• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.427-437
• /
• 2018

This study explored the effectiveness of the online English learning program contents for elementary school students. The study used the online English learning program served by Gyeonggi province office of education. 107 students attending P elementary school in K city volunteered for the program. After studying English via the website for almost one year, they were asked to respond the questionnaires related to the contents of the online English program. Since the research investigated that the relations of students' grades, the time for the study, their diagnostic test scores, and the effectiveness of the contents, the survey responses were analyzed with Spearman correlation. As a result, older students thought that the type of problem-solving, the type of performing a task, WBI (Web Based Instruction) were not efficacious. Also, these types of online English program were chosen as ineffective from the students at the higher level. Whereas the type of private lesson, the lessons based on a story, and the type of animation were preferred to the students who spent longer time on the website. This highlights the need to consider the students' characteristics such as students' grades, the time for the study, and their English level when developing the contents of the online English learning program.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.359-370
• /
• 2009

This study analyzed the effects of augmented reality contents in the elementary school English curriculum. The study revealed the differences between study focus rate, study participation activeness, study activities consuming variables and instructional climate of a group that used augmented reality contents of the English curriculum produced by KERIS and ETRI in 2008, and a group that did not use the contents. As a result, there was no significant difference between the group that studied with augmented reality contents and the group that studied in a traditional method in terms of study focus rate. For study participation activeness, the traditional class had higher scores. On the other hand, the augmented reality contents class had an even spread of study activities consuming variables overall. In terms of instructional climate, the traditional class had higher scores in the amiable field. These results show that in English classes, the student's focusing skills and motivation for studies and stimulation of students' concentration are more related to results than the type of contents.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.157-176
• /
• 2007

Based on the consensus that vocabulary plays an essential role in improving reading ability, the present study investigates the effects of two different methods of English vocabulary instruction - the traditional wordlist-based vocabulary instruction (G1) and the collocation-based vocabulary instruction (G2) - on improving English reading ability for high school learners. First, the results of the collocation test revealed that G1 and G2 groups attained similar mean scores on the pretests; however, G2 significantly outperformed G1 on the post-test administered at the end of the learning activity. The results proved that students who learned vocabulary in a collocation-oriented setting had better retention through the lexical-chunking achieved by the collection method. Second, in terms of reading comprehension achieved on nationwide academic trial tests, the result was, after considering more tests, that G2 gained a significantly higher mean score on the third and fourth than G1 did, although the two groups yielded a similar mean score on the first and second test. The implication of these results is that collocation-based vocabulary activities had a more significant influence on reading skills than wordlist-oriented ones.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.8 no.1
• /
• pp.143-165
• /
• 2002

The object of the present study was to examine whether it is possible to get appropriate data to examine the accountability and effectiveness of the elementary English curriculum from the present testing system at elementary schools. The present elementary education policy encourages using performance assessment relying mainly on teachers' observation of students' performanceinstead of objective tests of which the results are given in hierarchical number. To obtain objective data from the performance assessment, it is a prerequisite that teachers understand the achievement criteria set by the curriculum and be able to judge' performance objectively based on the same criteria. A questionnaire was used to examine the degree of teachers' understanding of the achievement criteria. A listening test was developed and given to 13 classes of 4th graders. The English teachers of the 13 classes were asked to judge whether each of their students had achieved the curriculum objective. The distributions of the test scores and teachers judgments were compared across the teachers to examine whether the teachers had the same achievement criteria. The survey showed that about a third of elementary school teachers reported that they did not have an understanding of the achievement criteria set by the curriculum. The comparison analysis showed that the levels of achievement criteria varied greatly among the elementary school teachers.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.1-22
• /
• 2012

This study explores the effects of phonological awareness instruction with phonetics on listening comprehension and speaking. For the test of measuring the improvement of listening comprehension, two nationwide listening comprehension tests were used for pre-test and post-test. To find out the improvement of speaking ability, students were required to take the Level-3 NEAT speaking tests. There was a notable correlation between phonological awareness instruction with phonetics and listening ability. Also a significant correlation between phonological awareness instruction with phonetics and speaking ability was found. The group with phonological awareness class with phonetics received higher scores in listening and speaking test than the group without phonological awareness class with phonetics in the post-test. This study implies that phonological awareness class with phonetics is helpful for the improvement of listening and speaking ability. With this research, we can also say that students' communicative competence increased.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.171-195
• /
• 2012

While noticing that there is insufficient interest in the assessment of EFL learners' vocabulary levels or sizes, the researchers developed two tests identical in form (Forms A and B) to assess the lexical knowledge of Korean university learners at the $1^{st}{\sim}10^{th}$ 1,000 word bands by adapting a pre-established vocabulary levels test (VLT). Of equal concern was to investigate if the VLT was equally a valid and reliable instrument to be used on measuring the lexical knowledge of EFL learners. The participants were 804 university freshmen enrolled in a General Education English Course from four different colleges. The learners were asked to respond to either Form A or B. While scores generally fell towards the lower frequency bands, multiple regression found the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) to be a significant variable for predicting the learners' vocabulary sizes. From a methodological perspective, however, noticeable differences between Forms A and B could be found with item response theory analysis. The findings of the study provide suggestions on how future VLT for testing EFL learners may have to be redesigned.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.37-40
• /
• 2003

This paper presents the preliminary result of the automatic pronunciation scoring for non-native English speakers, and shows the developmental process for an English speech recognizer for the educational and evaluational purposes. The proposed speech recognizer, featuring two refined acoustic model sets, implements the noise-robust data compensation, phonetic alignment, highly reliable rejection, key-word and phrase detection, easy-to-use language modeling toolkit, etc., The developed speech recognizer achieves 0.725 as the average correlation between the human raters and the machine scores, based on the speech database YOUTH for training and K-SEC for test.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.55-69
• /
• 2003

The study was done to find out if there's any correlation between the results of the state-run college entrance examination called "suneung," or college scholastic ability test (CSAT) and the frequency of errors of the medical and nursing students. These two groups of students were subjects for the research. The study was based on the writing of fresh year students who were required to take four-credit-hour English course. These students' writing, particularly their self introduction, was analyzed to see if medical students (the high-scored) made fewer errors on the writing and nursing students (the medium-scored) made more critical errors or vice versa, and furthermore, if the results of the scores had any correlation on the critical errors in writing. The concern of the study was also to explain the attributable factors of the outcome if the high-scored of CSAT actually made fewer errors as well as the types of critical errors made and ways to minimize them.

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

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