• Title/Summary/Keyword: EFL reading

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A Study on the Korean EFL Learners' Grammatical Knowledge Development under Input-enhanced FFI and Output-enhanced FFI Conditions (입력강화와 출력강화 형태초점교수 상황에서의 한국 EFL 학습자들의 언어형태 지식개발에 관한 연구)

  • Hwang, Hee-Jeong
    • Journal of Digital Convergence
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    • v.16 no.5
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    • pp.435-443
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    • 2018
  • This study explores the effects of different Focus-on-Form Instruction (FFI) on improving learners' grammatical knowledge development and observes how the learners apply the knowledge to their output. A total of 112 college students were placed into three groups: 35 input-enhanced group students, who received visually enhanced input reading materials, 41 output-enhanced group students, performing dictogloss tasks, and 46 control group students given traditional grammar instruction. All the participant students took pre/post grammatical tests and completed pre/post writing tasks, which aimed to look into how the target grammatical structures were used in writing. The research findings indicated that both input-enhanced and output-enhanced FFI were effective on learners' language form learning and made contribution to their writing. Based on the findings, this study suggests that the elaborate design of combination of both FFI can maximize learners' language form learning.

A Study of Apology Strategies between Genders in EFL College Students

  • Shim, Jae-Hwang
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.225-243
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    • 2009
  • This study investigates the use of different speech act of apology strategies between male and female EFL college students by comparing the components of intensity, stylistic competence, and semantic formulas. The data was collected from 37 participants who were studying freshmen English reading course at the Department of English Education of C University in Seoul. Most students were English majors taking pre-teacher course of teaching English for secondary school students. The participants were divided into two gender groups of male and female. The discourse completion test (DCT) which was revised from the speech act of apology by Olshtain and Cohen (1990) was provided with the participants after the researcher explained the speech act of apology in ten situations. The speech act of apology depends on situation variables: social solidarity, severity of offense, and social status. The results show that in the preference of intensity, male and female have almost the similar ratio in high (female: 24.7%, male 24%) and low intensity (female: 75.3%, male: 76%). In the use of stylistic competence, male group (21%) expresses more diversely formal features than female group (12%), while female (87%) use more informal features than male (66%). Most of participants show a limitation in the use of speaking four types of semantic formulas: expression of apology (APOL), acknowledgment of responsibility (RESP), offer of repair (REPR), and promise of forbearance (FORB). As nonnative speakers, the participants cannot conduct the semantic formula in some situations regardless of the tasks provided. The results suggest that English teachers should recognize pragmatic variations in which students feel difficulty in appropriate speaking strategies on apology. This study also contributes to teaching learners the strategies and speaking patterns in the course of various apology situations.

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Korean College Students' Acquisition of English Tense through Reading (한국 대학생의 독해지문을 활용한 영어시제 습득)

  • Kim, Kyung-Hoon
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.8 no.10
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    • pp.373-380
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate how Korean EFL university students acquire an understanding of English tenses. To research this, we proposed two research questions of study as below. Firstly, what difference is there in English tense acquisition between an experimental group and a control group? Secondly, what difference is there in the English tense acquisition according to English proficiency? The subject of a sample survey was a 39 student experimental group and a 38 student control group, total 77 students, who take English courses as a required subject at 'C' university in Gwangju. The data needed for this study was obtained by the questionnaires with 40 questions about the English tense. The data analyzing method was t-test through the statistics program SPSS 12.0. There was a significant difference between the experimental group's tense acquisition ability and the control group's, even though low group showed no significant improvement in their tense acquisition ability. Studying English tense through reading led the students to be present in classes with interests, so the experimental group showed more academic accomplishments than the control group.

