• International Journal of Contents
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2010

This study aims at investigating the linguistic and educational factors affecting TOEFL scores, focusing on three OECD countries, Korea, Japan, and Finland. The data comprise document analysis on curriculums, websites, and literature. The findings reveal that the number of Korean test-takers and their TOEFL scores gradually increased year by year. Finnish test-takers consistently gained greatly high scores, and Japanese examinees showed the lowest scores. The languages Korean, Japanese, and Finnish are all far distant from English and receive little support on historical grounds from the Indo-European family tree. In Finland, however, Swedish which belongs to Indo-European languages is still used as an official language with Finnish. Korea and Finland adopt English education from Year 3 in primary school, whereas English is not an official subject in primary school at present in Japan. Finnish students are taught a foreign language in addition to English from primary school. These seem to support the result of the high TOEFL scores of Finnish test-takers. This study concludes that social context which includes linguistic and educational environments are the main factors which affect TOEFL scores.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.283-300
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• 2009

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a model for an English learning web-site using Korean folktales to stimulate the interest of beginners learning English, (elementary and early middle school ages) and suggest an integrated way of teaching 4 skills. The study first reviews the theoretical and historical backgrounds of storytelling using Korean folk tale, WBI (Web Based Learning), and learner-centered learning. Storytelling using Korean folk tale is an interactive way of teaching English through the use of words and actions from Korean traditional culture. The students can take pride in their own culture while learning a foreign language since they are familiar with the stories and the culture. Nowadays multicultural education is one of the big features of global education. Therefore there are benefits of studying English through Korean folktales. The websites can help students learn English ubiquitously with a learner-centered focus. For the study, we analyzed several digital English storytelling websites. The paper concludes that digital English story books need to improve their interactive ways of teaching for more effective learning. The authors created an integrated English learning website model using Korean folktales for beginners. We hope to introduce this type of learning through the website for higher level students in middle school. Further study should be conducted in order to make the websites more meaningful and useful for Korean students learning English.

• Journal of the East Asian Society of Dietary Life
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.441-443
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• 2014

Korean traditional fermented milk, Tarak, came down from the Koryo dynasty according to Korean ancient cookbook SoowoonJaabaang, which was written by Taakjunggong, Yoo Kim around AD 1500. Tarak is generally refers to milk or dairy products. Three theories on 'Tarak' revealed in this study are as follows: 1) it has been derived from Dolgwol language, tarak, 2) it has originated in Mongolian language, Topar(tarague), meaning horse's milk and 3) it originated in Tarak mountain located in Hanyang, which was capital of Chosun. In Mongolia, fermented milk has been called as Tarak and it has been called as tar by Yakuts tribe who are nomads in Sakha. The common part, tar, of these words is said to be the term representing the origin of the fermented milk coming from the central Asia. Therefore, Korean Tarak seems to be part of the central Asian culture that flowed into the Korean peninsula. The manufacturing method of Mogolian Topar(tarague) is similar to those of Tarak found in the SoowoonJaabaang. This research revealed that Korean traditional fermented milk, Tarak, is thought to be affected by the central Asia, especially Mongolia.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.579-597
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• 2008

This article discusses David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly as a suggestive text for examining Western masculinity in crisis in the post-imperialist age, in which territorial imperialism is no longer valid. Previous scholarship on M. Butterfly has centered around the interlocking dynamics of imperialism, racism and sexism. Such critical attentions focus on how Hwang deconstructs racialized significations of the East and the West. In these discussions, the issue of gender is often addressed merely as a trope to represent the power relations between the East and the West. As such, gender as well as sexuality is highlighted as the very source of subversion of the power relations. My discussion departs from a critique of the gendered trope of the East and the West, highlighting a postmodern agent, the allegedly feminized character Song Lining: a Chinese actor who passes for a woman for political purposes in postcolonial China. Remaining an "inappropriate/d other" in the gendered imperialist discourse, Song becomes an emergent subject, who is capable of playing gender ambiguity for reclaiming a devalued identity, that of homosexual Asian man. Discussing how the central character Rene Gallimard's masculine identity is constructed in a cross-cultural space and how it evolves, I also argue that Gallimard's melancholic death signifies a historical unsustainability of imperialist masculinity in the postmodern/postcolonial age since World War II.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.619-643
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• 2013

The experience of interment during World War II has been one of the primary motifs of fictional and autobiographical narratives by Japanese Americans. Examining textual evidences in John Okada's No-No Boy and Monica Sone's Nisei Daughters, this paper argues that the internment has been designed, carried out and concluded based primarily on the principles of economics. Borrowing the notion that 'wealth has (racial) color' as Lui and others maintain, this paper analyzes episodes in which the protagonists and other characters testify how their internment has resulted in their loss of capital as well as human rights and dignity, not to mention temporary suspension of their citizenships. In addition, this paper contrasts the image of the US as a land of equity as represented in the literary texts of the $18^{th}$ century authors in the US with that of our two authors. In doing so, this paper argues that the historical incident of internment in the $20^{th}$ century is the scene in which American ideals become irrecoverably sullied and American dreams turn into American nightmares.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.585-600
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• 2018

