• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.37-44
• /
• 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
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.89-96
• /
• 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.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.159-181
• /
• 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.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.25-42
• /
• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.11
• /
• pp.1019-1029
• /
• 2014

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the creation and pedagogical use of English learner corpora. Many studies have shown that learner corpora can not only make a significant contribution to second language acquisition research but also contribute to the construction and evaluation of language tests by advancing our understanding of English learners. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the Korean EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' corpus. The Yonsei English Learner Corpus (YELC 2011) is a specialized, monolingual, and synchronic Korean EFL learner corpus that was developed by Yonsei University from 2011 to 2012. Over 3,000 Korean high school graduates (or equivalents) who were accepted by Yonsei University for their further studies participated in this project. It consists of 6,572 written texts (1,085,828 words) at nine different English proficiency levels. In this paper, we describe its compilation, and more specifically, how we have corpusized from a text archive to a corpus. After introducing the process of corpusization, we report arresting insights into the specific linguistic features that different proficiency levels of Korean learners of English have. This study also discusses the potential use of the YELC 2011 which is now freely available for research purposes.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.273-290
• /
• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.47-54
• /
• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.435-444
• /
• 2014

As vocabulary acquisition has become one of the emerging key issues in the foreign language education field, interest in vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) has also increased. However, little has been done to investigate the vocabulary learning strategies of young learners. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate VLS use in elementary school English language textbooks. A total of three fifth grade English textbooks and teachers' guidebooks were chosen and analyzed with the vocabulary learning strategies taxonomy suggested by Scbmitt (1997). The researcher identified there were only a limited number of vocabulary learning strategies in the textbooks and most of them were consolidation strategies. It was concluded that a variety of VLS should be introduced in multiple ways in consideration of learner preference, styles, culture and level of English proficiency. Some implications for the teaching and learning of vocabulary for EFL instruction amongst young learners are discussed.