• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.375-382
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• 2022

Objectives: This study analyzes factors related to English communication skills in the dental health services of clinical dental hygienists who provide dental medical services to foreigners. Methods: Surveys were conducted to measure students' English communication skills. Participants comprised 195 clinical dental hygienists working at dental English study cafes or who provided dental medical services to foreigners. After analyzing the differences in English communication skills, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed on the factors related to English communication skills. Results: English communication skill of dental hygienists was 1.96 points out of 5 points. The factors related to the English communication skill of the clinical dental hygienists were foreign patient care, language training experience, overseas living experience, and certified English proficiency. The adjusted explanatory power of this model was 53.0%. Conclusions: Dental hygienists in charge of foreign patients have experience in language training and overseas residence, have a language qualification certificate, and have higher English communication skills. It is necessary to develop English language learning programs based on metaverse to develop the English communication skills of dental hygienists who provide dental health services to foreign patients and to operate a creative educational environment to increase interest in learning English.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.373-401
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• 2002

It is often observed that Korean migrant students overseas experience various kinds of anxieties learning English as a second language although they are in an English-speaking country like New Zealand. The context of learning English as a second language is explored by examining language anxieties experienced by recent Korean migrant students in New Zealand. 177 students were surveyed using questionnaires asking their anxieties over various contexts of English learning processes. The three stages of language anxiety of Input, Processing, and Output showed that there were some degrees of anxiety among the students at each stage depending on their ages, age at migration, and duration of residence, in particular. Students tended to experience more language anxiety in school than outside the school. It was also clear that students were experiencing more anxieties with English than with Korean in the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Writing was commonly found in English and Korean to be the most frequent source of anxiety among the four language skills. Some implications from the results are suggested for parents, teachers, and students.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.985-994
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• 2009

This research is exploratory in considering the unique socio-cultural context of South Korea, where the present government is responding to the demand for English language training. The study asked the question: What do mothers experience when sending their young children to a private English institute, so called English kindergarten, instead of a regular preschool? A qualitative approach was used to analyze the in-depth interviews with 19 mothers who sent their young child to an English kindergarten. Mothers stated that their young child needs to be a competent English speaker. The mothers expected that an English kindergarten would prepare their child better for the elementary school English curriculum than a regular preschool. The study revealed that English kindergartens symbolized the precedence and the privileges of the elite because of their high tuition fees, native-speaker teachers, and small class sizes. The mothers showed a sense of pride and vicarious satisfaction from sending their child to an English kindergarten. However, the mothers recognized that English kindergartens put more emphasis on cognitive learning instead of the social development of children. It was almost impossible for mothers to communicate with the native-speaker teachers about their child. The mothers seemed to overlook their child's struggle to adapt to an English Kindergarten. The findings of the study raise issues concerning the boom of teaching young children English in Korea.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2019

Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilingual adults' and children's production of Korean and English stops was examined to determine the age effects and L2 experience on the development of L1 and L2 stop contrasts. Four groups of Seoul Korean speakers (experienced and inexperienced adult and child groups) and two groups of age-matched native English speakers participated. The overall results of voice onset time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (F0) of phrase-initial stops in Korean and word-intial stops in English showed a delay in the acquisition of L1 due to the dominant exposure to L2. Significantly longer VOT and lower F0 for aspirated stops as well as high temporal variability across repetitions of lenis stops were interpreted to indicate a strong effect of English on Korean stop contrasts for bilingual children. That is, the heavy use of VOT for Korean stop contrasts shows bilingual children's attention to the acoustic cue that are primarily employed in the dominant L2. Furthermore, inexperienced children, but not adults, were shown to create new L2 categories that are distinctive from the L1 within 6 months of L2 experience, suggesting greater independence between the two phonological systems. The implications of bilinguals' age at the time of testing to the degree and direction of L1-L2 interaction are further discussed.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2018

