• English & American cultural studies
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.163-188
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• 2018

Through the action of Major Barbara, Shaw advocates the improvement of human race and civilization through fabian eugenic socialism in the based on the Galtonian eugenics and social Darwinism in late Victorian period. In the play, Shaw contrasts two ideologies, Barbara's spiritual institutionalized Christianity with Undershaft's worldly power to control the conventional society. For the dramatic purpose, Shaw symbolically combines the power of the munitions maker, the intellect of the scholar and the faith of the Salvationist. Shaw seems to believe that the best way of improving the human society can be comprised by effective eugenic agencies regarded Shavian trinities. In relation to the eugenic discourses for social betterment, this essay explores how Shaw's ideas on social eugenic is perceived in Major Barbara through main characters as spiritual, intellectual and economic agencies in terms of social Darwinism for the progress of the human society. As always, Shaw's evolutionary agencies are disillusionized from the idealistic faith through the realistic awareness of economic facts, which is manifested in their practices to advance the institutional society Shaw attacked. It is obvious that the significant facts of eugenic socialism/social eugenics based on social Darwinism are promoted by Barbara, Cusins and Undershaft in Major Barbara to maintain a worthy evolution of society and humanity.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.253-268
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• 2010

Robert Lowell is one of the major poets in the modern American poetic world. His major work, Life Studies, is a representative of confessional poetry. It presented American spiritual civilization and universality for life from the late 1950s to 1960s. It dealt with the subject of the poet's private life under the psychological pressure. Lowell described his distinctive vision of the relationship of painful world and suffering self in his poetry. An important feature of his confessional poems was the criticism on modern civilization by means of characterization. Life Studies was written as a kind of therapy to overcome his early trauma, as well as the social problems of contemporary Americans which Lowell was confronted with. Through his personal experiences, Lowell exposed and judged the collapse of traditional value and moral confusion in the society. Therefore, he is a poet who opened his own world of poetry with his poetic achievements.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.7
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• pp.411-418
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to research the effects of English reading strategies on English reading comprehension by Korean college students. Reading strategy use was assessed through Oxford's self-report questionnaire in reading strategies. This study has three research questions. The first question was to investigate some reading strategies used by college students. The second question was to investigate the differences in reading strategies between two groups in gender. The third question was to investigate the differences in reading strategies of three college student groups according to their English proficiency estimated by reading scores. Some major findings of this study are as follows. First, college English learners use memory strategies most frequently of the six strategies, while using metacognitive strategies least frequently. Second, there exists a significant difference in reading strategies between the gender group. Third, there also exists a significant difference in reading strategies among the three groups divided according to English proficiency. This study shows that students' reading ability can be strengthened and motivated by some reading strategies in reading practice. It also means that it is necessary for English teachers to take into consideration the reading strategies suitable for the students in their reading classes.

• MALSORI
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• no.66
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• pp.41-59
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• 2008

Knowledge in linguistic rhythm of the target language plays a major role in foreign language proficiency. This study attempts to discover valid rhythm features that can be utilized in automatic assessment of non-native English pronunciation. Eight previously proposed and two novel rhythm metrics are investigated with 360 English read speech tokens obtained from 27 Korean learners and 9 native speakers. It is found that some of the speech-rate normalized interval measures and above-word level metrics are effective enough to be further applied for automatic scoring as they are significantly correlated with speakers' proficiency levels. It is also shown that metrics need to be dynamically selected depending upon the structure of target sentences. Results from a preliminary auto-scoring experiment through a Multi Regression analysis suggest that appropriate control of unexpected input utterances is also desirable for better performance.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.59-81
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• 2009

The primary goal of this paper was to develop a critical point of view to critical pedagogy when applied to EFL contexts. Critical pedagogy is more concerned about how language can affect personal and social change of teachers and students than it is with how to teach language effectively or in ways that encourage critical thinking on the part of teacher and students. For this goal, this paper introduces the definition, emergence and major constructs of critical pedagogy in a broad way at first. Then, this paper presents how critical pedagogy has an impact on ELT, focusing on how critical pedagogy is applied in ELT contexts and why the application of critical pedagogy in EFL can be criticized, through the review of empirical studies. Reflection of Korean English teaching situation and applicational difficulties of critical pedagogy in Korean ELT are followed.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.387-416
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• 2001

