• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2011

Listening has been a neglected research area despite the crucial role it plays. The present investigation was aimed at examining how the provision of topical knowledge and learners' listening proficiency level affect learners' listening performance under four different preparatory activity conditions: topical knowledge, vocabulary list, language structure, and no activity. A total of 134 participants, assigned to the four different activity groups, took part in the study. The results revealed that the learners who were provided with topical knowledge before listening performed significantly better than the other learners, followed by the vocabulary list group and language structure group, which might be attributed to the activation of their content schemata. The learners who did not perform any preparatory activities achieved the lowest scores. When it comes to the impact of listening proficiency, it was revealed that learners' proficiency level had a significant influence on learners' listening performance, and there was a significant interaction between the learners' level of listening proficiency and preparatory activity. Providing relevant knowledge was effective for both higher level and lower level learners, whereas teaching vocabulary before listening was effective for higher level learners but was not for lower level ones. Based on the results, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.117-124
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• 2021

Korean education in China began at Peking University in the 1950s. At present, The Korean language education in China has made remarkable progress in many aspects such as scale, scope, level and achievement. In addition, with the increasingly frequent economic and cultural exchanges or cooperation between China and South Korea and the increasing trend of internationalization, the prosperity of Korean wave culture and the sound development of China-South Korea relations, the country's demand for Korean language talents is increasing day by day. However, with the rise of Korean education in China in recent years, some hidden problems also surfaced. In this paper, the Korean language proficiency test(TOPIK) is used to evaluate the Korean language proficiency of Korean learners, and Chinese juniors are used to evaluate the Korean language proficiency. In addition, a questionnaire survey was conducted to analyze the learning media of Chinese Korean learners at the present stage, and the relationship between learning media and learning outcomes was concluded. At the same time, deficiencies and problems existed in Korean education in colleges and universities were proposed and their own ideas were put forward.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.363-369
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• 2013

In this paper, the modeling of phenomena that occurs in the brain related language was designed and developed the second language proficiency method. This method based on cognitive ability test in cognitive psychology that is the lexical decision task, the priming task and the verbal span task. The lexical decision task involves measuring how quickly decide stimuli as words or nonwords. This task is divided reading and listening according to stimulus type to the details. The priming task finds the output of the language. This task is divided the translation-priming and the semantic-priming according to stimulus type. The verbal span task finds the short term memory. In this paper, we propose the second language proficiency measurement method using the linguistics cognitive ability of the learner about the second language.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.181-195
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• 2004

The purpose of the study was to explore the degree of children's access to media and the relationship between the use of media and language development of Korean-Chinese bilingual children in Yanji, China. Questionnaires were answered by 258 4th graders and their parents. The results showed that the children had an access to a variety of media. The children's use of language(Korean/ Chinese) differed to the type of media： they had more access to Korean language in the use of newspapers/magazines, books, and radio, and to Chinese language in the use of computer. They had comparatively a balanced access to Korean/chinese language in the use of TV. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that the children's access to Chinese language in the use of media, proficiency of a parent's Chinese language, and a parent's affection were related to proficiency of the children's Chinese language. Implications are derived from the use of media in development of bilingualism.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.109-126
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• 2007

English article has been considered as one of the most difficult areas to learn among ESL/EFL students. The current paper reviews English learners' article error patterns as well as pedagogy in order to teach English articles and to minimize learning difficulties on English articles. Different pedagogy for English articles on the basis of learners' proficiency levels are suggested as each proficiency level student shows a different error tendency; beginning level language learners used the zero article with the most facility while intermediate level language learners used the definite article the most accurately. However, studies about high advanced level learners' error patterns present that these high accuracy rates among beginning level students might be a result of students' plain guessing. Considering these error patterns, pedagogy for advanced level is also suggested.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.165-190
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• 2011

This research investigates listening strategies and the relationship between the employment of strategy and listening proficiency of Korean EFL middle school students. One hundred and four middle school students (N = 104) participated in this study and their strategy use was assessed through a questionnaire adapted from Oxford's (1990) SILL and O'Malley and Chamot (1990). To measure listening proficiency, the English Listening Ability Test designed by 15 city and provincial offices of education in Korea was used. The results show that students employed a moderate use of strategies; compensation strategies were used most frequently and metacognitive strategies were used the least frequently. Significant differences were found in the use of implicit strategy among different listening proficiency groups, but not in their use of behavioral strategy. Furthermore, there were significant differences in the use of implicit memory, cognitive and compensation strategies among groups of students with different listening proficiencies, but not in their use of metacognitive strategy. The results from multiple regression analysis indicate that implicit strategy use could play an important role in listening comprehension. The findings suggest the need for additional research to explore the effect of listening strategy training for English language learners.

• Journal of Agricultural Extension & Community Development
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1061-1091
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• 2014

Language is connected with culture, and have a function of social and cultural integration. Also social participation is known to conduct an important role in promoting identity of immigrants. This study aimed to investigate the effect of variables such as the level of proficiency in Korean language, and experience in local society activity on community sense of married immigrant women in Korean rural areas. The result showed that the level of proficiency in Korean language had the greatest effect on their sense of community, and experience in local society activity seemed to have intermediation effect on it. In conclusion, based on results of this study, plans improving proficiency of Korean language of the immigrants and participation in local society activities were suggested.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.195-199
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• 2011

There are many causes for the variation of the result in oral proficiency test such as the examiner, the task, the theme of the interview, and the gender of the participants. Previous literature documents that the rater is an important variable influencing test scores of second language oral proficiency. Although much research in language testing has been conducted concerning rater effect on test scores, there has been little attention paid to the effect of potential rater variables in language testing on their rating process. There are noticeably different contents of the rating scales across different speaking tests developed in different context. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to apply the same rating criteria for various tasks. In conclusion, we need more subject protocol analyses and more thoughtful studies on rating processes. In other words, the oral proficiency test needs a more realistic and valid tool for the assessment of second language proficiency.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.17-29
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• 2016

To help define future research direction and enhance educational service for children from Asian and Latino immigrant backgrounds, this review examines research investigating social competence with reference to host and heritage language skills. A targeted search obtained 14 peer-reviewed studies published from 1994 to 2014 focusing on children aged from birth to 12 years. Social competence is mainly measured by four dimensions: externalizing behaviours, internalizing behaviours, social skills and relationships with others. The evidence suggests that English proficiency levels are positively associated with social skills and parent-child relationships are of higher quality when parent-child heritage language difference is minimal. However the findings are mixed regarding how English levels are associated with externalizing, internalizing behaviours and relationships with others and how heritage language levels are associated with social competence. This review makes a set of recommendations for future research including assessment of participants' language proficiency with language tests and examination of emotional factors in the relationship between English and social competence. The implications of the findings are also discussed for educators.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.55-66
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• 2006

A purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic characteristics of English stress produced by the two groups of South Kyungsang (henceforth, SK) Korean speakers: high-proficiency and low-proficiency with reference to English native speakers. Another purpose is to compare results from the high- and low-proficiency SK Korean subjects with those of the native speakers, and to provide an analytical account of how approximate the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' production is to the native speakers' and how different the low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' is from the native speakers'. Results indicated that the native speakers' main strategy used in producing stressed syllables was duration while the high-proficiency SK Korean subjects' was predominantly pitch-oriented. The low-proficiency SK Korean subjects' pitch patterns showed regularity, emphasizing the penultimate syllable with pitch. In comparing duration among the three groups, both groups of the SK Korean subjects became more even in their duration values for each syllable as the structure of the word or the sentence became more complex.