• Title/Summary/Keyword: Language proficiency

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A comparative study of English test items of college entrance examinations in Korea, China, and Japan (한국.중국.일본의 대학입학 영어시험 문항 비교 연구)

  • Jeon, Byoung-Man
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.113-132
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    • 2004
  • This study aims to suggest desirable directions through analyzing English test items of college entrance examinations(CEE) in Korea, China, and Japan. To achieve this, English test items of Scholastic Ability Test(SAT) in Korea were compared with those of CEE in China and Japan, and test items of TOEFL and IELTS. It was found that there were not many items for testing productive skills relatively to the tests of other countries including TOEFL and IELTS. Especially, there were integrated items for writing test in China. In case of speaking test, all the other country adopted direct ways like interview and oral test, not indirect test as in the SAT in Korea. It is suggested that there need to be included test items comprising long passages in order to measure extensive reading ability. It can be suggested that doze test be adopted for testing integrated proficiency of English.

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Developing Vocational English Textbooks for Marine Developing High Schools (모듈식 해양생산영어 교재 개발 연구)

  • Shim, Ji-Hyun;Rha, Hyun-Mi;Lee, Yoo-Won
    • Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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    • v.25 no.6
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    • pp.1273-1284
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    • 2013
  • The purpose of this study is to develop vocational English textbooks for vocational high school, especially marine production high school. Vocational English is intended to increase English proficiency in the area of specific industry or jobs. Based on the review of the literature, the study established developed vocational English textbooks for marine production high school based on the modular system. The developing process includes analysis for marine production job, marine production high school and current English textbook for marine production. Based on the analysis, this study developed English contents which marine production students utilize in not only school but also workplace. Also, this study suggests future research directions for effective development and use of the textbooks in the vocational high schools.

A Delphi Survey of Corporate Needs for Technical Skills (기업에서 요구하는 직무수행능력에 대한 델파이 분석)

  • Park, Sung-Mi
    • Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.12-22
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    • 2008
  • This study presents the results of a delphi survey which is intended to identify technical skills that corporations expect of employees. A total of 300 managers from different businesses took part in the survey. To obtain the delphi data, a questionnaire of expected technical skills developed on the basis of previous research was used. The obtained data were analyzed in terms of frequency and other descriptive statistics. Eleven technical skills emerged as important ones in the corporate environment. In order of importance, subjects listed communication skills, business capabilities, negotiation skills, problem-solving ability, organizational adaptation, ability to gather and analyze relevant information, practical computer literacy, self-management, creativity, and foreign language proficiency.

The whole-brained English teaching (영어교육에서의 좌-우뇌 통합 교수법)

  • Kwon, Na-Young
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • no.5
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    • pp.103-122
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    • 1999
  • In this paper, I will argue that in teaching L2, it is important to take a holistic teaching method considering various learning styles of the learners and the nature of L2 learning. Under the situation that most of the school education is centered on the left brain activity, learners with the right brain preference tend to get only to the lower proficiency than they really can. To prove this, I conducted a experiment on two classes of high school students. I decided the hemispheric preference of each students using HMI (hemispheric mode indicator) Then I compared the hemispheric preferences of students with their scores in English tests. The students with right hemispheric preference show significantly lower scores than the ones with left preference. It is implied that the current English education should adapted to address various learning and cognitive styles and whole-brain L2 teaching method should replace the left-centered instruction in the learning environment.

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L2 Learner's Perspectives of How Personal and Instructional Factors Influence Achievement in Online-incorporated Environment

  • Kim, Jeong-Yeon
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.39-69
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    • 2010
  • This study aims to identify how participants in online-incorporated English learning perceive interaction between achievement and factors of learning and personality. Using grounded theory analysis, this study attempts to generate a theoretical model depicting how the factors work with the L2 learners situated in the learning setting. A total of 231 college freshmen participated in online and offline EFL learning programs for the duration of one semester. In addition, all respondents completed a survey questionnaire on their learning experiences. In the investigation of the differences between low- and high-proficiency groups, audio-taped interviews with 20 selected students, 10 from each group, have revealed differences not only in the types of personal and instructional factors, but also, more importantly, in the interrelationship between these factors in each group's learning model. These models effectively explained the statistically significant differences in four questionnaire items, such as online learning and contributions of offline class sections to their L2 achievement. These findings entail L2 practitioners' shared understandings of their students' perspectives of learning in the specific L2 learning context.

