• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.201-228
• /
• 2013

The research goal of this study is to investigate the realities and difficulties of English education for young children of North Korean refugee mothers. The subjects of this study were 201 North Korean refugee mothers of 3-5-year-old children. They were surveyed and some of them were interviewed on their children's English education. The results of the study are as follows. First, most of the North Korean refugee mothers in this study provided their children with English education since their children were 3 years old. The major reason for the English education was their children's peer group who received English education early in their lives. Their educational interaction periods with their children were less than 10 minutes, and they had their young children study English alone, focusing solely on their assignment. Next, North Korean refugee mothers claimed that the biggest difficulties for teaching English to their children were cost, lack of information, lack of time to teach English, and unsatisfactory English education. They expressed that the cost for English education was a burden on the family to some extent.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.582-590
• /
• 2020

This paper aims to analyze and introduce the primary English curriculum of North Korea reformulated according to the New Educational Program. Sources for analysis are the 4th and 5th primary school English syllabus based on the New Educational Program, explanations of the New Educational Program appeared in People's Education and Kim, Jeong-Il's selected writings. The analytical sources are classified into characteristics, objectives, contents, methods and evaluation. The findings are as follows: The primary English education aims to reach to the basis of middle school English by learning English alphabets and basic English expressions. 4th graders learn basic oral English such as pronunciation, stress and intonation for the first semester and learn English alphabets and their sounds for the second semester. 5th graders learn familiar topics in English and repeatedly practice the important components of English such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. The method is to maintain students' interests in English and encourage students to use classroom English. Also, structural practice is an important part of the method. Evaluation is primarily process-oriented and must motivate students to excel in English rather than fail in English.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.331-341
• /
• 2017

This paper aims to analyze English vocabulary of the North Korean textbooks diachronically using the constructed English textbook corpus. The North Korea English textbooks attained from Information Center on North Korea of the Ministry of Unification are divided into before and after Kim Jong-Il era for the year of 1996 in which the curriculum revision has been conducted. They are stored as text files to analyse vocabularies using WordSmith Tools 7.0. The vocabulary size of the revised textbooks increased after the curriculum reorganization, but the number of vocabulary types and vocabulary diversity decreased. After the curriculum revision, it was found that lots of vocabulary related to the establishment of the Kim Jong-Il system appeared as the keyword. It was also found that some vocabularies reflected the economic and social life of North Korea. In addition, through comparison of the 100 high-frequency word list and keywords, it can be concluded that the vocabulary of the English textbooks of North Korea is gradually changing into communicative contents from contents related with written language.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.770-779
• /
• 2016

The study aimed to investigate what difficulties and needs North Korean refugee college students have in their college English programs and what they experience over an English tutoring program offered by pre-service English teachers. Before the tutoring started, a survey was conducted to examine the current difficulties and needs 100 NK refugee college students had. After the survey, six NK refugee college students and 12 pre-service English teachers participated in the tutoring on the voluntary basis. The survey questionnaires were analyzed statistically, and the effects of the tutoring program were analyzed qualitatively. The results show that NK refugee students reported the severe difficulties in learning English, their increased awareness of the slightly improved English skills over the tutoring program, the increased awareness of their affects, and the increased awareness of their linguistics development at the end of the tutoring. Pedagogical implications for supporting NK refugee college students are discussed.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.17 no.11
• /
• pp.242-251
• /
• 2017

For the purposes of this research, a corpus of words was created from the English textbooks of the "First Middle School" for the gifted in North Korea, and using the corpus, their linguistic characteristics were analyzed. Although there have been many studies that identified the traits of English textbooks in the North Korea's general middle school, not much focus has been placed on the English textbooks used at North Korea's First Middle School. Initially, the structure of English textbooks of the first, second, fourth, and sixth grades that had been procured from the Information Center on North Korea was reviewed, after which their corpus was created. Then, by using Wordsmith Tools 7.0, linguistic properties and high frequency content words appeared in the English textbook of the first grade were analyzed specifically. Basic statistical data gathered indicated that while the number of vocabulary did not increase as students progress through the grades, the words used tended to diversify incrementally. In the mean time, a distribution of the high frequency content words by grade illustrated that a big difference was found between the content words used in the English texts of each grade, and it was a subject matter of the texts that determined such difference.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.7
• /
• pp.412-422
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this research was to compare structural organization of North Korean English textbooks pre and post North Korean 2013 curriculum revision. 5 revised textbooks were selected and compared with old textbooks. First, revised textbooks are dramatically changed into colored printed edition. Second, there appears phrases related to Kim Jong Un for the very first time in the preface. Third, while old textbooks emphasized only reading and writing skills, new textbooks integrate 4 skills. Fourth, new textbooks follow united organization system according to the kinds of school; 7 sub skills of Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation for general high middle textbooks and 5 sub skills of Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, English in Use for the first high middle textbooks. Also, new textbooks integrate English and other subject contents such as science, geography or computer. Finally, the changed structure organization of new textbooks seems to be similar with the ones of English books in the reference which is presented for the first time in North Korean textbooks.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.20 no.7
• /
• pp.274-281
• /
• 2020

