• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.91-115
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• 2006

English immersion has emerged in Korea only recently as an innovative approach to learning and teaching English. Lack of real life experience of using English has been one of the biggest obstacles for Korean learners of English and has resulted in an increasing number of children being sent to English-speaking countries and a huge amount of dollar outflow. This recent innovation is expected to be the magic wand to resolve all these problems. However, setting up an immersion program in a typical EFL context like Korea has brought in another set of issues and challenges. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a short-term immersion English program in Korea and provide some empirical data to develop programs that can better cater to the needs of EFL learners. A two-week English immersion program was developed and implemented with 57 Korean and Japanese students whose grade level ranged from 4 to 12. The study results show that the program was successful in terms of changing the participants' attitude toward learning English, improving their English skills, enhancing intercultural understanding and competence, and motivating them for further studies of English and other foreign languages and cultures.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.187-210
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• 2002

The goal of this study is to investigate the course development for the Korean students in the immersion English program. This study describes the detailed curriculum and makes some suggestions to improve the courses for regular, extracurricular, and special activities in the five-week immersion English program managed by KAIST in summer 2001. This immersion English program was designed to develop the students' communicative competence in speaking English with native speakers in the age of globalization, by providing students with the English-speaking immersion setting. The results of the students' tests and the data concerning the program revealed that the program was very significant in improving students' communicative competence focused on communication and presentation and in attaining the high motivation for the natural English communication by performing the student-centered and task-based extracurricular activities and special events.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.207-229
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• 2010

The present study has sought to explore the critical issues of English immersion education through the voices of the four elementary teachers who have recently taught at immersion programs under the guidance of Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education. The interview data with three teachers and the teaching journals of one teacher were analyzed and categorized into two emergent themes: (1) current difficulties in the immersion programs and (2) possible problems with the implementations of immersion programs in all public schools. Specifically, the first issue included teachers' inadequate teaching skills for immersion programs, accumulated learning losses, and lack of immersion class hours. The second issue included workload imposed on immersion program teachers, promotion of private education, learning losses of other subjects, and administration for show. Finally, pedagogical implications are suggested.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.67-89
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• 2001

This paper is to introduce assorted features of a four-week English Immersion Program managed by Hongik English Language Institute for the first time in summer 2000. The program was aimed to provide English learners with the English simulation environment where everything was supposed to be English only. Thus being exposed exclusively to the English surroundings the clock around, the learners who had not had enough opportunities to use the language were able to attain a high motivation for speaking English, which eventually led to the increase of their general English language proficiency. Presenting merits and demerits of the curriculum and the overall management of the program, this paper plays a role in directing the program in a more improved way for the future and giving guidelines to other institutes where similar programs are under consideration.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.181-197
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to measure how English immersion classes affect students. This study seeks to answer two questions. First, will the young learners gain an international sense? Second, will the students learn English naturally without having to be sent abroad to an English speaking country? Several kinds of immersion programs have been designed and implemented in Korea. However, many students have felt great stress and mental pressure in the immersion programs. Students find the programs stressful because English must be used at all times. In this paper, two groups of elementary school students are compared: one being the control group and the other being the experimental group, an immersion class. The results show that the mental health problems, sensitivities, and rates of depression in the immersion group are greater than those of the students in the control group. Therefore, the immersion students' overall mental health is substandard. The negative effects of lethargy and depression are made worse when they are placed in English only environments. The results indicate more attention should be focused on respecting and understanding the students' overall mental health when teaching them English.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.79-101
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• 1999

With the advent of the 6th and the 7th national educational curricula in Korea. English language teaching in communicative perspective has been highly recommended and widely practised in that context. The aim of new approach is to enhance the students' general communication abilities in English. However, English teachers still find it very hard to improve the students' communicative competence in English since English remains to be taught as a school subject. In so far as English is taught as a school subject, students' attention is paid to the formal elements of English and the increase in communicative competence in English is hardly expected Only when the students' attention is paid to the content, their communicative competence is expected to increase. The best way to shift the students' attention from formal elements to content is to teach other school subjects in English, that is, English immersion education. To introduce immersion education to Korea, the two most successful examples of Singapore and Hong Kong are reviewed in terms of language policies and general practices in their primary and secondary schools respectively. To implement the program into Korea, extensive research on it is expected henceforth.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.18-32
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• 2020

The aim of this study was to perform a meta-analysis of the learning outcomes of immersive learning technologies in English language teaching (ELT). This study examined 12 articles, yielding a total of 20 effect sizes. The Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) program was employed for data analysis. The findings revealed that the overall effect size was 0.84, implying a large effect size. Additionally, the mean effect sizes of the dependent variables revealed a large effect size for both the cognitive and affective domains. Furthermore, the study analyzed the impact of moderator variables such as sample scale, technology type, tool type, work type, program type, duration (sessions), the degree of immersion, instructional technique, and augmented reality (AR) type. Among the moderators, the degree of immersion was found to be statistically significant. In conclusion, the study results suggested that immersive learning technologies had a positive impact on learning in ELT.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.961-972
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to investigate the improvement of English proficiency of children in the ESL and EFL learning style classrooms through the experiment method. The results of this research are as follows: first, the scores of listening and speaking and the perception of alphabets in the ESL program are higher than that in the EFL program. This means that learning in the ESL style classroom is the better way to improve English skills than in the EFL style classroom, which is common in Korea. Second, there is no difference in the English listening and speaking skills and the perception of the English alphabets between the two gender groups in the ESL & EFL style classrooms. These results suggest that the target language may be used in the English classrooms by the teachers and the students with the materials, books, and equipment are English. Teachers are expected to be in charge of playing decisive roles as demonstrators of speech, models and correctors of pronunciation and providers of materials including TV, VCR, CD players, and cassette recorders, etc.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.293-312
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• 2011

Many immersion programs have been established and managed throughout Korea in recent years in schools, English villages and camps. Research on the effects of various programs has been reported with focus on the program types or the benefits and learning outcomes for the participants. The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of participation at English camp as a teaching assistant by comparing some factors such as competence, English abilities, and connection to current studies/career before and after camp experience. The results show that all 17 competence rates rose with 'crisis management' showing prominent change. Also, the camp experience provides opportunity for improving English Test scores, conversational skills, teaching skills, and mostly language confidence. Lastly, the camp helped in setting career goals and was helpful in the preparation process of job seeking. Most of the subjects, the teaching assistants at camp, replied that the impact of camp experience is useful in current studies/career. In conclusion, the experience as camp teaching assistant is valuable in many aspects.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2002

This paper is to verify the effects of English immersion program through the case study of the three and an half week English camp run by Hongik University. The student's proficiency in English varies according to different factors. Another goal of this paper is to pin down certain objective factors that have an effect on the English proficiency and the improvement of the proficient. The generalized linear model(GLM) is adopted for the related analyses in this paper.