An analysis and teaching of cultural contents in the first-grade High School English textbooks (고등학교 1학년 교과서에 나타난 문화소재 분석과 지도방안)

  • Im, Byung-Bin;Gu, So-Young
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.155-177
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    • 2005
  • In the EFL context, Korean students don't have enough opportunities to directly experience the target culture, prompting the need to offer some well-organized culture education in class. The goals of this study are to analyze how many cultural contents are reflected in High School English textbooks and to suggest an implication for cultural learning. These textbooks were carefully examined, focusing on the cultural contents, by four categories: 'cultural skill section', 'cultural patterns', 'related language skills', and 'target countries'. The results of the analysis were like the following: First, although many of the textbooks are dealing with the culture skill sections, their contents were still wanting consistency and were small in quantity. Second, as for the cultural patterns, the pages dealing with behavioral culture were 43%, spiritual culture, 35.7%, material culture, 21.3%. Third, as for the related language skills, the cultural contents in the textbooks were organized in the order of listening, reading, speaking, writing, and cultural skill sections. Since it is impossible to separate language skills from culture, we suggest that the aspects of target culture should be incorporated in various forms into the learning situations. Fourth, as for the issue of target countries, the contents about the general or whole English culture were insufficient. So we suggest that English textbooks should play an essential role in providing students with various cultural information about various English speaking countries.

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Form-focused Instruction in Incidental Learning of English Verb Patterns

  • Kim, Bu-Ja
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.59-80
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    • 2010
  • The present study investigated what kind of form-focused instruction would yield better results for incidental learning of English verb patterns in two experiments. Experiment 1 compared the effectiveness of focus on form (reading + translation) and focus on forms (verb pattern list + translation) tasks in learning new English verb patterns incidentally in Korean EFL college classrooms. The results of Experiment 1 showed significantly higher results for the focus on forms group. Since it was revealed by Experiment 1 that the learners did not notice unknown target verb patterns, Experiment 2 was undertaken to examine whether the difference between the focus on form and focus on forms conditions found in Experiment 1 would be retained even after the isolated form-focused instruction or focus on forms aiming at teaching students how to recognize verb patterns was provided for the learners before the focus on form and focus on forms tasks were carried out. The results showed that the focus on form group yielded significantly higher incidental learning scores than the focus on forms group. The effectiveness rates of the focus on form in Experiment 2 were statistically higher than those of the focus on forms in Experiment 1. The results of the two experiments indicated that the combination of the isolated form-focused instruction and focus on form was significantly more effective in learning English verb patterns incidentally. In conclusion, form-focused instruction including both isolated form-focused instruction and focus on form is an effective way to incidental learning of English verb patterns.

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Development of a college English teaching and learning model in online synchronous/asynchronous platforms to enhance Competencies (실시간-비실시간 온라인플랫폼을 통한 역량강화중심 대학영어 교수-학습 모형 개발)

  • Lee, Myong-Kwan
    • The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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    • v.7 no.4
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    • pp.35-42
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    • 2021
  • The college English teaching-learning model in this study is intended to effectively apply dictogloss activities to enhance competencies such as communication, self-directedness, and cooperation by upgrading the utilization of various online platform functions. Dictogloss is a language teaching and learning activity that combines four functions (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) of communication. College English classes in this study focus on communication-oriented integrated English education. In this study, the teaching and learning is an online-based English integrated teaching-learning method based on constructivism theory. The model presented the roles of learners and teachers according to the seven procedures.

A Model for Teaching Film Literacy through Movie English (영화영어를 통한 영화리터러시 교육방안)

  • Seo, Ji-Young
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.21 no.6
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    • pp.779-790
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    • 2021
  • Film literacy comprises the process of producing a new creation through understanding the elements that make up a film, the content of a film, and a critical and creative thinking process. Film literacy is employed in fields such as composition, science, social studies, and geography, and, additionally, it is used to cultivate humanities literacy and critical thinking skills. Yet despite the large proportion of the film script in the movie, it is not easy to find literacy education cases that use film English as a teaching method. Film English is a practical and authentic material, and is suitable as an English learning material in an EFL context like Korea. However, the approach of using films to teach and learn differs according to the content and genre of a film. Thus, the teacher may have a difficult time organizing and preparing for class. This study suggests six class activities that can be commonly applied to English classes using films based on the areas of critical, cultural, and creative (3Cs) activities. Four hundred and five college students taking Movie English classes participated in the present study and frequency analysis was conducted to find out their preferences through a questionnaire survey. The results from conducting class activities in university liberal arts classes suggest that the most preferred activities of students are related to cultural, critical, and creative, in that order. Creative activities that are far beyond English instruction utilizing various digital tools or providing additional reading materials can be a burden on learners.

