• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.49-62
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• 1999

Education systems throughout the world encourage their students to learn languages other than their native one. In Australia, our Education Boards provide students with the opportunity to learn European and Asian languages. French, German, Chinese and Japanese are the most popular languages studied in elementary and high schools. This choice is a reflection of Australias European heritage and its geographical position near Asia. In most non-English speaking countries, English is the foreign language most readily available to students. In Korea, the English language is actively promoted by the Education Department and, in less official ways, by companies and the public. It is impossible to be anywhere in Korea without seeing the English language alongside or intermingled with Korean. When I ask students why they are learning English, I receive answers that include the word globalization and the importance of English throughout the world. When I press further and ask why they personally are learning English, the students mention passing exams, usually high school tests or TOEIC, and the necessity of passing the latter to obtain a good job. Seldom do I ever hear anything about communication: about the desire to talk with other people in English, to read novels or poetry in English, to understand movies or pop-songs in English, to chat on the Internet in English, to search for information on the Internet in English, or to email pen-pals in English. Yet isnt communication the only valid reason for learning a language? We learn our native language to communicate with those around us. Shouldnt we set the same goal for learning a foreign language? In my opinion communication, whether it is reading and writing or speaking and listening, must be central to language learning. Learning a language to pass examinations is meaningless unless those examinations are a reliable indicator of the ability of the student to communicate. In previous eras, most communication in a foreign language was through reading novels or formal letters. This required a thorough knowledge of grammar and a large vocabulary. Todays communication is much less formal. Telephone conversations, tele-conferences, faxes and emails allow people to communicate regularly and informally. Reading materials are also less formal as popular novels and newspapers are available world-wide. Movies and popular songs have added to the range of informal communication available. Finally travel has ensured that people from different cultures will meet easily and regularly. This informal communication requires less emphasis on grammar and vocabulary and more emphasis on comprehension and confidence to speak. Placing communication central to language learning has important implications for the Education system and for teachers.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.21-29
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• 2009

This study investigated the effects of three factors-mothers' parenting beliefs; child care-home involvement; and the home learning environment - on the school readiness of 3- to 5-year-olds. The subjects were 366 children who were enrolled in child care centers located in Seoul and the Kyoungki area, and their mothers. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique was employed to test the pathways to children's school readiness as indicated by the child's abilities in vocabulary, math and reading. The results showed that mothers' stronger beliefs in their responsibilities in their children's academic and behavioral development predicted greater involvement in child care and better quality in the home learning environment. Likewise, the quality of the learning environment predicted the extent of the child's readiness for school. No direct relation was found between child care involvement and the child's school readiness. The results imply that multiple factors - parental, child-care-related, and home environmental- explain the extent to which the child is prepared to adjust to scholastic life.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.61-74
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• 2013

In this paper we proposed a gamification methodology for Korean language education. We suggested gamification elements that increased the fun factor and induced immersion by analyzing the successful gamification cases which can be classified into three types; management, Implementation, and self-expression. Then, we analyzed Korean learning theory and methods to extract four key aspects, listening, speaking, vocabulary and culture from eight Korean learning function. Finally, by using Korean Wave contents, we proposed a Korean learning gamification methodology based on the gamification elements and the extracted four key aspects.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1-7
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• 2021

Since Neural Machine Translation (NMT) uses only a limited number of words, there is a possibility that words that are not registered in the dictionary will be entered as input. The proposed method to alleviate this Out of Vocabulary (OOV) problem is Subword Tokenization, which is a methodology for constructing words by dividing sentences into subword units smaller than words. In this paper, we deal with general subword tokenization algorithms. Furthermore, in order to create a vocabulary that can handle the infinite conjugation of Korean adjectives and verbs, we propose a new methodology for subword tokenization training by separating the Jongsung(coda) from Korean syllables (consisting of Chosung-onset, Jungsung-neucleus and Jongsung-coda). As a result of the experiment, the methodology proposed in this paper outperforms the existing subword tokenization methodology.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

This research primarily aimed to investigate proficient and less proficient EFL readers' awareness and experiences about learning to read and reading in English. The secondary purpose was to explore the participants' reading strategies, and to discover how the genres of English texts influence their reading processing behaviors. The participants consisted of four college students in engineering aged 21-25 years. Three data sources were employed: questionnaires, interviews, and think-alouds. The findings revealed that: (1) the proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be good readers, while the less proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be fair readers; (2) unknown vocabulary was perceived to be the major impediment to reading comprehension; the think-aloud data, however, demonstrated that unknown vocabulary did not significantly interfere with their reading comprehension; (3) regardless of the genre of the text, the participants employed similar reading strategies; (4) the participants were more likely to tolerate ambiguity and predict the content when reading the narrative text than the expository text; (5) there was no set of strategies that distinguished proficient EFL readers from less proficient EFL readers; and (6) when identifying problems, the proficient EFL readers used fix-up strategies more effectively and were better able to provide satisfactory solutions than their counterparts. Pedagogical implications for EFL reading instruction are discussed.

