• School Mathematics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.503-526
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• 2016

The study aimed at determining the identity of mathematics essay test in the university entrance examination. For this purpose, a document research was conducted for higher order thinking and mathematics essay ability and it analyzed the goal of assessment and the tendency of problem settings and looked into mathematics essay problems of twenty-five universities. As a result, the study found out that evaluation factors of mathematics essay test requires higher order thinking ability including mathematical knowledge and essay ability such as mathematical knowledge, understanding, problem solving, logical and critical thinking, creative ability, power of expression, argument skills. Also, problems from previous mathematics essay tests were set mainly to assess mathematical knowledge, understanding and problem solving. Based on the findings, the past mathematics essay tests in university entrance examination in Korea that require logical and critical thinking, creative ability, power of expression, argument skills were a rather small percentage of questions.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.149-167
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• 2009

This study was aimed to examine problem-solving ability of fifth graders on two types of mathematical essay problems, and to analyze the process of mathematical justification in solving the essay problems. For this purpose, a total of 14 mathematical essay problems were developed, in which half of the items were single tasks and the other half were data-provided tasks. Sixteen students with higher academic achievements in mathematics and the Korean language were chosen, and were given to solve the mathematical essay problems individually. They then were asked to justify their solution methods in groups of 4 and to reach a consensus through negotiation among group members. Students were good at understanding the given single tasks but they often revealed lack of logical thinking and representation. They also tended to use everyday language rather than mathematical language in explaining their solution processes. Some students experienced difficulty in understanding the meaning of data in the essay problems. With regard to mathematical justification, students employed more internal justification by experience or mathematical logic than external justification by authority. Given this, this paper includes implications for teachers on how they need to teach mathematics in order to foster students' logical thinking and communication.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.37
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• pp.335-360
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether high-level(level 6) essay-writing questions in Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) have been presented appropriately so as to enable foreign test-takers to display their Korean writing ability properly, and to provide some suggestions on how those questions need to be changed. To accomplish this purpose, all the essay-writing questions were collected from the 33 TOPIK tests, from the 2nd in 1998 to the 35thin 2014, and analyzed from the perspectives of their topics and formats. The results are that high-level TOPIK essay-writing questions showed a strong tendency to take as their topics Korean sociocultural structures and phenomena, or current issues in Korea, and that they frequently employed guided writing formats by providing preset ideas or/and contexts for test-takers to write in a guided way; such tendencies were analyzed to shed a negative influence on test-takers displaying their writing ability and creativity, because those topics and preset ideas or contexts provided do not allow them to express their own opinions or positions freely. It is suggested that TOPIK essay-writing questions should be changed to deal with objective and general topics which enable test-takers to write freely and logically in Korean based on their experience, because TOPIK is not a test to check whether they have enough background knowledge about the Korean society and culture, but a test to assess their Korean proficiency.

• Journal of Ethics
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• no.72
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• pp.247-272
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to suggest a direction, contents, and method of essay education in the elementary school. The value of essay is getting weaker and weaker as a evaluation item of a university entrance examination. But there is a lot of educational value of essay itself yet. The essay goes beyond merely writing, as long as it displays one's sense of values and viewpoint of world. It is the highest intelligent ability that not is formated easily in short time. Starting a essay education at elementary school age is better than middle or high school age. when the students in a elementary school, they have a little burden of studies. The elementary students can be educated to develop the power of philosophical thought focusing on the reading and discussing. The moral subject have to assign the essay education, because thinking faculty is very important ability in essay. This study consisted of three directions ; firstly, what is direction of elementary moral education for essay education? secondly, what is contents and method as a basis of essay education in the moral subject? thirdly, how does teach the concept analysis as a concrete essay education method? I suggested answers in the three aspects of moral education in the elementary school. The essay education is important as the result of moral education, philosophy education as contents, and discuss training as a method. And I applicated concretely contents of this study as a concept analysis method in class.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.21-44
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to analyse the possibilities and legitimacies for using integrated essay on Home Economics Education, and to suggest the instructional design. Integrated Essay consisted with three composers, subject(students), object(texts), and strategy(thinking abilities). The results of theoretical analysis, socio-constructionalism by Vygotsky, the deconstructional literacy criticism by Derrida, and cognitive psychological approach by Beyer, Wood et al, Hayes were supported the integrated essay in instruction for Home Economics Education. Also, essay tests types of university entrance exams in Korea, previous researches of thinking ability in Home Economics Education, and essay questions in textbook were analysed. As results, theoretical framework, instruction process, and instruction design for integrated essay in Home Economics Education were developed. The possibility of integrated essay is high but it's real estimate will success when Home Economics Education realize it's nature.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.95-120
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• 2011