Effects on the Use of Two Textbooks for Four Types of Classes in a South Korean University

  • Ramos, Ian Done D.
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.1 no.2
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    • pp.24-32
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    • 2013
  • This paper determined students' ranks of difficulty on the use of materials in terms of 1) understanding the layout of the learning materials, 2) reading comprehension of the learning materials, and 3) realization on relevance to needs of the learning materials. It also determined students' 4) rank and frequency of attitude on the materials. With the data gathered through 128 survey questionnaires, 7 focused group discussions, and 10 interviews, the results were found out that there was an inappropriate assessment procedure set by this particular university. The researcher concludes that: 1) design of four types of classes by just using the two textbooks with their respective workbooks is grammar-based with limited conversation activities; 2) placement for these students in one big class size was implemented without considering their common interest and motivation and language levels; and, 3) qualification of teachers teaching these EFL students did not support students' real needs and the language program itself. Content professors who were made to teach may have the ability to input learning, but their teaching styles may differ from the ones who are real English teachers. This paper then recommends that teachers and school administration should have an appropriate placement exam before students attend the class, especially in a big class size. There could only be a few problems among students in one big class size when students' level of competence is proportioned. With this, topics and conversation activities can even be more flexible with the maneuver of art of questioning, various dimensions of thinking, strategic competence, learning attitude or behavior, etc. to ensure sustenance of communicative mode and level of interest and motivation in the classroom. Grammar-based instruction can only be taught when a need arises. Thus, the course description of each class will be able to transact the objectives ready for developing students' communication competence. Moreover, proper measurement can be utilized to validly assess the amount of students' learning and the progress of language curriculum design in terms of materials selection and teaching approach.

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Using Multimedia to Improve Listening Comprehension in the EFL Classroom

  • Park, Seung-Won
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.105-115
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    • 2003
  • The four skills of a language are basically required for a communication. They are very important for a learner to develop the balanced language acquisition. Today both listening and speaking skills are emphasized in the global era rather than reading and writing proficiencies. The reason is really why the learners' communicative competence is more needed than the accurate knowledge of a structure in the language. For this reason, the listening comprehension should be taught effectively using the following strategies. First, the sound difference of a language must be taught. Language is a complicated process to convey the comprehensive meaning combined with the internal and external factors of a language. In other words, the meaning for the sound of language should be transmitted by the unit of vocabulary and syntax. Second, a good listening comprehension requires the familiarity and much experience with a lot of English words to understand English sentences unconsciously. Third, as understanding the structure of language is effective for the listening comprehension, the better listening comprehension can be possible through the meaningful exercise. Fourth, the compound process of listening comprehension requires the comprehensive understanding of language, but not the separate understanding of language. Fifth, the appropriate application of the multimedia courseware helps improve the listening comprehension better than that of the existing audio, video, tape recorder and so on. Using multimedia courseware is useful as follows: A learner is able to take as much lesson as he/she wants. It does take little time to repeat about what he/she takes a lesson. It gives the lively picture with the native speakers' voices. It gives him/her(a learner) a feedback effect continuously through the interaction of computer. It controls his/her lesson in accordance with the level of a learner.

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The acquisition effect by measurement periods of adult learners learned through English pattern practice (영어 패턴 연습을 활용한 성인 학습자의 측정 시기별 습득 효과)

  • Choi, Kyung-Mi
    • Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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    • v.11 no.5
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    • pp.183-189
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    • 2020
  • This study was carried out to find out the acquisition effect by measurement periods of adult learners learning through English pattern practice. The subjects of this study were divided into adult learner groups including the learners in their 40s and those who were over 65 and the child group who were 8 years old as a comparative group. After the subjects had a pre-test at first, person agreement and tense were instructed though English pattern practice and right after that, they had a post-test. Then 4 weeks later, they had a delayed test. As a result, the acquisition result of adult learners learning though English pattern practice showed the largest rise by those in their 40s and the learners of those over 65. However the adult learners aged over 65 showed the largest drop in delayed test of the reading comprehension. Based on these results, it is necessary to develop teaching method for adult learners in consideration of their characters and weak points.