• 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.

• Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.115-118
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• 2015

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) 모델은 단일 신경망 구조만을 사용하는 End-to-end 방식의 기계번역 모델로, 기존의 Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) 모델에 비해서 높은 성능을 보이고, Feature Engineering이 필요 없으며, 번역 모델 및 언어 모델의 역할을 단일 신경망에서 수행하여 디코더의 구조가 간단하다는 장점이 있다. 그러나 NMT 모델은 출력 언어 사전(Target Vocabulary)의 크기에 비례해서 학습 및 디코딩의 속도가 느려지기 때문에 출력 언어 사전의 크기에 제한을 갖는다는 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 NMT 모델의 출력 언어 사전의 크기 제한 문제를 해결하기 위해서, 입력 언어는 단어 단위로 읽고(Encoding) 출력 언어를 문자(Character) 단위로 생성(Decoding)하는 방법을 제안한다. 출력 언어를 문자 단위로 생성하게 되면 NMT 모델의 출력 언어 사전에 모든 문자를 포함할 수 있게 되어 출력 언어의 Out-of-vocabulary(OOV) 문제가 사라지고 출력 언어의 사전 크기가 줄어들어 학습 및 디코딩 속도가 빨라지게 된다. 실험 결과, 본 논문에서 제안한 방법이 영어-일본어 및 한국어-일본어 기계번역에서 기존의 단어 단위의 NMT 모델보다 우수한 성능을 보였다.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2022.11a
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• pp.88-90
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• 2022

영어 교육 시장이 증대되면서 영어 학습을 효과적으로 지원하는 다양한 학습 시스템들이 개발되고 있다. 영어문장을 구성하는 기본적인 단위는 어휘로 문장 전체의 의미를 파악하기 위해서는 어휘의 의미를 이해하는 것이 필수적이다. 따라서 영어 어휘 능력 향상을 위한 다양한 영어 어휘 학습 시스템들이 개발되고 있으나, 어휘가 사용되는 문맥을 고려하거나 동시에 학습하면 효과적인 어휘 등 어휘 학습에 효과적인 교수학습 방법의 원리가 적용된 영어 어휘 학습 시스템에 대한 연구는 미비한 상황이다. 본 논문에서는 n 개의 영어 단어가 하나의 그룹으로 동시에 제시되면서 그 n개의 영어 단어가 모두 포함된 예문을 제공하는 지능형 영어 어휘 학습 시스템을 설계한다. 임의로 n 개의 영어 어휘가 주어졌을 경우 문맥에 맞게 영어 예문을 자동으로 생성하는 지능형 영어 문장 생성 모델이 본 연구의 핵심이다. 또한, 어휘 능력 평가에서 기존 어휘 학습 시스템과 같이 단순히 어휘를 얼마나 암기하고 있는지에 대한 평과 결과만을 제시하는 것이 아니라, 그룹별 취약 어휘 분석을 통해 효과적인 그룹 어휘 선택 규칙을 파악할 수 있는 기반을 마련하고자 한다. 본 논문에서 제안한 지능형 영어 어휘 학습 시스템을 통해 영어 어휘 학습자들의 학습 능력 향상에 도움이 될 것으로 기대한다.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.697-712
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to seek strengths and weaknesses from analyzing Korea and U.S. science textbooks in terms of general structural features, contents, cognitive levels of questions and the purpose of questions used in science textbooks. This provided insight into improvement of textbooks that can effectively assist teaching and learning. To investigate organization of unit in textbooks in-depth, the evolution unit was selected and scrutinized as one example. The results showed that the number of pages, activities, vocabulary words, and vocabulary lists are considerably different between Korean and the U.S. Commonly, U.S. textbooks were more laden with information and lacking in coherence than those of the Korean textbooks. The findings on the cognitive levels of questions showed that the majority of questions in both nations are concerned with knowledge. However, the difference between the two nations is great in the ratios of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation questions. Questions are concentrated in review section (45% of Korean and 60.6% of U.S.) in textbooks. It suggested that well-planned questions in a review section can provide the basic guidance for strength in a science classroom.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.44
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• pp.283-314
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to explore the diversity of French learning materials and suggest a learning method to increase the efficiency of learning. In the first part, we explore the linguistic characteristics of the proverb. In the second part, we present the examples that can be utilized in actual learning. In terms of teaching methods, sharing a common cultural consciousness is important for language and communication between interlocutors. In view of this point, the proverb has an extremely important value in the linguistic dimension. It means that the proverb can serve as a very useful material for the comparison of the morphology and phonetics of French. The efficiency of learning can be increased if we can apply an adequate learning plan using proverbs in accordance to the learner's level and the learning contents.