• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.8
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• pp.19-26
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• 2018

In an effort to investigate the effects of chatbots on English listening and reading skills, 46 college students participated in the current study. Participants consisted of first-year students who enrolled in an English class at a university in South Korea. They were randomly divided into two groups: one experimental group (n=24) and one control group (n=22). During 16 weeks, the experimental group engaged in chats with a chatbot, named Elbot, while the control group did not. There were pre- and post-tests to confirm the effects of the chatbot usage. Major findings are as follows: First, participants in both groups significantly improved listening and reading skills. On the post-listening test, however, the experimental group showed more improvements. Their listening proficiency level improved from intermediate to advanced level after engaging in chat with the chatbot. Limitations and implications for theory and practice are discussed at the end.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.71-90
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to analyze the improvement of students' interest and general proficiency of English through cultural understanding. To achieve this purpose, two classes of the 2nd grade in the informational high school were divided into the experimental class and the control class. The Grammar-Translation Method was used for the control class and a cultural learning - compare and contrast Korean culture and American culture - was taken for the experimental. After various cultural differences were studied, surveys of students' attitude and reading and listening test were taken. The results from this study were as follows: Firstly, students' interest in English was improved through learning the American culture that was related to the content of each lesson. Secondly, English reading and communicative skills were improved by learning about cultural aspects. Therefore, it can be said that teaching culture stimulates students' interest and motivation for learning English and helps students retain such affective attitudes. And English communicative skills were improved as well.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.121-127
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• 2018

This paper develops and builds an Integrated Assessment System for National Competency Standard Professional Basic. The integrated evaluation system for basic job competency in the National Competency Standards is developed to conduct examination by means of computers, smartphones and tablet PCs. The system can be used for the basic job competency test, examination for online cyber universities, job competency examination for enterprises, and the listening, reading, and speaking test in the foreign language proficiency examination and is even better in terms of facility investment and saved operating costs as well as efficient use of spaces in comparison with conventional evaluation schemes. Even greater synergy effects can be achieved by providing support for the integrated evaluation system for basic job competency in connection with the NCS qualification system. The evaluation system has been tested and practiced at a specialized high school and can be applied to the NCS education evaluation of the college and four-year college and to the selection examination of new employees of the company.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.229-252
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• 2004

The TOEIC has widely used to evaluate business English proficiency in Korea, but those who achieved high scores still often face difficulties in performing their duties in English at work. This implies that the test may not evaluate business English proficiency effectively enough. With an ultimate goal of proposing an effective way of assessing business English proficiency, therefore, his study analyzed the predictive validity of the TOEIC. A correlation analysis was conducted between TOEIC scores of 64 office workers of multinational companies and their working skills in English evaluated by themselves, and their colleagues and seniors. Its results illustrated a significant correlation between their listening and reading scores and their working skills measured by all the groups, but not between their scores and their working skills in speaking and writing. In addition, the study did a delphi study to identify working skills in English to be assessed in business English tests and a contents analysis of the TOEIC. The results suggest business English tests should be able to assess working skills by work types and more direct testing of working skills in speaking and writing is needed.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.537-543
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• 2016

This paper suggests a class model to improve the English oral proficiency for intermediate low English speaking learners. Utilizing the four English skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), the class model focuses on the learners' schema and discussion strategies. To enhance the learners' motivation and match their cognitive capacity, 10 discussion topics were prepared by surveying the learners. A pilot experiment was conducted to investigate the teaching effects of the discussion class model with 26 college students majoring in English in Seoul. The participants' oral proficiency was measured both before, and after the instructions by OPIc (Oral Proficiency Interview in computer). As a result of the experiment, the percentage of participants whose oral proficiency levels were lower than intermediate mid decreased from 82% to 47%. In addition, the percentage of participants with higher oral proficiency than intermediate low was increased dramatically from 18% to 53%, which supports the claim that through discussion, the class learners' diverse and creative ideas need to be expressed in a formal and intelligible language. Finally, through the findings of the study, the possibility of a discussion class can be expected, regardless of the learners' low level of oral proficiency.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.19-29
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• 2015

