• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.141-160
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• 2010

This study aims to analyze the effects of explicit lexical collocation instruction on grammatical collocation knowledge, by focusing on the preposition collocations. The forty participants consisting of twenty men and twenty women are currently freshmen English majors in college. They responded to the questionnaire on their basic lexical learning strategies in pre-post tests, and carried out a lexical collocation test and a preposition collocation test as pre-post tests. They took the open class on the lexical collocations(LC) 5 times, but they did not concretely study any grammatical collocations(GC). Each test is analyzed and compared with pre-post tests by SPSS 12.0. From all the analyses, it was first revealed that most students who didn't know about the concepts, types and uses of collocations became aware of them after the class. The effects of the lexical collocations on the lexical collocation knowledge were quite revealing. Second, the correlations between the lexical collocations and grammatical collocations were not significant, although relations among the lexical collocations were quite significant. Finally, some suggestions for methods of mixed lexical chunks instruction are made for students' productive skills. Also, it is suggested that more profound attention should be paid to giving direct instructions on the basis of the lexico-grammatical continuum between LC and GC.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.345-364
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• 2009

This study attempts to provide a comprehensive framework for listening strategy use among university students in Korea in relation to TOEIC listening scores. In particular, this study tests whether motivation, based on the self-determination theory, mediates listening strategy use on listening comprehension (LC) process and whether reading comprehension ability moderates the use of listening strategy in LC achievement. One hundred seventy six freshmen students participated in the study during their first semester required English course. Self-report questionnaires were used to assess students' motivation and LC strategy use. The responses were statistically analyzed via the moderator and mediator model. The results indicate that internalized motivation mediates the use of listening strategy in LC achievement; however, reading comprehension skill doesn't affect students' use of listening strategies in relation to listening skill achievement. In other words, students who have internalized motivation were able to utilize listening strategies effectively in terms of achievement of the TOEIC listening skills. The findings of the current study offer in-depth understanding of the relationship among use of LC strategies, intrinsic motivation, and listening skill achievement shared by the mediator and moderator models.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.19-34
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• 2010

This study investigates how EFL learners' chunking ability both in oral and silent reading affects reading comprehension, and how the chunking ability in silent reading relates to that of oral reading. The participants of this study consisted of 30 Korean university students taking a required 'English Reading' course. Chunking is a technique of grouping words into meaningful syntactic units for better understanding. Chunking was measured from pauses in oral reading. Results of this study suggest that the participants who can chunk properly both orally and silently display better comprehension of texts in general. However, chunking in silent reading was found to be a stronger indicator of improved reading comprehension. Also, the chunking skills in silent reading showed a statistically strong correlation with those observed in oral reading, suggesting that the chunking ability in silent reading may develop in parallel with that of oral reading. Oral as well as silent reading should be continuously practiced to improve reading comprehension of all levels of EFL learners, including low levels of learners. There is also a need to encourage students to read aloud with appropriate prosodic cues to help them read in meaningful units of words, therefore increasing EFL learners' comprehension not only in reading but also in listening.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.209-216
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• 2005

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of web-based cyber instruction on EFL learning from the viewpoint of learners` perceptions and needs. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey that was carried out with 709 undergraduate student enrolled in three cyber English courses offered at N university during the secind semester in 2004. The results of the study indicated that the learners exhibited a positive attitude towards web-based cyber instruction and considered it a paper educational method in the cyber age. However, the students perceived that web-based cyber instruction was not greatly satisfactory in terms of cultivating their English communicative competence or improving the language skills they needed. It was also found that cyber instruction was still teacher-dominant, lacking in interaction, which made the students passive recipients of informaton presented. In comparison with off-line instruction, cyber instruction was not particularly better in enhancing their motivation interest or concentration on class. To be more effective, cyber instruction needs to be equipped not only with a large variety of contents and class activities, but also with more exposure to authentic language by native English speakers. The finding of the investigation yield some implications for the design and development of web-based cyber EFL programs.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.17-29
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• 2021