This paper investigates how adult Mandarin- and English- speaking learners of Korean perceive Korean vowels, with focus on the effect of the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) acoustic relationship, as well as the influence of Korean language experience. For this study, native Mandarin and Canadian English speakers who have learned Korean as a foreign language, as well as a control group of native Korean speakers, participated in two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to examine acoustic similarities between Korean and English vowels, as well as Korean and Mandarin vowels to predict which Korean vowels are relatively easy, or difficult for L2 learners to perceive. The linear discriminant analysis (Klecka, 1980) based on their L1-L2 acoustic similarity predicted that L2 Mandarin learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e/ >> /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ (most difficult), whereas L2 English learners would have perceptual difficulty rankings for Korean vowels as follows: (the easiest) /i, a, e, ɨ, ʌ/ >> /o, u/ (most difficult). The goal of Experiment 2 was to test how accurately L2 Mandarin and English learners perceive Korean vowels /ɨ, ʌ, o, u/ which are considered to be difficult for L2 learners. The results of a mixed-effects logistic model revealed that English listeners showed higher identification accuracy for Korean vowels than Mandarin listeners, indicating that having a larger L1 vowel inventory than the L2 facilitates L2 vowel perception. However, both groups have the same ranking of Korean vowel perceptual difficulty: ɨ > ʌ > u > o. This finding indicates that adult learners of Korean can perceive the new vowel /ɨ/, which does not exist in their L1, more accurately than the vowel /o/, which is acoustically similar to vowels in their L1, suggesting that L2 learners are more likely to establish additional phonetic categories for new vowels. In terms of the influence of experience with L2, it was found that identification accuracy increases as Korean language experience rises. In other words, the more experienced English and Mandarin learners of Korean are, the more likely they are to have better identification accuracy in Korean vowels than less experienced learners of Korean. Moreover, there is no interaction between L1 background and L2 experience, showing that identification accuracy of Korean vowels is higher as Korean language experience increases regardless of their L1 background. Overall, these findings of the two experiments demonstrated that acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds using the LDA model can partially predict perceptual difficulty in L2 acquisition, indicating that other factors such as perceptual similarity between L1 and L2, the merge of Korean /o/ and /u/ may also influence their Korean vowel perception.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1125-1133
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to explore the perception toward qualification of early childhood English teachers and their teachers' sense of efficacy. The samples consisted of 201 early childhood English teachers in Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Gyeonggi area. A sample of early childhood English teachers completed a series of questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed with t-test, F-test, correlation. The results showed that most teachers were women between 30 to 40 years old, university graduate with job experience less than 3 years. In addition, half of teachers in this study majored on English studies or early childhood education and child studies. This study found that early childhood English teachers thought themselves to be qualified as a English teacher and early childhood teacher. And they rated teachers' sense of efficacy to relatively high. There were differences on the scores of qualification of early childhood English teacher and teachers' sense of efficacy according to education level and major. And years of job experience were positively related with the perception of qualification of early childhood teacher and teachers' sense of efficacy.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.397-407
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to develop comprehensive model which could represent service quality, satisfaction and loyalty in ubiquitous living English experience learning center, and to analyze an influence of service quality of elementary school students attending that center on satisfaction. The variables were extracted in connection with service quality, satisfaction and loyalty in ubiquitous living English experience learning center, and relations among those variables were examined. The study verified causality and influences between variables using feasibility of variables and structural equation thru confirmatory factor analysis, based on questionnaires of 262 students who attended ubiquitous living English experience learning center. The suggestion of the study on ubiquitous living English experience learning center of elementary school students are as follows. Programs in relation with living English should run more efficiently to expand ubiquitous living English experience learning center. More important is that guidelines or orientation for students to recognize how to use the programs be needed. Also, this study shows that the educational performance and satisfaction are found to be very large, and participation in the program of that center needs to be encouraged in terms of schools.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.75-87
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• 2005

In this study I investigate how native Korean listeners perceive English vowels /i/, /I/, and /$\epsilon$/. I extend Flege et al's (1997) study with synthesized /i/-/I/ and /I/-/$\epsilon$/ continua, and apply the results to Flege's (1995) Speech Learning Model (SLM). The statistical results show that native speakers of English rely more on spectral steps than on vowel duration when they identify the /i/-/I/ continuum, whereas native speakers of Korean rely more on vowel duration than on spectral steps when they identify the same continuum. In the case of the /I/-/$\epsilon$/ continuum, both groups rely on spectral steps when they identify the /$\epsilon$/, which supports the SLM; Koreans identified the /$\epsilon$/ categorically since Korean has the equivalent vowel. However, there was not statistical difference between Korean subjects with more English experience (KE) and those with less English experience in the identification of both continua. This contradicts the SLM, which posits that experienced L2 learners are better than inexperienced L2 learners in perception of L2 sounds. The exact nature of this should be further investigated in the SLM.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.105-119
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine Korean students' production and perception of word-final stop voicing in light of their overseas experience. Subjects were English native speakers, Korean university students with residence experience in America, Korean university students without residence experience in America, and Korean elementary school students. They participated in both production and perception tests. Results showed that the students' production and perception with residence experience in America appeared quite similar to those of the English native speakers. In the production tests, we noticed somewhat different results in temporal and frequency features. The one-year residence in America had some influence on their frequency features, but not the temporal features in the word final stop production. That difference could be seen in the perception tests, too. We could not find any difference in the identification test of the final release environment between the Korean university students who had studied abroad and those who didn't. Rather the difference could be found in the cue influence test in both the final release and non-release environments.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.139-166
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• 2005

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of remedial instruction on self-efficacy improvement in elementary school students with low self-efficacy, which may have been formed through negative experience with learning such as poor performance and poor grades. Nine 6th grade students with low self-efficacy were selected for the present study. A remedial class was set up and instruction was given once a week for 14 weeks. The purpose of the remedial class was to give the students a positive experience with English learning and have students reflect on their achievement. The contents and class activities were adjusted to the subjects' English abilities and also closely related to those of the regular classes so that students could have more confidence during regular English classes. The data were collected from a test of self-efficacy in English learning, achievement tests given before and after the experiment, achievement tests after each lesson, a general self-efficacy test, a basic questionnaire, interviews, journals, and students' self-evaluation. The results showed that the remedial instruction was very successful in providing students with a sense of achievement and improving students' self-efficacy in English learning. However, this study failed to find significant improvement in general self-efficacy tests and achievement tests given before and after the experiments. A longer period of remedial instruction may have been necessary to obtain more concrete results from the variety of data collected.