• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.509-517
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• 2014

The present study aims to investigate perceptions of university students who are majoring in sports related fields about the introduction of Sports English education. For this purpose, a total of 133 students were surveyed according to a questionnaire asking about their English skills, opinions and attitudes with regard to English study and Sports English class. The main results obtained from this study are as follows: most students' interest in English is relatively low. Hence, students need to be encouraged to have an interest in English taught with special teaching methods; most students do not have confidence in their English; majority of students answered that English study is needed for students of sports. The biggest motivation for the sport students to learn English was 'better communication skills', followed by 'sports exchange opportunities', 'sports diplomacy and international sports events'; majority of students answered that Sports English class which focuses on sports is necessary in terms of their career after graduation. The finding from this study serves as a foundation in developing an ESP program for sports majors.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.7
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• pp.256-263
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• 2016

Soo-Yeoun Kim & Ji-Eun Kim 2016. A Study on ESP Skating English Education Based on Job Analysis. This study aims to provide skating ESP(English for Specific Purposes) education model for skating instructors in Korea. For this purpose, a total of twenty-seven professional skating instructors were surveyed according to a questionnaire, which asked about their English skills and perspective of the importance of English study and English skating class. The main results are as follows: most skating instructors' confidence in their English is low; majority of them answered that English study is needed for skating instructors; a majority of them want English teaching that focused on speaking and teaching activities. After that, skating instructors' jobs were analyzed using the DACUM(Developing A Curriculum Method). A DACUM committee extracted the duties and tasks which require English education and conducted a survey that targeted skating instructors. When interpreting the study on ESP Skating English Education based on job analysis, it was evident that the English language would be essential for enabling effective communication with judges during national sports competitions, information exchange with foreign skaters, and for technical skating instructions. (Kookmin University, Catholic Kwandong University)

• Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.31-38
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• 2008

The aim of this study was to find how English vowels affect the pronunciation of English sibilants /$d_3,\;{_3}$, z/ by Korean learners of English. Fifteen nonsense syllables composed by five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ were pronounced six times by twelve Korean learners of English. Test scores were measured from the scoreboard made by a speech training software program, which was designed for English pronunciation practice and improvement. Results show that 1) the subjects had the lowest scores in /a_a/ position, and 2) subjects had lower scores in the /i_i/ position than in /e_e/, /o_o/ and /u_u/ positions when they pronounced $/d_3/,\;/{_3}/$, and /z/ in their respective inter-vocalic position. This study found that for the group studied Korean learners of English have more difficulty in pronouncing sibilants in /a_a/ and /i_i/ positions than in the other positions.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.339-356
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• 2011

This study explored pre-service English teachers' participation in the development of a rubric and examined evaluation of their own English poetry. The current study would investigate: 1) the pre-service English teachers' perception as a rubric developer and self-evaluator, 2) the number of analytic area that the participants included in their rubrics and the scoring scheme that they designed in their rubrics, and 3) the inter-rater differences between self-assessemnt and expert-assessment across analytic areas. Twenty-four EFL learners participated in the current study. The researchers analyzed the learners' own English poetry, their field notes which contained the process of their writing, their rubrics, scores of self-assessment, and expert raters' scores. The results revealed that learners showed positive responses on learner-directed assessment, that 'content' is the most important area, and that inter-rater difference is small across all analytic areas.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.215-234
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• 2002

This study is designed for two purposes. The first one is to compare the realization and perception of English contrastive focus between Korean learners of English and native speakers of English. The second purpose is to study the phonological and phonetical features of contrastive focus by examining the results of production and perception experiments. English native speakers' results show that the English contrastive accents are generally accompanied by higher peak heights. The findings agree with the results of Bartels & Kingston (1994). Unlike native speakers of English, Korean speakers seem to be poor at relating the phonetical features of contrastive focus to their actual speech. Korean speakers' results are especially unsuccessful when the contrast is not distinctly grasped through syntactic structure, or when the function words are contrasted. Furthermore, Korean speakers' utterances tend to have pitch accents on every content word, whether the word is contrasted or not.

• 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.17 no.4
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• pp.395-411
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the elementary English conversation instructors' perception on their professionalism and the needs of teacher training program. The survey data were attained from 136 elementary English conversation instructors. Descriptive statistics were employed to discuss the result of the survey response. The results of this study revealed that the elementary English conversation instructors perceived the need of in-service training program for their professionalism improvement, especially in teaching techniques for four language skills. The result also revealed that the instructors need to be more equipped with the knowledge of elementary learners' developmental psychology and L2 learning process. The study concludes with several suggestions for elementary English conversation instructors' improvement of teaching professionalism and in-service training program.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.3-10
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• 2013

This study investigated the rhythmic accommodation of Korean English learners' interlanguage talk. Twelve Korean speakers, 6 native English speakers and 6 non-native English speakers in London participated in multiple conversations on different topics which produced 36 conversational data in interlanguage talk (ILT) settings. 190 utterances from the 36 conversational data were analyzed to investigate the rhythmic patterns of Korean English learners when they communicated with English speakers with different language backgrounds. Save for the final-syllable, the normalized duration of consecutive syllables was compared in order to derive a variability index (VI). It was found that there was no significant variability in the measurement of the syllable-to-syllable duration for the utterances of Korean English learners, regardless of their interlocutor's language background. Conversely, it was found that there was evidence that Korean English learners showed rhythmic accommodation in ILT when they conversed with non-native English speakers. The speaking rate became significantly slower when Korean English learners talked to non-native English speakers, than when they talked to other Korean English learners. Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between speaking rate and the VI in the utterances of Korean English learners in ILT.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1-6
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• 2017

This study examined how early bilingual children produce sounds in their two languages articulated with the same manner of articulation but at different places of articulation. English affricates are palato-alveolar and Korean affricates are alveolar. This study analyzed the frequencies of center of gravity (COG), spectral peak (SP), and the second formant (F2) of word-initial affricates in English and Korean produced by twenty-four early Korean-English bilingual children (aged 4 to 7), and compared them with those of monolingual counterparts in the two languages. If early Korean-English bilingual children produce palato-alveolar affricates in English and alveolar affricates in Korean, they may produce Korean affricates with higher COGs, SPs, and F2s than English affricates. The early Korean-English bilingual children at the age of 4 produced English and Korean affricates with similar COGs, SPs, and F2s, and the COGs, SPs, and F2s of their Korean affricates were similar to those of the Korean monolingual counterparts. However, the early bilingual children at the age of 5 to 7 had lower COGs and SPs for English affricates with higher F2s compared to Korean affricates, and the COGs, SPs, and F2s of their English affricates were similar to those of the English monolingual counterparts.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.699-710
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• 2007

The study purposes to explore the effects of individual characteristics and home environments of children on their bilingual language aquisition, that is, to examine whether their English language competency is different from their Korean language competency depending on those variables. Thus English or Korean language competency of children who had had early exposure in English learning were studied in terms of child's individual characteristics such as age, gender, exposure period to English, intelligence, and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries, and home environments such as parental age, educational level, income level, their perceived English competency, their perceived significance of English and Korean language, and the frequency of using English at home. 72 children who went to English kindergarten were tested with Peabody Pictures Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) in Korean version and in English version respectively. The results show that child's intelligence and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries influence their Korean language competency. Also child's age, exposure period to English and experiences of visiting English-speaking countries influence their English language competency. Moreover their mother's educational background, father's English fluency, mothers' English fluency, and the frequency of using English at home influence child's English language competency, whereas any variables did not influence child's Korean language competency. Accordingly, child's English and Korean language competencies are related to each other.