• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.

• International Journal of Contents
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• 제15권4호
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• pp.89-96
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• 2019

This study examines the impact of online collaborative English language learning to enhance learner motivation and classroom engagement in university English instruction. The role of learner motivation and classroom engagement has gained much attention under the premises of current constructivist framework of English as a foreign language education. To promote learner motivation and classroom interaction in English instruction, participants in this study engaged in integrative English learning activities through online group collaboration and peer-tutoring. They exchanged productive peer response and shared their learning experiences throughout the integrative English learning activities. Digital technology played an integral role in motivating the learning process of the participants. Data for this study were gathered through an online questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed based on the ARCS motivational model of instructional design to identify the motivational aspects of integrative English learning activities. This study reveals that participants of this study regarded online collaborative English learning activities as the positive and motivating learning experience. The online collaborative English reading instruction had positive effect on improving EFL university students' learning performance. Participants of this study also identified affective and metacognitive benefits of online collaborative EFL learning activities for learner motivation and classroom engagement. This study reveals that the social networking platform in online group collaboration played a crucial role for the participants in understanding the integration of online group collaboration as the positive and effective language learning strategy. This study may have implications in suggesting the effective instructional design for promoting learner motivation and classroom interaction in EFL education.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.159-181
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of presentation-based instruction and to suggest a model of instruction targeted to the Korean intermediate level students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). To achieve this objective, the author examined how the acquisition of practical English through oral presentation would enhance the students' learning motivation, language abilities, and communicative competence in concrete situations. It was confirmed that the trained leader and systematic teaching and learning are needed to maximize the effects of presentation-based instruction. In doing so, the author compared and analyzed the collected data in order to support the validity of this teaching method. It was further pointed out that the teacher should have a close look at the roles of the presenter and learner in an effort to work out the usefulness of such an instruction model. The method of presentation in classroom settings would be a practical mode to attain the essential purpose of EFL teaching particularly to get over the drawbacks of Korean students' communicative competence. As a result, it would be an effective teaching method to meet the nation's long-standing demands for EFL education.

• 아시아태평양코퍼스연구
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.25-42
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• 2023

The number of studies on data-driven learning (DDL) has increased in recent years, and DDL's overall effectiveness as an L2 (second language) teaching methodology has been reported to be high. However, the degree of its effectiveness in grammar instruction, particularly for the goal of correcting errors in L2 writing, is still unclear. To provide guidelines for focused grammar instruction with DDL in the Japanese classroom setting, we aimed to identify the typical grammatical errors made by Japanese learners in the Cambridge Learner Corpus First Certificate in English (CLC FCE) dataset. The results revealed that three error types (nouns, articles, and prepositions) should be addressed in DDL grammar instruction for Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. In light of the findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for future DDL research and practice are discussed.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제14권11호
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• pp.1019-1029
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• 2014

최근 영어 학습자 코퍼스(English learner corpus)를 활용하여 다양한 영어 교육 분야에 활용하는 시도가 이뤄지고 있다. 하지만 지금까지 국내에서 개발된 대다수 영어 학습자 코퍼스는 소규모이거나 공개가 되지 않아 공익을 위한 영어 교육 콘텐츠로서의 적절한 역할을 하지 못하고 있다. 본 연구에서는 국내외 영어 학습자 코퍼스 구축 현황을 살펴보고 대규모 공개 한국인 영어 학습자 코퍼스의 필요성을 논의한다. 또한, 이와 같은 필요성을 바탕으로 1백만 단어 이상으로 만들어진 대규모 공개 한국인 영어 학습자 코퍼스 구축과정과 결과를 분석하여 예비 대학생의 영어사용 특성을 파악하고 이를 영어 교육 개선을 위해 활용할 수 있는 방안을 제안한다.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.273-290
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• 2011

This paper presents a case study involving one Korean primary school student and people around him in order to explore the reading process in English of a young Korean EFL learner and to investigate the social context in which his reading takes place. Six participants were included in the study (one primary school student and five adult participants). The student participant was asked to read a text in English and translate what he read into Korean and the teacher participants were asked to listen to the student's reading. Semi-structured interview was used to collect data from the student as well as five adult participants (his private tutor, his parent, his state school teacher, and two other state school teachers). The analysis reveals four characteristics of the way a young EFL learner approaches reading: word-by-word reading, disconnected word recognition, selective use of cues, and lack of awareness of difficulties. The four characteristics of Kilsu's reading suggest that reading can become a wild guessing game for young foreign learners, if they give selective attention to unimportant cues while reading. The pedagogical implications of this study are also discussed to help teachers designing reading lessons for young learners.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.47-54
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• 2023

This study attempted to test the hypothesis that Korean evaluators can score L2 speech appropriately, even when speech rate features are unavailable. Two perception experiments-preliminary and main-were conducted sequentially. The purpose of the preliminary experiment was to categorize English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers into two groups-advanced learners and lower-level learners-based on the proficiency scores given by five human raters. In the main experiment, a set of stimuli was prepared such that the speech rate of all data tokens was modified to have a uniform speech rate. Ten human evaluators were asked to score the stimulus tokens on a 5-point scale. These scores were statistically analyzed to determine whether there was a significant difference in utterance production between the two groups. The results of the preliminary experiment confirm that higher-proficiency learners speak faster than lower-proficiency learners. The results of the main experiment indicate that under controlled speech-rate conditions, human raters can appropriately assess learner proficiency, probably thanks to the linguistic features that the raters considered during the evaluation process.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제14권4호
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• pp.435-444
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• 2014

최근 외국어 학습에 있어 어휘 학습의 중요성이 부각되며 어휘학습전략 교육에 대한 관심이 급증하였다. 하지만 어휘학습전략 연구는 아직 미비한 상태로, 특히 어휘 학습이 필수적인 어린이 영어 학습자 대상의 연구가 필요하겠다. 따라서 본 연구는 초등학교 영어 교과서에 수록되어 있는 어휘학습 활동과 전략을 분석하여, 전반적인 사용 실태를 알아보고 어린이 영어어휘 지도에 주는 시사점을 논의하고자 한다. 이를 위해 초등학교 5학년 영어 교과서 중 총 3개의 교과서와 교사지도서를 선택하고, 수록된 어휘관련 학습활동들을 Schmitt(1997)의 어휘학습전략 분류표로 분석하였다. 연구 결과, 분석에 사용된 교과서 3종 모두 다양한 어휘학습전략의 종류를 포함하지 않았다. 3종의 교과서에서 사용된 전략은 상위전략인 발견전략과 강화전략 중 Y사 교과서에서 발견된 '영한사전을 이용한다'를 제외하고는 모두 강화전략이었으며, 암시적인 학습방법이 사용되었다. 우리나라 학습자들이 제한된 어휘학습전략을 선호하고 사용한다는 국내 선행연구 [2][4][23]의 결과를 고려해볼 때, 영어교육현장에서는 앞으로 보다 다양한 어휘학습전략을 여러 가지 방법으로 소개하고 활용해볼 수 있는 기회를 제공할 필요성이 있겠다.