Over the last three decades, the field of American Studies has increasingly paid attention to transnational approaches in an effort to diversify and expand the field's concerns beyond the narrow sense of the nation-state in today's globalizing world. Yet, the mediation of the transnational requires a careful analysis of the nation that is still in transit. In this context, this essay examines Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851) as a case study that vividly shows how reading American literature and culture through transnationalism not only offers new interpretations of canonical texts, but also helps us to better understand the historical roots and cultural contexts of contemporary issues such as global labor and migration, US citizenship and racial justice. To address the complexity of the text's circulation and reproduction, coupled with US national ideology and cultural conditions, I first turn to the canonization of Melville's Moby-Dick during the Cold War era as a national project and then explore the possibilities of transnational readings by focusing on the politics of race and global capitalism in the nineteenth century whaling industry. In doing so, I argue that critical transnationalism allows readers to keep questioning about their own understanding of race, nation, and cultural identity while remaining attentive to the destructive force of US imperialism and global capitalism in the twenty-first century.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.112-128
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• 2019

The history of modern Korean 'kimchi' can be traced through the history of the wordforms 'dihi' (디히), 'dimchʌi' (딤?), and 'thimchʌi' (팀?) in ancient Korean texts. As native Korean words, the 'dihi' word line ('dihi', 'dii', 'jihi', and 'ji') constitutes an old substratum. This word line coexisted with the 'dimchʌi' word line (dimchʌi, jimchʌi, and kim∫chi) from the Hanja '沈菜'. 'Ji', which is the last word variation of 'dihi', and is still used today as the unique form in several Korean dialects. In standard Korean, however, it only serves as a suffix to form the derivative names of various kimchi types. 'Dimchʌi' is believed to have appeared around the $6^{th}-7^{th}$ centuries, when Silla began to master Chinese characters. Hence,'dimchʌi' reflects either the Archaic Chinese (上古音) or the Old Chinese (中古音) pronunciation of the Hanja, '沈菜'. With the palatalization of the plosive alveolar [t], 'dimchʌi' changed to 'jimchʌi'. The Yangban intellectuals' rejection of the palatalization of the plosive velar [k] led to the hypercorrection of 'jimchʌi' into 'kimchʌi'. It is precisely the hypercorrect 'kimchʌe' that gave the wordform 'kim∫chi', which has eventually become the standard and predominant form in today's Korean language. Regarding 'thimchʌe', it reflects the Middle Chinese (Yuan Dynasty) pronunciation of the Hanja '沈菜' and was used mainly in writing by Yangban intellectuals.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.2
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• pp.171-185
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• 2018

Students and other new readers of modernist poetry often experience difficulty with the influential early work of Ezra Pound. Although these typically brief poems may appear (deceptively) simple, an understanding of the relationship between Imagism and Vorticism is crucial to reading-or teaching-them effectively, which in turn requires significant familiarity with relevant poetics theories as well as representative poems. This essay clarifies the complex relations Imagism and Vorticism as two distinct styles that are too often conflated to the detriment of an accurate understanding of either one (and, in consequence, of the later modernist poetry that builds on their discoveries). In order to elucidate the modernists' justification of free verse over traditional metrical composition, I begin with an elaboration of T. E. Hulme's 1911 theory of the "cheerful, dry, and sophisticated" modern classicism on which both Imagism and Vorticism were largely predicated, developing Hulme's important distinction between the version of classicism that is "static" (and gives rise to Imagism) and the one that is "dynamic" (and leads to Vorticism and beyond it). In the following two sections, I draw upon and synthesize a broad range of Pound's own poetics statements to reveal the evolution of first sound ("melopoeia") and then the image ("phanopoeia") throughout his early work. Although the body of this article is analytical and historical in nature, it concludes with a practical template prompt for a creative response assignment, appropriate to undergraduate and graduate students, designed to help new readers recognize for themselves how Vorticist art works and why it matters.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.645-666
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• 2013

In the history of the study of Shakespeare's texts the eighteenth century marked the emergence of editors, and in the history of Shakespearean editing Edmond Malone's emphasis on documentary evidence inaugurated a new stage. Malone's antiquarian scholarship sought to establish Shakespeare in the theatrical context of his age and a historically informed view of the physical circumstances under which he wrote his plays. Malone's editorial use of historical sources in terms of Shakespeare's past formulated a new mode of ascertaining his authorship: the construction of Shakespeare as a man of the theatre as well as of literature. Malone was the first scholar to recognize Shakespeare's merits as an actor, and to introduce the concept of the theatrical Shakespeare, which has become the scholarly norm since. In this respect this paper is designed to demonstrate that Malone's editorial principle and practice are characteristic of the identification of the factual documents of Shakespeare's biography, the authentication of his material to attain his true text, and the construction of his personal experiences through intensive readings of his plays. In conclusion, Malone's new criteria laid the foundation for the progress towards authorizing Shakespeare, thereby canonizing him as a figure of the theatrical and literary authority.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.25-37
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• 2018

The turning point is one of the more evocative concepts in the critic's arsenal, as it is equally suited to the evaluation and analysis of a given moment in one's day as to those of a historical event. But how does one recognize a turning point? As we find ourselves always "in the middest," both spatially and temporally, we inhabit sites that may be points at which many things may be seen to turn. Indeed, it is usually only possible to identify a turning point, as it were, from a distance, from the remove of space and time which allows for a sense of recognition, based in part on original context and in part of perceived effects. In this article, Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that the apprehension and interpretation of a turning point involves a fundamentally critical activity. Examining three models by which to understand the concept of the turning point-the swerve, the trope, and peripety (or the dialectical reversal)-Tally demonstrates how each represents a different way of seeing the turning point and its effects. Thus, the swerve is associated with a point of departure for a critical project; the trope is connected to continuous and sustained critical activity in the moment, and peripety enables a retrospective vision that, in turn, inform future research. Tally argues for the significance of the turning point in literary and cultural theory, and concludes that the identification, analysis, and interpretation of turning points is crucial to the project of criticism today.