, use, and necessity of recasts in second language acquisition. Second, the issue of the nature of recasts, whether they have benefits in SLA as a negative or positive evidence, was discussed with reference to Leeman(2003)'s research findings. Then, in relation to availability and use of recasts, the issue of the extent that they are noticed by learners was reviewed based on the findings from Philp(2003)'s study. Finally, the limitations of these two studies and the research orientation of future study were mentioned.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the semantic ambiguity of coordination connected by 'and' in English and show a clear explanation for the meaning of the sentence. Two sentences which are connected by 'and' can be divided into the symmetric conjunction and the asymmetric conjunction according to its meaning. Especially, in order to explain the different meaning in the asymmetric conjunctions, we introduce the theory of presupposition and entailment, which provides the solution to the ambiguity in meaning. It can be said that presupposition and entailment can logically explain the meaning of natural language.

This study aims to illustrate students' and teachers' perceptions towards certification of English proficiency and proficiency- based curriculum, and to investigate their needs for developing college English program. A total of 597 students and 28 teachers participated in the survey. The findings showed that both groups acknowledged the usefulness of the certification of English proficiency and proficiency-based curriculum. However, both groups showed a negative response to 'waive test' (testing for the replacement of English required class). They also expressed high level of needs in increasing the number of courses and credit hours, reducing the class size, and improving facilities. Both groups perceived speaking and listening as more important skills, while students showed various preferences for effective language practice activities. The findings of this study suggest t hat the introduction of certification of English proficiency should he supplemented with follow-ups both in pedagogical aspect and on administrative level.

As an attempt to characterize the English test section of CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test) and to get some suggestions, this study raised the research questions, as 'What are the main factors that affect students' English test scores in CSAT, and how big influences do they have?' It has been hypothesized that among main factors are the L1 competence, represented by the Korean test scores in CSAT, background knowledge or intelligence, represented by the "total" scores in CSAT, and the two types of L2 knowledge (vocabulary and grammar on one hand and prosody m the other hand), measured by the test devised specially for this study. The individual effect of the L2 vocabulary and grammar (one kind of L2 knowledge) was 70%, that of background knowledge or intelligence 61%, that of the L1 competence 50%, and that of the L2 prosody knowledge (the other kind of L2 knowledge) 32%. According to the stepwise regression, the whole effect of these four factors was 74%. The findings suggest that first, although CSAT is based on the top-down model of comprehension, the bottom-up model of learning should be more emphasized in our English class. Also, since background knowledge or intelligence is the second most influential factor, the top-down model of learning that helps students learn to understand by activating their various schemata must also be very effective.

The purpose of this study is to introduce Korean teachers and researchers ESL standards for TESOL students developed by TESOL association in 1997. The standards were designed to be useful for teachers and other educators who want to incorporate them in their educational programs for ESOL students in mainly the USA. These standards are important because they articulate the English language development needs of ESL learners and provide directions to educators on how to fulfill the needs of ESL students. Also. they emphasize the major role of language in the attainment of other content area standards. In this paper the author introduced not only the theoretical backgrounds. construct. meaning of the standards, and the ways of implementation but also their lessons to our Korean situation.

This paper is to help the students in elementary schools develop and improve their English listening and speaking skills by presenting effective teaching and learning techniques using puppetry. It is absolutely obvious that listening and speaking are very important skills for most EFL students. Using puppets in the classroom is a creative English teaching technique which can involve authentic, communicative language situations. Moreover, puppets appeal to children and can aid in lowering affective filters thereby creating a more comfortable learning environment. The study clearly showed that using puppets is feasible and enjoyable in elementary English classes. However, caution must be exercised in drawing and generalizing conclusions from this experience. The results of the experiment are as follows: First, using puppetry in the English class was found to have positive influence on students' affective domains (interst, attitude). Second, using puppets in the English classes was found to be efficient for improving students' English listening and speaking skills. Third, appropriate materials should be selected and well thought-out plans should be made to be successful English class using puppetry. Perhaps the most interesting line of future research is to use qualitative research to examine the effect of this technique on the teacher variable. Further research is recommended, especially on using puppetry for speaking proficiency and creating affectively comfortable learning atmospheres.