N-gram analysis casts a new look at the n-word cluster in use different from the previously known idioms. It analyzes a corpus of English textbooks for frequently occurring n consecutive words mechanically using a concordance software, which is different from the previously known idioms. The current paper aims at extracting and comparing 4-gram words clusters between South Korean high school English textbooks and its North Korean counterpart. The classification criteria includes number of tokens and types between the two across oral and written languages in the textbooks. The criteria also use the grammatical categories and functional categories to classify and compare the 4-gram words clusters. The grammatical categories include noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases, partial clauses and others. The functional categories include deictic function, text organizers, stance and others. The findings are: South Korean high school English textbook contains more tokens and types in both oral and written languages. Verb phrase and partial clause 4-grams are grammatically most frequently encountered categories across both South and North Korean high school English textbooks. Stance is most dominant functional category in both South and North Korean English textbooks.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.107-116
• /
• 2020

This paper aims to explore the vocabulary difference between South and North Korean English textbooks as a first step toward a unified vocabulary list. To this end, both South and North Korean English textbooks in 2000s and 2010s are digitized into a corpus of text files, and a vocabulary list is constructed based on the corpus with reference to its concordances for the vocabulary use and contexts using AntConc 3.5.7. The vocabulary list of North Korean English textbooks are compared and found in their differences of quantity and quality of the English vocabulary in English education. Both quantitative and qualitative differences are found in between South and North Korean English textbook corpus. Both South and North aim that students learn about 3,000 words throughout the English education. North Korean English textbook contains more special academic vocabulary while South Korean English textbook is constrained by a strict vocabulary control which does not allow such a flexibility. Differences of vocabulary and their use are caused by the capitalistic market economy of South and the socialists' planned economy of North. Differences are also attributed to the religious words and grammatical vocabulary appearance.

• The Science & Technology
• /
• v.26 no.12 s.295
• /
• pp.90-93
• /
• 1993

지난 호에서도 언급한 바와 같이 컴퓨터용어는 아직 순화단계에 있어 남한에서도 통일된 것이 없고, 같은 영어 낱말을 여러 가지로 사용하는 경우가 많다. 예로 「interrupt」를 정익사판 컴퓨터용어사전에는 「인터럽트」로 영어발음을 그대로 우리말로 표기한 반면, 다른 용어사전에서는 「가로채기」, 「개입중단」등으로 되어 있다. 현재 남한에서 발간 된 컴퓨터용어 관련자료로는 크라운사, 교학사, 대은사 및 정익사 발행의 컴퓨터용어사전과 하이텔 이용자 모임순화안, 서울대 뉴미디어통신공동연구소 HDTV용어사전, 한국과학기술원 인공지능연구센터안, 교육부 편수자료 등이 있고 1993년 1월에 발간된 문화체육부의 전산기 기본용어 순화시안이 최신 것이라 하겠다. 이곳에서는 주로 1990년 정익사에서 출판한 한국정보과학회편 「컴퓨터용어사전」과 1986년 북한의 과학, 백과사전 출판사에서 발간한 전웅편저「전자계산기프로그람용어사전」을 참조하여 비교하였고, 참고로 문화체육부에서 내어놓은 순화시안도 함께 병기하였다. 지면상 모든 용어를 비교한다는 것은 불가능하여 남한과 북한에서 서로 다르게 부르는 용어 중 일부분만을 다음 표에 나열한다.