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The Combined Effects of Metalinguistic Explanation and Self-Correction on Improving EFL Writing Accuracy

  • Kim, Bu-Ja
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.83-104
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    • 2009
  • This study examined whether self-correction or metalinguistic explanation might make a difference in the ability to accurately write two English grammatical structures when learners received indirect teacher feedback in the form of underlining target errors in a Korean EFL college classroom. With the goal of helping low-proficiency students improve their ability to accurately write sentences including nonfinite present participial relative clauses and present participial constructions, four groups were formed: a group which received indirect feedback, a group which received indirect feedback and metalinguistic explanation, a group which received indirect feedback and self-corrected errors, and a group which received indirect feedback and self-corrected errors after receiving metalinguistic explanation. The results showed that the effects of either metalinguistic explanation or self-correction integrated with indirect feedback on learners' ability to accurately write the target structures were not meaningful, while the combined effects of metalinguistic explanation and self-correction were statistically significant.

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Discrimination of Synthesized English Vowels by American and Korean Listeners

  • Yang, Byung-Gon
    • Speech Sciences
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.7-27
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    • 2006
  • This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by twenty-seven American and Korean, male and female listeners. The average formant values of nine monophthongs produced by ten American English male speakers were employed to synthesize the vowels. Then, subjects were instructed explicitly to respond to AX discrimination tasks in which the standard vowel was followed by another one with the increment or decrement of the original formant values. The highest and lowest formant values of the same vowel quality were collected and compared to examine patterns of vowel discrimination. Results showed that the American and Korean groups discriminated the vowel pairs almost identically and their center formant frequency values of the high and low boundary fell almost exactly on those of the standards. In addition, the acceptable range of the same vowel quality was similar among the language and gender groups. The acceptable thresholds of each vowel formed oval to maintain perceptual contrast from adjacent vowels. The results suggested that nonnative speakers with high English proficiency could match native speakers' performance in discriminating vowel pairs with a shorter inter-stimulus interval. Pedagogical implications of those findings are discussed.

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A Validity Study on the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test for Korean Elementary Students

  • Shin, Yousun
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.125-147
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    • 2012
  • The primary goal of the study was to provide some preliminary validity evidence for the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test (Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education, 2009), which is designed to measure the receptive vocabulary knowledge of learners in L2. For the purpose of the current study, 327 participants at the elementary school participated in the study and were asked to take two different vocabulary tests. Namely, a Vocabulary Size Test (Nation, 2001) and a Vocabulary Grade Levels Test. The data were analyzed using correlation in order to discover the relationship between these two types of tests. Following this, the Rasch analysis was conducted to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement in question. The data analysis showed that both grade separation reliability and item separation reliability were high, indicating that the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test well discriminates learners with a wide range of proficiency levels. The findings of the study are discussed, along with further improvements in order to ascertain the validity of this particular vocabulary test.

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Reference and Substitution as Cohesion Devices in EFL Writing

  • Eun, Ho-Yoon;Jeon, Byoung-Man
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.23-36
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    • 2009
  • This paper aims to investigate the use of reference and substitution as cohesion devices by advanced Korean EFL writers and English native writers. Twelve research articles (totaling 218 pages, 93,033 words) written in English were collected in academic journals. Half of the research articles were prepared by Koreans and the other half were written by native writers. Several demonstrative pronouns, personal pronouns and demonstrative adverbs were selected as referential cohesion devices for this study. Three substitutional cohesion devices were also chosen. Their frequency was investigated at first, after which their preference was analyzed. There was not much difference in the overall use of cohesion devices between the two groups. Some devices were used by Korean writers more often than native ones. Reasons for this could be high English proficiency of Korean writers, their hyper-correction or the influence of Korean culture. Other more distinctive cohesion features such as conjunctions are recommended for analysis of cohesion in future research.

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Korean Learners' Development of English Passive Constructions

  • Park, Hye-Sook
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.199-216
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    • 2009
  • This study investigates how Korean speakers develop their interlanguage of English passive constructions with a reference to the learners' grammar proficiency levels. Sixty two college students of different levels of English participated in this study. They were asked to complete a sentence-completion task. Their production was classified into accurate passives, malformed passives, pseudo-passives, unaccusatives, and actives according to the use of transitive, ergative and unergative verbs. They then were further analyzed depending on the subjects' levels of grammar by three main factors: L1 transfer, the English voice system, and universal cognitive factors. The results showed that the subjects of the lower group produced more pseudo-passives, malformed passives, and overpassivization than those of the higher group, and even subjects of higher group still made passives for ergative verbs. It was also shown that L1 and universal factors had more influence on the lower group than on the higher group. Based on the analyses of the subjects' responses, the development of the English passive system by Korean learners is shown and some implications are suggested for effective teaching of English.

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