• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.189-208
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• 2009

Most if not all research articles published in journals require the author to write an abstract regardless of academic field. However, abstract writing in English is a highly specialized genre on its own. In this light, the purpose of this study is to investigate differences in journal article abstracts written in English by Korean and native English scholars. 90 research paper abstracts written in English by Korean national scholars, US-educated Korean scholars and native English scholars were compared according to rhetorical organization. A generalized rhetorical scheme was used in analysis which was based on Graetz (1985) and Swales (1990): Background-Purpose-Method-Result-Conclusion. In addition, the use of conjunctions as a cohesive device was analyzed based on the categories proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Analyses of the research paper abstracts showed that the majority of the abstracts included the purpose, method and result components. However, while approximately 70 percent of native English writers used research background in the abstract, only 26 percent of Korean national scholars did so. Regarding the use of conjunctions, Korean-national scholars overused and inappropriately used additive and temporal conjunctions. The US-educated Korean scholars showed similar patterns to the native English speakers. The findings obtained here imply that there is a need to provide academic writing instruction of abstracts to non-native scholars.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.259-281
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• 2009

The ICELT(In-Service Certificate in English Language Teaching) is a highly practical course-based English teacher education program which integrates classroom teaching and off-site teacher training. This case study analyzes the three-year implementation of the ICELT program in Korea and discusses its effects and the implications for improving the inservice English teacher education system. It has been found that the course participants were satisfied with the quality of its execution, thinking that it contributed to their professional development in the areas of teaching practice, methodology and language competence. The study has identified several success factors as shared program goals among the course participants, including systematic selection of course participants, well-qualified tutors and the proper provision of resources including syllabus, teaching materials and course assessment system. Nonetheless, it has been suggested that attention needs to be paid to generalized application of the ICELT for English teacher education due to the limitations such as the heavy workload caused by the program, lack of course participants' collaboration with other teachers at their schools and tutors' poor understanding of the Korean education context. Bearing this in mind, the implications for improving the inservice English teacher education system in Korea have been discussed. Finally, further studies have been suggested, which are concerned with in-depth investigation in exploring the division of roles between native English speaking tutors and Korean ones and the impact of the program on the sustainability of course participants' professional development and the impact on schools.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.3557-3563
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• 2014

Korean National Level Kindergarten Curriculum does not include English education in regular class time. On the other hand, more than 90% kindergarteners are taught English. This study examined the Native English Teachers' (NETs') cultural aspects of their teaching at regular kindergartens in Korea. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with four NETs who were working at regular kindergartens in Korea, their partner Local English Teachers (LETs) and kindergarten principals. All interview data was transcribed and categorized based on the grounded theory method. The results showed that NETs are not required to be culturally prepared to teach in Korean kindergartens. Consequently, most of them do not consider the students' culture in their teaching activities. Moreover, Korean kindergartens, where research participants work, are not prepared well to invite NETs into their regular curriculum. These results will have significant implications on Korean kindergarten's English education practice.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.123-142
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• 2009

The present study used multi-faceted Rasch measurement to explore the characteristics and bias patterns of non-native raters when they scored L2 writing tasks. Three raters scored 254 writing tasks written by Korean university students on two topics adapted from the TOEFL Test of Written English (TWE). The written products were assessed using a five-category rating scale (Content, Organization, Language in Use, Grammar, and Mechanics). The raters only showed a difference in severity with regard to rating categories but not in task types. Overall, the raters scored Grammar most harshly and Organization most leniently. The results also indicated several bias patterns of ratings with regard to the rating categories and task types. In rater-task bias interactions, each rater showed recurring bias patterns in their rating between two writing tasks. Analysis of rater-category bias interaction showed that the three raters revealed biased patterns across all the rating categories though they were relatively consistent in their rating. The study has implications for the importance of rater training and task selection in L2 writing assessment.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.19-40
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• 2006

This paper deals with a part-specific analysis of grammatical errors in the production of the English passive in writing. The purpose of the study is dual: to explore common error types in forming the passive; and to provide plausible sources of the errors, with special attention to the role of the native language. To this end, this study obtained a large amount of data from Korean EFL university students using an essay writing task. The results show that in forming the passive sentence, errors were made in various ways and that the most common problem was the formation of the be-auxiliary, in particular, the proper use of tense and S-V agreement. Another important finding was that the global errors found in this study were not necessarily those with the greatest frequency. Also corroborated was the general claim that many factors work together to account for errors. In many cases, interlingual and intralingual factors were shown to interact with each other to explain the passive errors made by Korean students. On the basis of the results, suggestions are made for effective and well-formed use of the passive sentence.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.985-994
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• 2009