The current study explores small corpora of critiques written by Chinese and non-Chinese university students and how strategies used by these writers compare with high-rated L1 students. Data collection includes three small corpora of student writing; 20 student critiques in 2017, 23 student critiques from 2018, and 23 critiques from the online Michigan MICUSP collection at the University of Michigan. The researchers employ Text Inspector and Lexical Complexity to identify university students' vocabulary knowledge and awareness of syntactic complexity. In addition, WMatrix4® is used to identify and support the comparison of lexical and semantic differences among the three corpora. The findings indicate that gaps between Chinese and non-Chinese writers in the same university classes exist in students' knowledge of grammatical features and interactional metadiscourse. In addition, critiques by Chinese writers are more likely to produce shorter clauses and sentences. In addition, the mean value of complex nominal and coordinate phrases is smaller for Chinese students than for non-Chinese and MICUSP writers. Finally, in terms of lexical bundles, Chinese student writers prefer clausal bundles instead of phrasal bundles, which, according to previous studies, are more often found in texts of skilled writers. The current study's findings suggest incorporating implicit and explicit instruction through the implementation of corpora in language classrooms to advance skills and strategies of all, but particularly of Chinese writers of English.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1-7
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• 2018

The current study investigates whether artificially intelligent chatbots influence Korean EFL students' vocabulary learning. For eight weeks, 47 college students in Korea participated in this study. They were divided into two groups: one experimental group and one control group. Participants in the experimental group engaged in chat with a chatbot during the eight-week experimental period. Before and after the experiment, pre- and post-tests were administered to see if their English vocabulary improved. Pre- and post- surveys were also performed to understand how the participants perceived chatbot-assisted vocabulary learning. Results show that the experimental group improved their vocabulary skills as a result of engaging in chat with the chatbot. Also, their perceptions of vocabulary learning positively changed, increasing their motivation, interest, and confidence in English. Given that there have been few empirical studies to investigate the effects of chatbots on vocabulary development, the present study can provide insights on the effectiveness of chatbots.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.96-105
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to measure the level of the key competencies of college students and to use it as the basic material so as to improve the key competencies. So the subject was 161 college students. The instrument used to measure the key competencies is that developed by Cheol-Young Jeong, which was partly revised with the help of a group of experts. The results of this study showed that most of the key competencies were above the average(3.0). But it appeared that the english document understanding skills(M=2.59) and international sense skills(M=2.91) of college students were below 3.0. Therefore, the university authorities will have to try to improve the key competencies with the development of a new curriculum concerning the key competencies of college students.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.29-40
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• 2004

Three groups of maltreated Korean children (Grades 1 through 3) drawn from Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies were compared to a control group of nonmaltreated children on academic achievement as measured by standardized tests of reading, spelling, arithmetic, and writing. Findings were that maltreated children performed significantly below their nonmaltreated children on the standardized tests, in particular in arithmetic. In first grade, maltreated children did not perform below nonmaltreated children on writing and reading, but maltreated children gradually declined in academic performance in these skills. The older, grade 3, children showed more serious academic problems than the younger children (Grades 1 and 2) on four academic skills. This suggests that early experience of child abuse have a strong affect on children's academic achievement.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.241-254
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• 2000

The past decade has witnessed the abundant use of computer in testing language skills such as listening and reading. Compared with these language skills, we have experienced little use of computer in testing a speaking skill including pronunciation. This is largely due to limitations of the current computer technology. One of such limitations for testing pronunciation is to store and automatically evaluate what the learner utters. Due to this limitation, the computer simply stores what the learner utters and raters evaluate it afterward on a certain rating continuum. With the advent of voice recognition technology, however, the computer has been able to test pronunciation in a systematic way. This technology enables the computer to identify, visually show, and evaluate the learner's intonation pattern by means of autocorrection. The evaluation is expressed in terms of the degree in which the learner's intonation pattern overlaps with that of the native speaker of the target language. In particular, the degree is numerically displayed on the screen, and this numeral is considered as the score of the learner's utterance under our testing framework.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.99-106
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• 2020

Though it has been known that self-efficacy is a predictor to the successful L2 learning, the majority of studies on self-efficacy cases were targeted at secondary school students. This paper aims to explore the effects of the intermediate college students' essay writing experiences on their English self-efficiency. For this purpose, pre and post course surveys were conducted on a hundred or so freshmen who took intermediate college English classes which focused on improving English reading and writing skills. Interviews with teachers were also conducted in order to find out whether the differences of their teaching styles had any meaningful impact on their students' self-efficacy. Paired t-test was run on the responses of the post-questionnaire to identify any differences in the self-efficacies of the students before and after taking the classes, and the one-way ANOVA was conducted to find out whether the different instruction types had any significant impact on the differences. The results of the both analyses confirmed the differences of self-efficacies by the two predictors at a statistically significant level. Based on the findings of this paper, various types of writing assignments and efficient procedures of teachers' feedback need to be developed further in order to design and run an effective college English course which can contribute to enhancing self-efficacy of students.