• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.395-411
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the elementary English conversation instructors' perception on their professionalism and the needs of teacher training program. The survey data were attained from 136 elementary English conversation instructors. Descriptive statistics were employed to discuss the result of the survey response. The results of this study revealed that the elementary English conversation instructors perceived the need of in-service training program for their professionalism improvement, especially in teaching techniques for four language skills. The result also revealed that the instructors need to be more equipped with the knowledge of elementary learners' developmental psychology and L2 learning process. The study concludes with several suggestions for elementary English conversation instructors' improvement of teaching professionalism and in-service training program.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.05a
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• pp.147-149
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• 2004

Although most of the people have studied English for a long time, their English conversation capability is low. When we provide them portable conversational-type English learners by the application of computer and information process technology, such portable learners can be used to enhance their English conversation capability by their conventional conversation exercises. The core technology to develop such learner is the development of a voice recognition and synthesis module under an embedded environment. This paper deals with voice recognition and synthesis, prototype of the learner module using a DSP(Digital Signal Processing) chip for voice processing, voice playback function, flash memory file system, PC download function using USB ports, English conversation text function by the use of SMC(Smart Media Card) flash memory, LCD display function, MP3 music listening function, etc. Application areas of the prototype equipped with such various functions are vast, i.e. portable language learners, amusement devices, kids toy, control by voice, security by the use of voice, etc.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.235-245
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• 2013

Recent national attention on English conversation continued, smartphone game has emerged into the mainstream of game industry. In this study, smartphone serious game that combines english conversation learning and smartphone game for learning english conversation was designed and implemented. English sentence patterns separated words, phrases, and sentences was able to learn step-by-step and repeatedly. Also, Throughout the game of different type by stage was to provide interested. Test results were discovered the problem not causing continuous user interest. To compensate for this, study of a game changes element and difficulty adjusting will be followed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.27-48
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• 1999

College students frequently feel their grammar knowledge from primary and middle school is not useful when they are asked to speak in college conversation classes. Because of their frustration at their lack of communicational ability as well as inappropriate teaching methods and class textbooks that have little to do with the student's major course of study, the student often has a low motivation to study. It is not uncommon for students to seek English education outside of their college classrooms by going to language institutes or studying abroad. College teachers need to find a way to use the student's background in grammar from primary and secondary schools. Despite the student's sentiment about his/her grammar education, grammar is an essential key to successful English conversation. Some ways that teachers can close the gap between primary and secondary school grammar education and college conversation classes are: to use a theme-based methodology, cue cards, and modeling. Activities such as Grammar Clinic, Grammar Police, and Show and Tell can be effective ways to bridge this gap. Teachers can use these activities and methods to correct such student errors as: incorrect word order, missing or unnecessary be verbs, confusion between be and do verbs, subject-verb agreement. and incorrect tense.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.507-513
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• 2020

This paper aims to design and implement a robot that will help teach children living habits and English conversation education in dual-income families using the open platform robot Q.bo one based on raspberry pi3 of a single board computer. The first function of life habit formation is to help children to wash their hands, to brush their teeth, homework and sleep regularly. The child is then photographed listening to the notification and acting so that the parent can identify and provide feedback. The second basic conversation education feature uses Google's DialogFlow to help children learn English naturally through simple English conversation through the robot. The two-functioning robot allows children from working families to feel secure by printing their parents' voices even when they are not at home. At the same time, it allows them to get into basic lifestyle, to have basic English conversation with robots, and to be interested in English early.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.17-36
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• 2007

This study examined educational and career backgrounds of 180 early childhood English teachers and curricula of training courses for early childhood English teachers in continuing education centers across 6 areas in Korea. Data analyses showed that (1) curricula for early childhood English teachers consists of basic practical conversation, English teaching skills, understanding early childhood education and general English knowledge. (2) Most teachers are women between 30 to 40 years of age, university graduates with majors in English literature, English education and/or early childhood education with confidence in speaking in and listening to English. (3) They were satisfied with their retraining courses. (4) English pronunciation skill was not always related to English conversation skill, but clarity of pronunciation influenced teaching confidence.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.245-251
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• 2017

This presents an English conversation training system with which learners train their conversation skills in English, which makes them converse with native speaker characters in a virtual reality environment with voice. The proposed system allows the learners to talk with multiple native speaker characters in varous scenarios in the virtual reality environment. It recongizes voices spoken by the learners and generates voices by a speech synthesis method. The interaction with characters in the virtual reality environment in voice makes the learners immerged in the conversation situations. The scoring system which evaluates the learner's pronunciation provides the positive feedback for the learners to get engaged in the learning context.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.77-102
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• 2002

Factors affecting foreign language learning task are diverse in nature due to the different social and cultural backgrounds so that learners have to somehow use strategies and expressions to adjust diverse factors to their learning environments. The main purpose of this paper is to show how important NNS vs. NNs interaction through CCDL can be in their enhancement of English proficiency by giving examples from their chatting conversation(written conversation) data collected for over two semesters. Chatting as a means of synchronous communication interaction between students from two different cultural backgrounds can act as a predictor of foreign language achievement. Chatting and Telemeet activities have their own advantages in enhancing communicative competence when learning English. By engaging in these synchronous communication activities learners of English from different cultural backgrounds can acquire unique strategies and expressions from which they learn from each other. In short, this study advocates the importance of strategies and patterns foreign language learners can acquire from interaction among culturally different peer groups.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.821-841
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• 2009

This paper explores the ways to reshape humanistic values of the curriculum of the English department of Korean universities. The English curricula are usually composed of three fields of literary studies, general education, and English proficiency, whose conventional humanistic values have been currently dwindling. As for literary studies, teaching literature still hovers over the canonical works of past decades, not allowing students to access the canon with their own ideas and ending up with authoritative monologues. The general education field leans toward edited texts rather than authentic ones, which ignores a genuine path of communication between the author and its readers. Subjects for English proficiency such as "TOEIC" tend to be taught online with no teacher's presence for the nominal purpose of optimizing economic efficiency in teaching. All these testify to the attenuation of humanistic values in the curriculum, which motivates us to suggest some ways to reshape the values. Authoritative monologue in teaching literature can be shifted to the open-ended conversation by using role-play methods as well as accepting extra-canonical works into the curriculum. Authentic texts for general education prove to be preferred by students with the successful result of our experiment. Lastly, it is teacher's presence in the class that helps get higher achievement of "TOEIC" than some online classes. As suggested above, open-ended conversation, wider communication between author and readers, and human presence of the class will help reshape humanistic values in the English curriculum.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.129-136
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• 2010

In this paper, we present an Example-based Dialogue System for English conversation tutoring. It aims to provide intelligent one-to-one English conversation tutoring instead of old fashioned language education with static multimedia materials. This system can understand poor expressions of students and it enables green hands to engage in a dialogue in spite of their poor linguistic ability, which gives students interesting motivation to learn a foreign language. And this system also has educational functionalities to improve the linguistic ability. To achieve these goals, we have developed a statistical natural language understanding module for understanding poor expressions and an example-based dialogue manager with high domain scalability and several effective tutoring methods.