• Title/Summary/Keyword: Language Acquisition

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Korean Children's Perception of English Language Acquisition and Cultural Adaptation in Australia

  • Park, Joo-Kyung
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.127-152
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    • 2007
  • Recently, the number of students to choose to study in Australia has been increasing significantly. The purpose of this study is to examine how Korean primary school children perceive their own English language learning and cultural adaptation in Australia. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 34 Korean children aged 8-13 who were attending primary schools in Brisbane, Queensland. The study results show that they made diverse efforts to learn English language and culture in Australia, such as making English-speaking friends, watching TV/video/DVD, reading English books, and studying with a foreign tutor. Their English listening and writing abilities were thought to be improved most, followed by speaking, reading and cultural understanding after studying in Australia. The subjects were mostly satisfied with their study and life in Australia but they had difficulties with communicating in English, homesickness, foods, weather, insects, and discrimination. In particular, they had problems with understanding classes conducted all in English and participating in the classroom activities due to their low level of English ability and understanding of Australian classroom culture. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications for educators both in Australia and Korea.

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A Method of Using Discourse Analysis Activity in Task-based Korean Speaking Class (과제 수행 중심의 한국어 말하기 수업에서 담화 분석 활동의 활용 방안)

  • Kim, Jiyoung
    • Journal of Korean language education
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    • v.25 no.1
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    • pp.29-52
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    • 2014
  • The purpose of this paper is to suggest a discourse analysis activity that can be used in the stage after performing tasks in task-based Korean speaking class and show its pedagogical advantages. A discourse analysis activity is an metadiscourse activity in which learners speak what they have spoken. By analyzing discourse and performing tasks again, learners can enhance their fluency and accuracy, make their knowledges in target language more stable and extend them, and develop problem solving skills. Consequently, this facilitates learners' acquisition of Korean language. This paper reviewed theoretical background of proposing discourse analysis activity, suggested the pedagogical advantages of the analysis, and examined discourse analysis activity in Korean speaking class. And it included the discourse sample of learners in actual class.

Effects of age of L2 acquisition and L2 experience on the production of English vowels by Korean speakers

  • Eunhae Oh;Eunyoung Shin
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.9-16
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    • 2023
  • The current study investigated the influence of age of L2 acquisition (AOA) and length of residence (LOR) in the L2 setting country on the production of voicing-conditioned vowel duration and spectral qualities in English by Korean learners. The primary aim was to explore the ways in which the language-specific phonetic features are acquired by the age of onset and L2 experience. Analyses of the archived corpus data produced by 45 native speakers of Korean showed that, regardless of AOA or LOR, absolute vowel duration was used as a salient correlate of voicing contrast in English for Korean learners. The accuracy of relative vowel duration was influenced more by onset age than by L2 experience, suggesting that being exposed to English at an early age may benefit the acquisition of temporal dimension. On the other hand, the spectral characteristics of English vowels were more consistently influenced by L2 experience, indicating that immersive experience in the L2 speaking environment are likely to improve the accurate production of vowel quality. The distinct influence of the onset age and L2 experience on the specific phonetic cues in L2 vowel production provides insight into the intricate relationship between the two factors on the manifestation of L2 phonological knowledge.

The Variable Acquisition of Discourse Marker Use in Korean American Speakers of English

  • Lee, Hi-Kyoung
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.11 no.2
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    • pp.1-18
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    • 2005
  • This study is a preliminary investigation of the nature of discourse marker acquisition in Korean American speakers of English. Discourse markers are of interest because they are not an aspect of language taught through formal instruction either to native or non-native speakers. Therefore, discourse marker use serves as indirect evidence of face-to-face interaction with native speakers and an indicator of integration. In this light, the present study examines the presence of discourse markers in Korean Americans. The markers chosen for analysis were you know, like, and I mean. The data consist of spontaneous speech elicited from interviews. Sociolinguistic variables such as age, sex, and generation (i.e., $1^{st}$, 1.5, $2^{nd}$) were examined. Results show that there appears to be interaction between the variables and discourse marker use. While all speakers showed variable acquisition of markers, younger, female, and 1.5 generation speakers were found to use discourse markers more than other speakers. Although discourse marker use is optional and thus not a linguistic feature that must be necessarily acquired, it is clear that use is pervasive and acquired differentially by English speakers irrespective of whether they are native or not.

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The Effect of Mobile Apps on Vocabulary Acquisition in EFL Classroom

  • Kim, HyeJeong
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.9 no.4
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    • pp.118-125
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    • 2021
  • This study's purpose is to examine the effects of mobile apps on learners' vocabulary acquisition and to analyze students' perceptions and opinions about the vocabulary app. To this end, this study set up a control group, which was given explicit instructions in the classroom by the instructor and an experimental group, which used a vocabulary app. The vocabulary acquisition test results suggested that the difference between the the two groups was insignificant. However, user satisfaction with regard to the mobile app was high, and the reasons given were the following: convenience, efficiency of memorizing, having fun while learning, and the app's interface. Based on these results, this study suggests that teachers should use mobile apps much more actively in classroom instruction, and encourge students to let apps play a more active role in their language studies.

On the Role of Prefabricated Speech in L2 Acquisition Process: An Information Processing Approach

  • Boo, Kyung-Soon
    • Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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    • 1991.10a
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    • pp.196-208
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    • 1991
  • This study focused on the role of prefabricated speech (routines and patterns) in the L2 acquisition process. The data for this study consisted of spontaneous speech samples and various observational records of three Korean children learning English as L2 in a nursery school. The specific questions addressed here were: (1) What routines, patterns, and creative constructions did the children use? (2) What was the general trend in the three children's use of routines, patterns, and creative constructions over time? The data were collected over a period of one school year by observing the children in their school. The findings were discussed from the perspective of human information processing. This study found that prefabricated speech played a significant role in the three children's L2 acquisition. The automatic processing of prefabricated speech appeared to enable the children to reduce the burden on their information processing systems, which allowed the saved resources available for other language development activities. Also, the children's language development was evident in their increase in the use of patterns. The children were moving from heavy dependence on wholly unanalyzed routines to increased use of partly unanalyzed patterns. This increased control was the result of an increase in procedural knowledge.

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Toward A Bilingual Legal Term Glossary from Context Profiles

  • Kwong, Oi-Yee
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society for Language and Information Conference
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    • 2002.02a
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    • pp.249-258
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    • 2002
  • We propose an algorithm for the automatic acquisition of a bilingual lexicon in the legal domain. We make use of a parallel corpus of bilingual court judgments, aligned to the sentence level, and analyse the bilingual context profiles to extract corresponding legal terms in both languages. Our method is different from those in past studies as it does not require any prior knowledge source, and naturally extends to multi-word terms in either language. A pilot test was done with a sample of ten legal terms, each with ten or more occurrences in the data. Encouraging results of about 75% average accuracy were obtained. This figure does not only reflect the effectiveness of the method for bilingual lexicon acquisition, but also its potential for bilingual alignment at the word or expression level.

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