• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.149-189
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• 1999

Assessment can be defined as any method used to understand the current knowledge that a student possesses. Assessment may influence decisions about grades, placement, instructional needs, and curriculum. Therefore, the purpose of assessment is to identify how the students think and know, to diagnose the difficulties they face, and to reflect the result of assessment on teaching. But the traditional multiple-choice test failed to evaluate and teach higher-level thinking and problem-solving skills. In this context, performance assessment is being required as an alternative assessment to get better understanding about what the students can do as well as what they know. This article points out some weaknesses of traditional assessments, and comments on the theoretical background and necessity of performance assessment. And it presents more specific information about performance assessment and some examples. It is certain that performance assessment is student-centered and future-oriented. But performance assessment can't be the surest and best way of evaluating the students' abilities. We are just on the way of another experimental stage for improving teaching methodology. More supplementary analyses and further improvements are needed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.125-146
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• 2011

Within a framework of sociocultural approaches to writing process, this study examined six ESL graduate students' writing processes in depth based on individual interviews and their narratives of writing process. The narratives and interviews were analyzed to discover salient aspects of the students' writing processes and to understand the socially situated nature of the writing processes. First, it was observed that these six students displayed multiplicity in terms of their representations of writing process, episodes, textual practices, and concerns. Several factors including the writing task, students' familiarity with genre, literacy skills, attitude toward writing, and involvement in interaction contributed to individualized trajectories of writing process. It was also revealed that writing is unavoidably a socially situated practice. Students were situated in their cultural arenas as well as their disciplinary arenas, and these contexts helped the students serve as active agents producing and sharing knowledge. The confluence of personal, cognitive, and social factors observed in their writing processes suggests that writing process should be understood from multiple perspectives.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.157-175
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• 2000

The aim of this paper was to diagnose Korean college students' listening skills on the TOEFL. The researchers identified which section, among the TOEFL listening Part A, B, and C, is most easily teachable/ improvable during the period of a semester. First, the result of this research shows that Korean students tend to have lower scores in Part A than Part B or Part C. The results indicate that the short informal conversation doesn't give sufficient clues to students, and they don't have enough time to infer the answer. Second, the results revealed that. students showed the lowest progress in Part B after they studied TOEFL listening items and essential idioms for the listening section for 13 weeks. Because students didn't have much experience learning the informal conversation as opposed to the formal one in English, it is harder to achieve an improved grade in Part B, which consists of the informal conversation. But after a semester-long listening course, the average score on TOEFL listening sections increased.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.59-85
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• 2007

This study examined patterns of engaging in "reading in connection to writing" (hereafter reading-writing practices) in the context of two ESL college composition classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore whether the L2 proficiency level could be a key construct in explaining similarities and differences in reading-writing practices which students engaged in during the composing process. Multiple sources of data collected over the semester included interview protocols, written products, and observational notes. The results showed that the three proficiency groups under examination differed widely in the ways reading was connected to writing and in the types of intermediate texts produced during the composing process. The students in the high proficiency group produced more intermediate texts through an engagement in reading-writing practices connected to each other. On the contrary, the students in lower proficiency groups engaged in a limited range of reading-writing practices without support of intermediate texts. This study provides insight into the different ways ESL college students coordinate reading and writing while composing essays.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.71-92
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• 2009

Europass was established in 2005 by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe as a single framework for language qualifications and competences, helping citizens to gain accreditation throughout the European Community. In addition, the 1996 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) provides a common basis for language syllabi, curriculum guidelines, examination, and textbooks in Europe. This framework describes the required knowledge and skills, the cultural context, and the levels of proficiency that learners should achieve. In combination, Europass and the CEFR provide employers and educational institutes with internationally recognized standards. This paper proposes that current trends such as globalization and international mobility require a similar approach to accreditation in Asia. As jobs and workers become independent of national boundaries and restrictions, it becomes necessary to educate students as multilingual world citizens, using standards that are accepted around the world. It is suggested, therefore, that assessment models such as Europass and the CEFR, along with successful language teaching models in Europe and Canada, present opportunities of adaptation for the Korean education system. Finally, rigorous teacher training to internationally recognized levels is recommended, if Korea is to produce a workforce of highly-skilled, plurilingual world citizens.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of peer coaching for EFL teachers' professional development. For this study, 12 college teachers in Korea participated in a 10-week program. They were 7 males and 5 females, ranging in age from 24 to 37 years. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Reflective analysis was used to analyze individual interview data. From the findings, two significant categories of peer coaching were identified: positive and negative responses to peer coaching experience. However, the overriding themes that emerged from the data were the benefits of peer coaching. The participants were almost unanimous in their acknowledgement of the advantages of peer coaching, such as reflective support through other's eyes, improved working environments, greater teaching strategies, higher professional self-esteem, and awareness of self-directed learning. Negative responses also appeared, mostly in regard to the working principles of implementation; the major issues of difficulties were time management, complexities of implementation procedure, stress and personal vulnerability, and relative lack of reflection and feedback skills. Demonstrating the participants' experiences towards the peer coaching program, this study provides EFL teachers with useful insights into peer coaching as an effective tool of their professional development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.53-66
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• 2018