Modern society is the age of the information. As new information is springing up every day and pace of change becomes faster, the importance of communication skills is growing. The recent mathematics education is recognized as not a fragmentary mathematical knowledge or results of the learning, but a procedure of mathematical thinking, and the effective expression skill of their mathematical ideas and the ability to forward it to others are regarded very serious. As the method of mathematics evaluation, mathematical essay is introduced to replace the existing multiple-choice written test. This method assess the ability which students have, that express the reorganized knowledge and information according to given situation by themselves. Ultimately, it is expected to help that students get the higher order thinking skills such as logical thinking and creativity. However, definition of elementary mathematical essay is unclear, and proper teaching methods is lacking for each stage of elementary school students. Thus, in this paper, I have defined the concept of elementary mathematical essay and made a foundation of elementary mathematical essay research, then researched about the effective utilization of elementary mathematical essay using school education. Also elementary mathematical essay teaching-learning materials is developed and applied to analyzed the students' responses. Using this program, in real elementary school education, the implications has deduced.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.135-138
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• 2007

Essay education has been multifariously accomplished through school curriculums, private institutions and online education systems. However we can easily find misspellings from students' writing, and them still not being able to describe their own experiences logically and skillfully in schools. In this paper, we propose the web-based essay correction system using mash-up service, ECSUM, implemented for improvement of a students' logical writing ability applying a logical writing correction module with six steps. Using the proposed system, students can obtain logical writing skills using a mash-up service and teachers can help their students to improve their logical ability of self-expression.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.370-376
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• 2001

In this study, high school students' problem-solving strategy-performing ability was measured by an essay-type test. The relationship between students' logical thinking ability and strategy-performing ability was also investigated. Four classes (N=187) were selected from two high schools in Seoul, and the strategy performance ability test and the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking (GALT) were administered. Evaluation scheme for strategy-performing ability consists of 7 subcategories - understanding given of problems, recalling related law, setting up subgoals, deriving physical quantities, logical progress, mathematical execution, and reviewing. The intercoder agreement for scaling was .92, which indicated substantial strength of agreement. The results revealed that students' ability of understanding given of problems and mathematical execution was relatively high. However, their ability of setting up subgoals and reviewing was very low. The total scores of the strategy performance ability test and all of the scores of each subcategory were significantly correlated with the GALT scores.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1255-1279
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• 2010

Much has already been learned about what goes on in the minds of second language writers as they compose, yet, oddly enough, until recently little in the L2 research literature has addressed writing and mental imagery together. However, images and imaging (visual thinking) play a crucial role in perception (the basis of mental imagery), in turn, affecting language, thinking, and writing. Many theorists of mental imagery also agree that more than just language accounts for how we think and that imagery is at least as crucial as language. All of these demands, to be sure, are compounded for EFL students, which is why I investigate EFL students' writing process, focusing on the use of mental imagery and its relationship to the writing. First I speculate upon some ways that imagery influences EFL students' composing processes and products. Next, I want to explore how and whether the images in a writer's mind can be shaped effectively into a linear piece of written English in one's writing. I studied two university undergraduate EFL students, L and J. They had fairly advanced levels of English proficiency and exhibited high level of writing ability, as measured by TOEFL iBT Test. Each student wrote two comparison and contrast essays: one written under specified time limitations and the other written without the pressure of time. In order to investigate whether the amount of time in itself causes differences within an individual in imagery ability, the students were placed under strict time constraints for Topic 1. But for Topic 2, they were encouraged to take as much time as necessary to complete this essay. Immediately after completing their essays, I conducted face-to-face retrospective interviews with students to prompt them for information about the role of imagery as they write. Both L and J have spent more time on their second (untimed) essays. Without time constraint, they produced longer texts on untimed essay (149 vs. 170; 186 vs 284 words). However, despite a relatively long period of time spent writing an essay, these students neither described their images nor detailed them in their essays. Although their mental imagery generated an explosion of ideas for their writings, most visual thinking must merely be a means toward an end-pictures that writers spent in purchasing the right words or ideas.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.118-123
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• 2010

This study is aiming to structure progressive instructional strategy for development of constructivist-thinking into the beginning stage, developmental stage, and advanced stage, then organize multiple choice, completion, descriptive, and essay problems to be suitable for each stage of the strategy, and finally, to evaluate what effects this instructional strategy has on the students' academic achievements and enhancement of their scientific essay writing skills. The results of the study are as follows. First, lessons applying the strategy for developing constructivist-thinking were more effective in enhancing student' academic achievement than the text book-oriented lecture type lessons. In changes in academic achievement, the test group, for both high and low levels, displayed a higher average than the control group, however, changes in the high level was not statistically significant and changes in the low level students were found to be statistically significant. Second, scientific essay writing skills were found to be effective in all levels of the test group and the averages in both high and low groups of the test group were higher than those of the control group and were also found to be statistically significant.