This research is exploratory in considering the unique socio-cultural context of South Korea, where the present government is responding to the demand for English language training. The study asked the question: What do mothers experience when sending their young children to a private English institute, so called English kindergarten, instead of a regular preschool? A qualitative approach was used to analyze the in-depth interviews with 19 mothers who sent their young child to an English kindergarten. Mothers stated that their young child needs to be a competent English speaker. The mothers expected that an English kindergarten would prepare their child better for the elementary school English curriculum than a regular preschool. The study revealed that English kindergartens symbolized the precedence and the privileges of the elite because of their high tuition fees, native-speaker teachers, and small class sizes. The mothers showed a sense of pride and vicarious satisfaction from sending their child to an English kindergarten. However, the mothers recognized that English kindergartens put more emphasis on cognitive learning instead of the social development of children. It was almost impossible for mothers to communicate with the native-speaker teachers about their child. The mothers seemed to overlook their child's struggle to adapt to an English Kindergarten. The findings of the study raise issues concerning the boom of teaching young children English in Korea.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.1-20
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• 2004

The findings in contrastive rhetoric research of the twentieth century have shown that different cultures have different conventions in organizing written texts. These culture-related conventions were claimed to influence English texts written by L2 learners, including Asian learners of English. However, due to the massive inflow of the American culture into Asia as well as increased exposure to English in the midst of globalization of the last decade, it is quite probable that the textual gap between the native English writers and Asian EFL writers have been reduced. The present study investigates the changes that have taken place in EFL writer's knowledge of genre-specific writing over the past decade. To this aim, this study compared four sets of application essays written by four groups of applicants (1) native American applicants in 1993, (2) Korean EFL applicants in 1933, (3) native American applicants in 2003, and (4) Korean EFL applicants in 2003. The results suggested that the disparity between the Korean EFL writers' and the native English writers' texts were becoming less noticeable at the macro-level, possibly due to Korean EFL writers' enhanced textual awareness of English genre structures Pedagogical implications are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.41-59
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• 2009

The present study investigated Korean learners' knowledge on the range of possible interpretations of English locative PPs with manner of motion verbs, and considers whether learners can arrive at a superset L2 grammar on the basis of positive L2 input. Unlike Korean, some English locative PPs occurring with manner of motion verbs (such as in John jumped on the bed) are ambiguous as they can be interpreted as either directional or locational. Thirty Korean learners of English in three distinct groups (Advanced EFL-only group; Intermediate-EFL-only group; and ESL-experienced group) participated in an experimental study, along with a control group of nine native speakers of English. The results of the study showed that I) Korean learners, overall, tended to interpret English locative PPs as only locational, failing to recognize the ambiguity between the directional and locational readings in the target structure; 2) For the learners who experienced only the EFL context, even highly proficient learners, as well as intermediate level learners, failed to acknowledge the ambiguity; 3) The learners who experienced the ESL context for an extended period of time could identify the target reading to some extent, although they still could not reach the native-like competence. From these results, it is argued that robustness of positive evidence, not simply its availability, is critical in the acquisition of the superset L2 targets like the present one.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.91-106
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• 2010

This study examines the use of hedges in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of hedges in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of hedges in the students' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The result shows that EFL learners tend to use relatively smaller number of hedges than the native speakers in terms of the frequencies of the total tokens. It further reveals that the learners' overuse of a single versatile high-frequency hedging item, I think, results in relative underuse of other hedging devices. This indicates that due to their small repertoire of hedges, EFL learners' overuse of a limited number of hedging items may cause their speech or writing to become less competent. Based on the result and interviews with the learners, the study also argues that hedging should be understood in its social contexts and should not be understood just as a lack of conviction or a mark of low proficiency. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them develop communicative and pragmatic competence.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.1-31
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• 2009

Although Korean university students' primary concern is academic success in their higher degrees in the UK, they highly desire to develop English communicative competence through a number of opportunities to speak with natives speakers. The paper aims at examining to what extent they are able to be socialised into a new environment while they are studying at UK universities. The in-depth, longitudinal interviews with the targeted group of six Korean masters' students at the University of York was undertaken to observe the pace of their progress in developing social skills. Reluctance and hesitance to contact and interact with their supervisors and other academic staff persisted for most of them to the final term caused by cultural reasons such as face and hierarchy rather than language problems. Despite the six participants' variation in their patterns of social interaction, they struggled with pressures towards monoculture-biased interaction with Korean people, which was quite extreme for the five participants. This passivity can be explained by several reasons such as the students' lack of communicative competence and other situational factors on one-year course. It is important to note that students' failure to develop network with native speakers is strongly associated with experience of cultural withdrawal and frustration with developing communicative competence in English.