• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.11-21
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• 2019

It has been about 20 years since the English subject was formally taught in public elementary schools in Korea. The present research aims to analyze the studies regarding 'primary English' implemented in Korea during the time period. I have investigated 6,467 theses or research papers in total that were published in Korea with the help of the corpus programs Utagger and WordSmith Tools. The results show that for the last 20 years the number of overall studies appears to have increased since the year 1997, although the recent trend seems to be in recession. The research scope ranges from 'teaching-learning interaction' to 'curriculum' and 'assessment', which have been steadily investigated for 20 years. Furthermore, researchers sometimes appear to have followed the English education policy by conducting particular investigations like 'immersion program' or 'native English speaking teachers' in a certain time period. Recently, researchers started to have interest in the cutting-edge ICT. In conclusion, the academic field of 'primary English' in Korea has grown in quantity, and the spectrum of research areas has been expanded for the past 20 years. It is hoped that the results of this research will help set a new direction for future research.