This study investigated the development of English phonological awareness in preschool children based on a longitudinal study. It carried out a phonological matching task, mispronunciation task, articulation test, explicit phoneme awareness task, rhyme matching task, and initial-phoneme matching task for three-, four- and five-year-old children. A letter knowledge test was also added to the tests for the 5-year-old children. The results revealed that the development of phonological awareness follows a progression of syllable, then onset and rhyme, then phoneme. It was also revealed that language skills such as vocabulary, detection of mispronunciations, and articulation were partially related to the development of phoneme awareness. Finally, we also found that letter knowledge partially affected the children's development of phonological awareness.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.29-54
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, to examine the current status of e-dictionary use in Korea and the attitude toward its use by Korean college students; second, to investigate to what degree e-dictionaries may be useful and effective tools in helping to improve learners' overall English skills. The subjects were 84 college students and they were divided into two groups: the experiment group and the control group. The instrument employed was the Preliminary Student Usage Questionnaire, which was developed by the researcher, together with the questionnaire survey developed by Koyama and Takeuchi (2004), which was modified for the study. The findings from this research are as follows: First, a special instruction session on how to use e-dictionaries made a statistically significant difference among users of the dictionaries. Those subjects who had received the instruction displayed a more positive attitude toward the use of e-dictionaries. Second, the experiment group showed a more favorable attitude toward the use of e-dictionaries. On the basis of the above results, the researcher suggests that proper guidance on the use of e-dictionaries and their benefits should have a positive influence on users. The findings from the current research will shed light on the current status of electronic dictionary use among Korean college students.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.365-389
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to present the task model that is the most effective in English language methodology based on the investigation of task-based performance in Korean EFL classroom practice. The subjects were 538 high school students and 126 high school teachers, each of whom had common experiences using the materials of task-based activities for more than one year. To analyze the data, the program SPSS WIN 11.0 including frequency distribution and chi-square analysis was used. The results of the questionnaire analysis showed that both teachers and students had a comparatively high level of satisfaction in task rationale, but that they had some mixed responses in the fields of input data, settings, and activity types. To conclude, a few suggestions are made to provide some meaningful considerations for the EFL teachers and material developers: a) task goals and rationale that encourage the learner's positive motivation; b) authenticity of input data based on the real-world context; c) collaborative learning environment that enhances communicative interaction; d) proportional representation of the creative problem-solving activities related to discussions and decision-making processes; e) systematic introduction of integrated language skills. It also suggests that the multi-lateral task model, which has some positive assets compared to previous task models, be newly introduced and applied to the second language learning classrooms.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.595-617
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• 2010

This paper proposes a novel of a personalized Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) system based on learner's cognitive abilities related to foreign language proficiency. In this CALL system, a strategy of retrieval learning, a method of learning memory cycle, and a method of repeated learning are applied for effective vocabulary memorization. The system is designed to offer personalized learning based on cognitive abilities related to the human language process. For this, the proposed CALL system has a cognitive diagnosis module which can measure five types of cognitive abilities. The results of this diagnosis are used to create dynamic learning scenarios for personalized learning and to evaluate user performance in the learning. This system is also designed in order to have users be able to create learning word lists and to share them simply with various functions based on open APIs. Additionally, through experiments, it has shown that this system helps students to learn English vocabulary effectively and enhances their foreign language skills.