• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

This research primarily aimed to investigate proficient and less proficient EFL readers' awareness and experiences about learning to read and reading in English. The secondary purpose was to explore the participants' reading strategies, and to discover how the genres of English texts influence their reading processing behaviors. The participants consisted of four college students in engineering aged 21-25 years. Three data sources were employed: questionnaires, interviews, and think-alouds. The findings revealed that: (1) the proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be good readers, while the less proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be fair readers; (2) unknown vocabulary was perceived to be the major impediment to reading comprehension; the think-aloud data, however, demonstrated that unknown vocabulary did not significantly interfere with their reading comprehension; (3) regardless of the genre of the text, the participants employed similar reading strategies; (4) the participants were more likely to tolerate ambiguity and predict the content when reading the narrative text than the expository text; (5) there was no set of strategies that distinguished proficient EFL readers from less proficient EFL readers; and (6) when identifying problems, the proficient EFL readers used fix-up strategies more effectively and were better able to provide satisfactory solutions than their counterparts. Pedagogical implications for EFL reading instruction are discussed.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.671-676
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• 2021

A cDNA encoding the protein lethal (2) essential for life [l(2)efl] was cloned from Gryllus bimaculatus and named GBl(2)efl. This protein is composed of 189 amino acids, including an N-glycosylation site and 15 phosphorylation sites. Its predicted molecular mass is 21.19 kDa, with a theoretical isoelectric point of 6.2. The secondary structure of GBl(2)efl was predicted from the identification of random coils (56.08%), alpha helices (22.22%), extended strands (17.99%), and beta turns (3.7%) through sequence analyses. A homology analysis revealed that GBl(2)efl exhibited a high similarity with other species at the amino acid level, ranging from 52% to 69%. While GBl(2)efl mRNA expression was higher in the dorsal longitudinal flight muscle following a three-day starvation and in the Malpighian tubules following a one-day starvation, no changes in expression were detected in other tissues. Furthermore, tunicamycin-induced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress resulted in an approximately 1.8-fold higher expression in the fat body compared with the wild type.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.157-164
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• 2021

This study was conducted to investigate students' perception of the integration of Chinese ethnic minority culture into the college EFL teaching which was carried out in the fall and spring semesters with different presentation topics. One and the same questionnaire was distributed to 61 participants, involving Han Chinese and Chinese ethnic minority students, at a university in ethnic minority area in China at the end of each semester, and SPSS 20.0 was used for t-test to analyze the data. The research results showed that Chinese undergraduates have got more significant improvements in cultural cognition, emotions, attitudes, and multi-cultural values in the spring semester than those in the fall semester. All participants benefit a lot from multi-cultural activities without significant differences between Han Chinese and ethnic minority students in both semesters. It is suggested that ethnic minority culture be integrated into the college EFL teaching, along with English culture and Chinese mainstream culture, which be administered as a practical teaching mode to develop students' intercultural competence.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.181-210
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• 2003

The purpose of the study was to investigate how Korean EFL writing instructors give feedback to their students' writing and what influences their feedback. A total of 12 Korean EFL instructors in Korean universities teaching freshman English and intermediate EFL writing courses provided their feedback given on students' writing samples and participated in interviews. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively with a constant comparative approach and some data from writing samples and questionnaires produced descriptive statistics. The first lesson from the results of the study was that grammar was still the most frequent concern in giving feedback on students' writing. Contrary to the participants' report, comments on content and organization were not produced very often. The second lesson came from the interview data. Some aspects of teacher feedback seemed mostly influenced by their beliefs on L2 writing and experience in teaching L2 writing. The final and major lesson was that teachers chose how they would give comments on students' writing depending on whether they found their feedback helpful in students learning to write. EFL writing teachers can produce effective feedback by clearly communicating their beliefs about L2 writing and criteria in their feedback to students in their EFL writing classrooms.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.275-283
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• 2021

This study was intended to help improve assessment in college EFL classes by examining the relationship between formative assessment (FA) and summative assessment (SA). Participants for the study were 75 undergraduates, taking an eight-week optional college English course at a four-year college in China. FA data were collected in the final course of the course by a self-reporting survey using the online training platform Mosoteach. To achieve the finding, the relationship between FA scores and SA scores (final exam and performance scores) was analyzed in SPSS by means of Pearson correlation analyses. Significant positive correlations were found between FA and SA scores overall. In addition, students' performance on chapter tests, online discussions, brainstorming, quick-responses, assignments and the number of thumbs-up clicks by teachers were significantly correlated with SA scores. The results suggested that FA administered through the Mosoteach app could improve students' academic performance, thus providing an empirical basis for improving educational assessment. Based on these findings, implications for assessment in EFL classes were described.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.88-95
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• 2000

