• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.61-85
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• 2006

The purpose of the present study is to compare Korean EFL learners' speech corpus (i.e. oral productions) with their composition corpus (i.e. written productions). Four college students participated in the study. The composition corpus was collected through a writing assignment, and the speech corpus was gathered by audio-taping their oral presentations. The results of the data analysis indicate that (i) As for error frequency, young adult low-intermediate Korean EFL learners showed high frequency in determiners (mostly, indefinite articles), vocabulary (mostly, semantic errors), and prepositions. The frequency order did not show much difference between the speech corpus and the composition corpus; and (ii) When comparing the oral productions with the written productions, there were not many differences between them in terms of the contents, a style (i.e., colloquial vs. literary), vocabulary selection, and error types and frequency. Therefore, it is assumed that the proficiency in oral presentation of EFL learners at this learning stage heavily depends on how much/how well they are able to write. In other words, EFL learners' writing and speaking skills are closely co-related. It implies that the teacher does not need to separate teaching how to speak from teaching how to write. The teacher may use the same methods or strategies to help the learners improve their English speaking and writing skills. Furthermore, it will be more effective to teach writing before speaking since they have more opportunities to write than speak in the EFL contexts.

• 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.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.317-337
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• 2010

The present study has a dual purpose to investigate the current state of school English library and needs required for its effective use, and to propose a reading program at the school library. The literature on school library was reviewed. A questionnaire survey was done to find out the current situation of English library at the secondary school. The analysis of 26 secondary English teachers' responses reveals that there was the absence of librarians or reading specialists at the school English library. It was also found that the uses of the English library were limited due to the absence of the specialists, no guidelines, and no link between the curriculum and the library use. A case study on a 2-week special reading program at the school English library was conducted and 15 middle school students took part in the project. The participants took pre- and post-tests to identify their reading level using a software and did a variety of reading activities using the books selected according to their level. The comparison of the tests shows that most of the students' reading level improved after the reading program. The analysis of their views on the program and its effects reveals that they gained confidence in reading and their vocabulary understanding was improved. Some suggestions are made for the effective management of the school English library.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.233-257
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• 2009

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of 3D avatar-based Virtual Reality chatting on college students' English learning achievement. Forty college sophomore students participated at this study and the research lesson continued for 8 weeks. They were administered to take a pretest to evaluate their vocabulary knowledge and writing skills. Their progress was assessed on the basis of midterm. Finally, a post-questionnaire was administered to measure their interest and understanding toward their learning experience in 3D avatar-based Virtual chatting. The results of this study indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the control group and experimental group with respect to their midterm scores and writing. The result of the post-survey indicated the interest of English was statistically higher than the understanding of English.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.508-512
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• 2003

In 2000, the economy of Asia made a V-character type recovery from the currency and financial crisis in 1997. The increase in exports is assumed to be one of the causes. To negotiate with foreign countries, English must be indispensable in many cases. In this study, we investigated how English education is performed in East Asian countries while focusing on English textbooks. We metrically analyzed some textbooks used junior high schools and high school in Japan and Korea, and elementary schools in China and Singapore to compare them with U.S.A and U.K textbook. We investigated some characteristics of character-and word-appearance of English textbook using an exponential function. Moreover we derived the degree of difficulty far each material through the variety of words and their frequency on the basis of the required English vocabulary in Japanese junior high schools. As a result we could show at which level of U.S.A. or U.K the English textbooks used in East Asian countries are.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.261-286
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• 2005

Lately, teaching methods and instruments have become student-centered and are directed towards developing a communicative competence of learners. However, compared with that of other countries, the level of our students English is not very good. I guess the reason is that our English education is focused on the uniformal teaching methods regardless of the differences of intelligence, affective domains and study time. I tried to find the relationship between these factors and the students' English accomplishments. So I divided the students into 2 groups of superior and inferior students by the standard of intelligence, affective domain and study time and compared the scores between the groups in the fields of reading comprehension, grammar, pronunciation, accent, vocabulary, and listening. These were the results that followed: First, intelligence has a great influence students' English accomplishment in all fields. Second, affective domains such as motivation, anxiety, attitude, confidence, and studying time also have some influence on the students' English accomplishments. Third, the sequence of these factors according to their influence force are as follows: study time, anxiety, intelligence, motivation, attitude, and confidence. So we can conclude that we should teach English according to our students' ability in the field of intelligence and affective domains and should not ignore the individual differences they have.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.332-344
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• 2016

This study aimed at investigating the effects of grouping participants in pairs according to their relative vocabulary proficiency on the incidental improvement of vocabulary knowledge. Forty six university students were divided into three groups (high-high(n=14), high-low(n=18), or low-low(n=14)) and took part in the study. They performed three vocabulary activities in pairs as extra-class works. Data were collected from one receptive vocabulary knowledge test scores before treatment and two posttest scores after treatment. The results showed that, unlike former study results, HL dyads acquired more vocabulary receptively and productively than HH or LL dyads did, which demonstrated that collaborative pair activity was conducive to the growth of vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, not only higher proficiency participants in HL pairs made greater vocabulary gains than participants in HH pairs did but also lower proficiency participants gained more vocabulary than participants in LL pairs did. Based on these results, we discussed pedagogical implications.

• 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.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.551-561
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was firstly, to evaluate the contents of vocabulary game applications for young children's language learning. and secondly, to examine whether there is any differences between Korean and English word games in terms of the evaluation score. For this purpose, the word game applications in smart phone and tablet PC were analyzed, which included 30 Korean word games and another 30 English ones. The criteria to evaluate the contents were developed based on Children's Software Evaluation Instrument developed by CTR, the multimedia evaluation standard by Hee Sook Park, Young Joo Lee, and mobile contents evaluation standard by Soo Ui Choi. As a result, the educational value got the highest score whereas the design characteristics area got the lowest score in the whole evaluation analysis. And English word game applications mostly got higher score than Korean versions. The result of this study would suggest the way to evaluate educational game applications in use and to contribute to developing educational game contents aimed at young children's language learning.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 2007

This study aimed to investigate how EFL learners perceived English writing tasks and teachers' written feedback. The subjects were 82 mixed major college EFL students aged 19-24; the majority were freshmen females. Based on the scores estimated from the essay evaluation test, they were placed into two groups (proficienand less-proficient writers) and responded to an in-class questionnaire. The results indicated that: (1) regardless of writing proficiency, a large number of the students felt that they were just fair writers, which could be derived from low confidence and high anxiety; (2) grammar and vocabulary were perceived as the main features that determined good EFL writers and also prevented the students from performing the writing task successfully; (3) they believed that teachers' feedback contributed to the development of their English writing skills because it helped them apprehend what to improve or avoid in the future, acquire better English usage, and correct their errors; and (4) the proficient writers were more willing to correct errors themselves after being provided clues than the less-proficient writers. Implications of the findings for EFL classrooms are discussed.