Objectives: The purpose of the study is to investigate the related factors to dental care utilization, oral health behaviors, and oral health status in immigrant workers in Korea. Methods: The subjects were 504 foreign immigrant male workers over 20 years old who visited Daegu labor consultation center for oral health survey and oral examination. The questionnaire included 5 questions of socioeconomic characteristics, 8 questions of oral health practice behavior, 6 questions of dental clinic visit, 8 questions of social relations and Korean language proficiency. The question for health behavior was measure by body mass index(BMI). Social relations and Korean language proficiency instrument was modified by Seol from "Family welfare survey in Korean international marriage" and scored by Liker 5 scale. Results: The oral health examination of the immigrant workers was as follows: decayed teeth - 76.6%, filling teeth - 27.4%, missing teeth - 69.8%, dental caries experience above five or more - 60.2%, periodontal pocket tissues - 58.9%. Simplified Oral Hygiene Index was very poor and accounted for 49.0%. Dental care utilization experience was closely associated with social relation indexes including attendance in family events, household stuff help, financial help and counseling for hard work(p<0.01). Dental care utilization experience proportionally increased with proficiency in Korean literacy including speaking, listening, and writing abilities of Korean language(p<0.01). Conclusions: In order to improve the oral health condition of the immigrant workers, it is important to provide social network, Korean language proficiency support, and health insurance coverage through economic burden reduction by the Korean government.

• 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.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.59-73
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• 2012

This study attempts to investigate the contribution of prosody to the foreign accent in Chinese speakers' English production by examining the synthesized speech of crossing native and non-native talkers' prosody and segments. For the stimuli of the foreign accent ratings, we transplanted gender-matched native speakers' prosody onto non-native talkers' segments and vice versa, utilizing the TD-PSOLA algorithm. Eight English native listeners participated in judging foreign accent and comprehensibility of the transplanted stimuli. Results showed that the synthesized stimuli were perceived as stronger foreign accent regardless of speakers' proficiency when English speakers' prosody was crossed with Chinese speakers' segments. This suggests that segments contribute more than prosody to native listeners' evaluation of foreign accent. When transplanted with English speakers' segments, Chinese speakers' prosody showed a difference in duration rather than pitch between high and low proficiency such that stronger foreign accent was detected when low proficient Chinese speakers' duration was crossed with English speakers' segments. This indicated that prosody, more specifically duration, plays a role though the prosodic role is not overall as significant as segments. According to the post acoustic analysis, the temporal features contributing to making the duration parameter prominent as opposed to pitch were found out to be speaking rate, pause duration and pause frequency. Finally, foreign accent and comprehensibility showed no significant correlation such that native listeners had no difficulty listening to highly foreign accented speech.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.1-36
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• 2017

This study investigated the correlation between learners' psychological and social factors and their syntactic complexity of speaking. The study collected samples of Korean spoken production of 61 learners with English, Chinese, Japanese and other L1 backgrounds and applied mini-TOPIK, mini-AMTB, and SASIQ for 70 minutes. The study found that: (i) integrative motivation showed positive correlation with a number of simple complex clauses, but instrumental motivation correlated negatively with a number of adverbial clauses, indicating that high motivation hindered producing highly complex clauses although it triggered producing simple complex clauses, (ii) social contact with L2 native speakers showed positive correlation with general L2 development and a number of simple complex clauses, but revealed negative correlation with double or triple complex clauses, (iii) hours of L2 listening showed very strong positive correlation with producing triple complex clauses and general proficiency, but indicated negative correlation with a number of simple complex clauses. The study reported that high motivation toward Korean learning and active social activities with Korean native speakers helped produce simple complex clauses while hours of listening to Korean helped produce triple complex clauses.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.552-562
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• 2016

Although a number of studies have been conducted in Korea since 2000 on the impact of early English education, their interpretation is still not conclusive, due to their lack of control groups and failure to control for third factors and use valid measurements. The present study was designed to examine the effect of an English education program on young children's English proficiency after 8 months using the most well-known official English proficiency measure, the WIDA for kindergarteners. In addition, the children's Korean language proficiency, cognitive abilities, personality, parents' SES, and parents' attitudinal variables before the education were measured and controlled. The results indicated that the intervention group performed better than the control group in both listening and speaking skills, even when all relevant factors were considered. This effect, however, was only found in the item-level analyses.