In an attempt to identify highly probable causes of poor EFL performances, certain intriguing data of 11 common errors collected from 23 university students' listening and reading for correction of a short conversation of three people, with a questionnaire regarding their knowledge of the situational context, were analysed and interpreted within a theoretical framework of consciousness and the intonation unit (Chafe 1974, 1980, 1994), compatible with some important philosophical and psychological theories. The results: situational understanding does not always guarantee good EFL performances; the 11 errors were not attributable to hearing problems; consciousness appropriate for literacy and formal schooling appeared to be the major cause, which was inappropriate for a communicative use of English. Re-shaping of consciousness was suggested, with a warning against the ‘grammar consciousness raising’ approach.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.137-156
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• 2009

This case study examines language learners' oral interactive practices and what they learn along with these practices. Language learners who study abroad take on the challenge of living in a foreign place and undergo difficulties in communicating and interacting with people in their new country. These difficulties, caused by cultural differences, are experienced most particularly in their daily interactions. Language learners' trials and efforts to learn English while dealing with a different culture and the difficulties are mainly observed for this paper. The process of learning a second culture is closely related to the process of learning a second language. Oral interactive practices can give the study abroad language learners opportunities to learn their target culture. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how participating in interactive practices assists the learners in understanding their target culture while they deal with their difficulties inherent in studying abroad. This study adds weight to the notion that culture is an essential and major factor in learning a language, and that only active participation in interactions can be effective in learning both a language and its culture.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.51-66
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• 2005

This study investigates the feasibility of incorporating student evaluations of peer review interactions into the course grade for an EFL writing course. The use of such evaluations offers a way to grade the process of writing more directly than using writing portfolios alone. Moreover, evaluating peer review interactions highlights the social aspect of writing, which is valuable in the current post-process climate in writing instruction. The 18 members of a semester-long EFL writing course at a Korean university were trained in peer response for one half of a semester; then performed evaluations of peer review interactions during the second half of the semester as part of their writing course. Student evaluations were examined to reveal whether any bias occurred due to relative age, gender, major, or question type. The results revealed no such biases. Therefore, it is suggested that students are capable of providing fair evaluations of peers, which means the evaluations can be factored into the course grade in order to evaluate the social aspect of the writing process.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.27-49
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• 2009

This study aimed to explore EFL learners' beliefs and preferences about reading tasks and to examine the reading processes that they use for making sense of text. The subjects were comprised of 107 college students who were non-English majors and aged 19-28 years. Based on scores achieved on a reading comprehension test, they were divided into two groups (more-skilled and less-skilled readers) and asked to respond to a survey in class. The results of the survey revealed that: (1) a majority rate themselves as fair readers, which might be indicative of the insecurity they feel toward L2 reading; (2) authentic texts (especially magazines) and popular media appear to be their favorite reading materials; (3) unknown vocabulary is a major impediment to their L2 reading comprehension; (4) the more-skilled readers manifest a meaning centered view of reading, whereas the less-skilled readers center on vocabulary; and (5) both groups employ a multistrategic approach to L2 reading; however, the less-skilled readers are less successful in determining the meaning of unknown vocabulary. Pedagogical implications for EFL classroom teachers are provided.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.128-133
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• 2009

Brain drain of scientists and technologists to the United States from other countries is a phenomenal issue due to the potential developmental impacts it could have on sending countries. Immigration policies undoubtedly play the major part to shape the human resource outcomes. There has been a common sense explanation to the brain drain trend, which states that the lower English language requirements in the scientific and technology jobs compared to other high skill brain drain jobs offer immigrants more favorable employment opportunities. These and other language related variables are used with standard human capital model variables to assess the validity of the common sense proposition.