• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.157-164
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• 2021

This study was conducted to investigate students' perception of the integration of Chinese ethnic minority culture into the college EFL teaching which was carried out in the fall and spring semesters with different presentation topics. One and the same questionnaire was distributed to 61 participants, involving Han Chinese and Chinese ethnic minority students, at a university in ethnic minority area in China at the end of each semester, and SPSS 20.0 was used for t-test to analyze the data. The research results showed that Chinese undergraduates have got more significant improvements in cultural cognition, emotions, attitudes, and multi-cultural values in the spring semester than those in the fall semester. All participants benefit a lot from multi-cultural activities without significant differences between Han Chinese and ethnic minority students in both semesters. It is suggested that ethnic minority culture be integrated into the college EFL teaching, along with English culture and Chinese mainstream culture, which be administered as a practical teaching mode to develop students' intercultural competence.

• 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 English Language and Linguistics
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.181-210
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• 2003

The purpose of the study was to investigate how Korean EFL writing instructors give feedback to their students' writing and what influences their feedback. A total of 12 Korean EFL instructors in Korean universities teaching freshman English and intermediate EFL writing courses provided their feedback given on students' writing samples and participated in interviews. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively with a constant comparative approach and some data from writing samples and questionnaires produced descriptive statistics. The first lesson from the results of the study was that grammar was still the most frequent concern in giving feedback on students' writing. Contrary to the participants' report, comments on content and organization were not produced very often. The second lesson came from the interview data. Some aspects of teacher feedback seemed mostly influenced by their beliefs on L2 writing and experience in teaching L2 writing. The final and major lesson was that teachers chose how they would give comments on students' writing depending on whether they found their feedback helpful in students learning to write. EFL writing teachers can produce effective feedback by clearly communicating their beliefs about L2 writing and criteria in their feedback to students in their EFL writing classrooms.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.181-210
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• 2007

This study is to suggest systematic and effective reading comprehension techniques or strategies to be used in EFL reading classes. According to the definition of reading and reading process, six essential elements of reading comprehension are categorized: 1) reading speed; 2) skimming and scanning; 3) logical organization; 4) pleasure reading; 5) vocabulary; 6) cultural background and world knowledge. To present a more effective teaching and learning approach to EFL reading comprehension than ever, an experiment was performed. The hypothesis of the experimental study was that there would be a difference in students' reading speed as well as reading comprehension and vocabulary between an experimental group and a control group depending upon the teaching approaches (experimental vs. traditional). The result of the study indicates that the experimental teaching approach which intensifies speed reading and pleasure reading techniques as well as 4 other essential techniques of reading comprehension is more effective than the traditional one in teaching and learning reading comprehension.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.209-235
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• 2005

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching procedure for improving Korean college students' reading comprehension of English text. In particular, this study sought to explore the qualitative features, if any, in students' use of reading comprehension strategies presented in the process of Reciprocal Reading Procedure (RRP). In order to accomplish the goal of the study, transcripts of the students' dialogues, open-ended questionnaires, and researchers' observation notes were examined. The results of the study showed that the participants used different four kinds of reading strategies in the process of RRP (questioning, clarifying, predicting, summarizing). The findings also suggested that the readers with limited knowledge of vocabulary had difficulty in moving on to the next level. Additionally, future research direction and some pedagogical implications are presented for the practical EFL classroom.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.88-95
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• 2000

This paper attempts to investigate characteristic features of Japanese EFL learners' English intonation and how their Japanese accents are affecting their English intonation, focusing on a comparison between the accent patterns of Japanese compounds and the stress patterns of English compounds. It is based on research dedicated to helping to improve the teaching and learning of English intonation (prosody) for Japanese EFL learners. It examines the Fundamental Frequency (henceforth Fx) contours of two EFL college students, one specializing in English and the other in Japanese. Both of them may be considered upper intermediate EFL students with their TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores ranging between 500 and 550.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.149-154
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• 1996

Since the 1980s, a number of professionals in the ESL/EFL field have investigated the role of pronunciation in the ESL/EFL curriculum. Applying the insights gained from the second language acquisition research, these efforts have focused on the integration of pronunciation teaching and learning into the communicative curriculum, with a shift towards overall intelligibility as the primary goal of pronunciation teaching and learning. The present study reports on the efficacy of audio-visual aids and hyper-pronunciation training method in teaching the productions of English consonants to Japanese college students. The talk will focus on the implications of the present study, and the presenter makes suggestions to teaching pronunciation to Japanese learners.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.1-25
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of peer coaching for EFL teachers' professional development. For this study, 12 college teachers in Korea participated in a 10-week program. They were 7 males and 5 females, ranging in age from 24 to 37 years. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Reflective analysis was used to analyze individual interview data. From the findings, two significant categories of peer coaching were identified: positive and negative responses to peer coaching experience. However, the overriding themes that emerged from the data were the benefits of peer coaching. The participants were almost unanimous in their acknowledgement of the advantages of peer coaching, such as reflective support through other's eyes, improved working environments, greater teaching strategies, higher professional self-esteem, and awareness of self-directed learning. Negative responses also appeared, mostly in regard to the working principles of implementation; the major issues of difficulties were time management, complexities of implementation procedure, stress and personal vulnerability, and relative lack of reflection and feedback skills. Demonstrating the participants' experiences towards the peer coaching program, this study provides EFL teachers with useful insights into peer coaching as an effective tool of their professional development.

• 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.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.