• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.155-176
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• 2007

An attempt to investigate the effect of gender differences on Korean students' EFL learning orientation was made. To explain a Korean EFL learning context, three criteria (cultural distance between the target country and the host country, communicative needs of the TL, the status of the TL in the host country) are adopted. Moreover, as a contrastive FL learning context from the Imposed FL learning context, a FL learning context where there is a substantial cultural distance from the TL community, communication needs of the TL do not exist, and the TL enjoys a special educational and socioeconomic status in the host country, a concept of an Integrative FL learning context is newly brought up in this paper. As the result of a questionnaire conducted in four different high schools, female learners can be claimed to be more internalized about academic and socioeconomic benefits the TL entails for their social advancement and overcoming inequality between men and women in society, albeit insignificant numerical data.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.71-76
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• 2022

The purpose of this research is to investigate the types of semantic errors made by MT in translating EFL college students' original drafts written in Korean into English. Specifically, this study attempts to find out 1) what types of semantic errors are most frequently committed by MT? and 2) how students feel about the quality of the MT-produced output? The findings from this study indicated that MT produced the errors related to accuracy (47%) the most, followed by the errors related to fluency and ambiguity (14.6% respectively). Students were well aware of the errors with accuracy and fluency but had limited ability to check the errors with ambiguity. Based on the findings, this study suggests pedagogical implications which can be implemented in L2 writing classrooms.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2011

Listening has been a neglected research area despite the crucial role it plays. The present investigation was aimed at examining how the provision of topical knowledge and learners' listening proficiency level affect learners' listening performance under four different preparatory activity conditions: topical knowledge, vocabulary list, language structure, and no activity. A total of 134 participants, assigned to the four different activity groups, took part in the study. The results revealed that the learners who were provided with topical knowledge before listening performed significantly better than the other learners, followed by the vocabulary list group and language structure group, which might be attributed to the activation of their content schemata. The learners who did not perform any preparatory activities achieved the lowest scores. When it comes to the impact of listening proficiency, it was revealed that learners' proficiency level had a significant influence on learners' listening performance, and there was a significant interaction between the learners' level of listening proficiency and preparatory activity. Providing relevant knowledge was effective for both higher level and lower level learners, whereas teaching vocabulary before listening was effective for higher level learners but was not for lower level ones. Based on the results, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.99-118
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to examine visual elements in Korean high school English textbooks and compare the results with Hill's (2003) which attempted to analyze visuals in British EFL coursebooks. In this study, all 15 English textbooks of high school year 1 in Korea were selected and analyzed. On the basis of the analysis and comparison, the following results have been obtained. First, there were some similarities and differences between the two kinds of texts-Korean high school textbooks and British EFL coursebooks. One similarity was found in regard to the average of pictures and drawings. Second, it was found that in both cases, more pictures were used than the drawings. Third, with regard to the identity of the pictures and drawings used in both texts, there was a higher degree of the use of people than that of objects. Finally, it was found that the pictures and drawings were used more for decorative purpose rather than for the purpose of actual use in teaching and learning. The findings of the current study will shed light on visual impact in EFL coursebooks and explore ways to provide learners and teachers with meaningful learning and teaching experiences.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2020

This study seeks to add to the current understanding of learners' use of modality in argumentative writing. A learner corpus of argumentative essays on four topics was created and compared to native English speaker data from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). The relationship between learners' use of modal devices (MDs) and the devices' appearance in the school's curriculum was also examined. The results showed that learners relied on a very narrow range of MDs compared to those in previous studies. The frequency of use of MDs varied based on the topic and did not seem to be driven by cultural factors as has been previously suggested. Learners used more hedges than boosters on all topics, contradicting most previous studies. Curriculum was determined to have a direct correlation with MD use, and other important factors may include perception of topic and overreliance on certain MDs over others (the One-to-One principal). This research implies that learners' perception of topic should be explored further as a variable affecting MD use. Curricula should be designed based on frequency of MD use by English native speakers, and learners should receive instruction that teaches the norms of MD use in academic writing. The methodology used in the study to determine correlations between MD use and the curriculum has a wide range of potential applications in the field of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-99
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• 2011