This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.61-85
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• 2006

The purpose of the present study is to compare Korean EFL learners' speech corpus (i.e. oral productions) with their composition corpus (i.e. written productions). Four college students participated in the study. The composition corpus was collected through a writing assignment, and the speech corpus was gathered by audio-taping their oral presentations. The results of the data analysis indicate that (i) As for error frequency, young adult low-intermediate Korean EFL learners showed high frequency in determiners (mostly, indefinite articles), vocabulary (mostly, semantic errors), and prepositions. The frequency order did not show much difference between the speech corpus and the composition corpus; and (ii) When comparing the oral productions with the written productions, there were not many differences between them in terms of the contents, a style (i.e., colloquial vs. literary), vocabulary selection, and error types and frequency. Therefore, it is assumed that the proficiency in oral presentation of EFL learners at this learning stage heavily depends on how much/how well they are able to write. In other words, EFL learners' writing and speaking skills are closely co-related. It implies that the teacher does not need to separate teaching how to speak from teaching how to write. The teacher may use the same methods or strategies to help the learners improve their English speaking and writing skills. Furthermore, it will be more effective to teach writing before speaking since they have more opportunities to write than speak in the EFL contexts.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 2007

This study aimed to investigate how EFL learners perceived English writing tasks and teachers' written feedback. The subjects were 82 mixed major college EFL students aged 19-24; the majority were freshmen females. Based on the scores estimated from the essay evaluation test, they were placed into two groups (proficienand less-proficient writers) and responded to an in-class questionnaire. The results indicated that: (1) regardless of writing proficiency, a large number of the students felt that they were just fair writers, which could be derived from low confidence and high anxiety; (2) grammar and vocabulary were perceived as the main features that determined good EFL writers and also prevented the students from performing the writing task successfully; (3) they believed that teachers' feedback contributed to the development of their English writing skills because it helped them apprehend what to improve or avoid in the future, acquire better English usage, and correct their errors; and (4) the proficient writers were more willing to correct errors themselves after being provided clues than the less-proficient writers. Implications of the findings for EFL classrooms are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.35-50
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• 2005

Thirty six EFL freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were given a dictation, a listening comprehension test and a decoding test. The purpose of the study was to find out whether EFL freshmen students' spelling ability correlates with their listening comprehension and decoding skills. Data analysis showed that the typical EFL freshman student misspelled 41.5% of the words on the dictation, gave 49.5% correct responses on the listening comprehension test, and 52% correct responses on the decoding test. The median and mean scores showed that the subjects' spelling, listening and decoding achievement is low, which implied that the subjects were having spelling, listening comprehension and decoding difficulties. The students' spelling errors and correct listening comprehension and decoding responses revealed strong correlations between spelling ability, listening comprehension and decoding skills. This means that good spelling ability in EFL is related to good listening comprehension and good decoding skills. The better the listening comprehension and decoding abilities, the fewer the spelling errors. When listening comprehension and decoding skills are poor, spelling ability is also poor. Recommendations for spelling, listening and decoding instruction are given.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.351-384
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• 2015

This paper is concerned with the effectiveness of songs in the acquisition of formulaic sequences in the college EFL classroom. The existing research mentions the use of songs in terms of the power of their melodies (Fonseca-Mora, 2000), linguistic features in song lyrics (Abbott, 2002), and the emotional basis of memory (LI & Brand, 2009). Learners' opinions about the use of songs has been ignored, however. In this paper, seven subjects with English ability ranging from advanced (one) intermediate-high (three), intermediate-middle (two), and intermediate-low (one) studied five different pop songs. The results showed that they did not agree with the existing research findings. Rather, they were negative about using songs in the classroom. Their complaints were the burden of using too many hours to memorize lyrics, few language expressions to learn, and too much emphasis on expressions about love and feelings. Students at all levels expressed similar negativity about the use of songs. When their complaints were discussed during interviews, however, their attitude changed from negative to positive. The case study in this paper was on a small-scale but it is suggested that through further research the use of songs could be activated in the EFL classroom. Considering college language learners disregard most existing EFL materials, it appears to be worthwhile to continue further with this kind of research.