The role of corrective feedback (CF) has long been discussed in the field of second language acquisition. It has been claimed that CF enables learners to notice the problems in their second language (L2) production. However, it should not be assumed that learners always adequately interpret teachers' responses to their problematic utterance as correction. Especially when feedback is provided in an implicit way, the possibility that CF goes unnoticed should not be excluded. In this regard, the study aims to investigate how learners perceive teachers' corrective feedback in English classrooms in Korea. The study focuses particularly on examining the relationship between type of feedback and target linguistic content with learner interpretation of teacher corrective intention. Nine classrooms were observed and videotaped. Forty-five students and nine teachers participated in stimulated recall interviews. Their comments were analyzed to document the learners' perception and the teachers' intention of feedback. It was found that learner perception of teacher corrective intention was at its greatest when feedback was provided explicitly and was focused on morphological errors.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.83-102
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to find out some major characteristics of intermediate-advanced Korean learners' English by corpus- linguistically analyzing their essays in comparison with native speakers'. We construct a corpus of CBT TOEFL essays by Korean learners, NNS1 (94076 words in 402 texts), and its sub-corpus, NNS2 (14291 words in 45 texts), and then a corpus of model essays written or meticulously edited by native speakers, NS (14833 words in 35 texts). We compare NNS1 and NNS2 with NS, and with some other corpora, in terms of high-frequency words, and show that Korean learners' writings have more features of informal writing than those of formal writing, which is in accord with the reports in Granger (1998) that EFL writings by European advanced learners are characterized by informality.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.181-197
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to measure how English immersion classes affect students. This study seeks to answer two questions. First, will the young learners gain an international sense? Second, will the students learn English naturally without having to be sent abroad to an English speaking country? Several kinds of immersion programs have been designed and implemented in Korea. However, many students have felt great stress and mental pressure in the immersion programs. Students find the programs stressful because English must be used at all times. In this paper, two groups of elementary school students are compared: one being the control group and the other being the experimental group, an immersion class. The results show that the mental health problems, sensitivities, and rates of depression in the immersion group are greater than those of the students in the control group. Therefore, the immersion students' overall mental health is substandard. The negative effects of lethargy and depression are made worse when they are placed in English only environments. The results indicate more attention should be focused on respecting and understanding the students' overall mental health when teaching them English.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.239-265
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• 2010

This study investigates the effects of corpus-based vocabulary tasks on the acquisition of English vocabulary in an attempt to explore the influence of corpus use on EFL pedagogy. For this to be realized, a total of 40 Korean high school students participated in the study over a 4-week period. An experimental group used a set of corpus-based tasks for vocabulary learning, whereas a control group carried out a traditional task (i.e., the L1-L2 translation) for vocabulary learning. To assess learning gains, the students were asked to complete the pre- and post-treatment tests measuring the word form, meaning, and use aspects of target lexical items. Results of the study indicate that in the experimental group the corpus-based vocabulary tasks were beneficial for the learning of word forms and use. In particular, corpus-based benefits were greatest in the low-proficiency EFL learners' collocational aspects of vocabulary use. On the other hand, in the control group, the traditional vocabulary tasks benefited the meaning aspects of target vocabulary items the most. In addition, survey results revealed that most students were positive about the corpus-based learning experience although some expressed reservations about the heavy cognitive load and the time-consuming nature of the analysis of corpus data primarily due to learners' lack of language proficiency.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.91-115
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• 2006

English immersion has emerged in Korea only recently as an innovative approach to learning and teaching English. Lack of real life experience of using English has been one of the biggest obstacles for Korean learners of English and has resulted in an increasing number of children being sent to English-speaking countries and a huge amount of dollar outflow. This recent innovation is expected to be the magic wand to resolve all these problems. However, setting up an immersion program in a typical EFL context like Korea has brought in another set of issues and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a short-term immersion English program in Korea and provide some empirical data to develop programs that can better cater to the needs of EFL learners. A two-week English immersion program was developed and implemented with 57 Korean and Japanese students whose grade level ranged from 4 to 12. The study results show that the program was successful in terms of changing the participants' attitude toward learning English, improving their English skills, enhancing intercultural understanding and competence, and motivating them for further studies of English and other foreign languages and cultures.