• Title/Summary/Keyword: second language research

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Identifying Key Grammatical Errors of Japanese English as a Foreign Language Learners in a Learner Corpus: Toward Focused Grammar Instruction with Data-Driven Learning

  • Atsushi Mizumoto;Yoichi Watari
    • Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.25-42
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    • 2023
  • The number of studies on data-driven learning (DDL) has increased in recent years, and DDL's overall effectiveness as an L2 (second language) teaching methodology has been reported to be high. However, the degree of its effectiveness in grammar instruction, particularly for the goal of correcting errors in L2 writing, is still unclear. To provide guidelines for focused grammar instruction with DDL in the Japanese classroom setting, we aimed to identify the typical grammatical errors made by Japanese learners in the Cambridge Learner Corpus First Certificate in English (CLC FCE) dataset. The results revealed that three error types (nouns, articles, and prepositions) should be addressed in DDL grammar instruction for Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. In light of the findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for future DDL research and practice are discussed.

Exploring Teachers' Beliefs and Knowledge about English Writing and Their Writing Instruction in ESL Context

  • Kim, Tae-Eun
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.87-108
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    • 2007
  • Given that various classroom contextual factors influence the nature of writing instructional practices, it would be worthwhile to explore these factors to generate better environment for learning to write. Among many factors, this study examined teachers' beliefs and knowledge, which would operate as a very influential contextual factor in that changes in principles and methods of teaching writing would be the results of their underlying beliefs and knowledge related to teaching writing. Three professional teachers who teach second- and third-grade English language learners (ELLs) were interviewed, and the analysis of teacher interviews was conducted. The research findings indicated that basically all of the teachers perceived the role of writing in second language learning as very important, sharing the belief that the ultimate goal of teaching writing is to have their students gain fluency in writing and that some of instructional methods such as integration of writing and other language aspects, content-based writing, and providing scaffolding are important. In addition, some beliefs that two ESL teachers shared included the importance of ample and continuous opportunities to write, vocabulary knowledge, and explicit instruction about writing. Other beliefs, including the importance of creating a comfortable writing environment and opportunities for writing for varied purposes and genres were represented.

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Children's Literature in Teaching English As a Foreign Language: A Study of Literary Text Application (아동문학과 영어교육-텍스트 활용 방안에 대한 연구)

  • Kim, Hae-Ri;Kweon, Soo-Ok
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.54 no.2
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    • pp.189-215
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    • 2008
  • This study proposes using children's literature as a means of teaching and learning English as a foreign language and suggests practical strategies on the basis of transactional theory of reading suggested by Rosenblatt (1994, 1995). This study suggests three novels written for children or young adults: On My Honor (1986) by Marion Dane Bauer, The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry and Hatchet (1987) by Gary Paulsen. These texts were selected because of their diverse topics, easy and comprehensible language, engaging stories, and authentic and rich expressions, making them effective materials for foreign language learners. This paper is organized as follows: First, it reviews research on teaching literature in English education and response-oriented language teaching to provide theoretical background of literature-based language teaching and learning. Second, it provides the background of the texts selected for the study. Third, it develops diverse, practical strategies for instructors who intend to use children's literature in EFL teaching. We expect to guide EFL instructors in adopting children's literature in their English class by connecting theory and practice and by providing diverse methods and strategies, and sample responses by EFL university students.

A Case Study of KSL Learner-Learner Dialogue as a Cognitive Activity in Speaking Tasks (말하기 과제 수행에서 인지적 활동으로서의 학습자 대화 사례 연구)

  • Son, Hyejin
    • Journal of Korean language education
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    • v.29 no.2
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    • pp.73-100
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this study is to investigate learner-learner dialogue during speaking tasks. In the Korean language classroom, conversation between learners is an important activity as speaking practice. However, learner dialogue is also a tool to enable learners to collaboratively conduct various cognitive activities in the classroom. In previous research, it was unfolded that through learner-learner dialogue, learners can solve second-language related problems and set a goal to carry out tasks. Therefore, this study analyzed learner-learner dialogue to investigate what kinds of cognitive activities are activated during the role-play task. As a result, the learners collaboratively generated and monitored language and content for role play. Also, in order to accomplish tasks more successfully, learners shared the same understanding about the goal of the task, and tried to manage the task procedure. Through learner-learner dialogue, learners can participate in cognitive activities such as content, language construction, and task management voluntarily without the help from teachers. This means that learner-learner dialogue can be an activity to support language learning tasks. Also, it can make learners actively involved in learning and by sharing resources with each other. It is also important that learners can experience language use that participates in real-world communication activities, such as learning in the classroom and collaborating with peer learners. This study is an exploratory study for a basic understanding of learner's conversation as a cognitive activity, and the scope of the study is limited to clarifying contents of learner-learner dialogue as a cognitive activity in speaking tasks. Based on the findings of this study, future research should be conducted on the function of learner-learner dialogue as a cognitive activity in Korean language learning and its role in the classroom of Korean language education.

The Relationship between Temperament and Resilience in Preschool Children from Low-Income Families: The Moderating Effect of Maternal Warmth (저소득층 유아의 기질과 탄력성과의 관계: 어머니의 애정적 양육행동의 중재효과)

  • Choi, Insuk;Hwang, Hae Shin
    • Human Ecology Research
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    • v.51 no.3
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    • pp.341-353
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    • 2013
  • The object of this study is to examine the relationship between temperament (emotionality, activity, sociability, and shyness) and the resilience (social competence and language ability) of preschool children from low-income families and the moderating effect of maternal warmth. The subjects were 86 low-income preschool children (42 girls and 44 boys; mean age, 70.57 months), their mothers and teachers, recruited from five daycare centers in Namyangju city and Ansan city located in Gyeonggi-do area. Each child's language ability was individually assessed with with the standardized measure, Preschool Receptive-Expressive Language Scale (PRES) and their teachers reported on children's social competence and parents reported on their child's temperament by questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed by correlation analysis and hierarchical regression. The main results of this study were as follows. First, children's emotionality in temperament and maternal warmth had main effects on social competence. Second, only monthly income level and sex had main effects on language ability. Third, maternal warmth moderated the effects of children's shyness in temperament on social competence and language ability as resilience. Findings could provide basic information for programs to promote resilience in preschool children from low-income families.

The Influence of Early English Education on Children's Bilingual Language Development (조기 영어 교육이 유아의 이중 언어 발달에 미치는 영향)

  • Hwang, Hae-Shin
    • Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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    • v.13 no.4
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    • pp.497-506
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    • 2004
  • This study examines the influence of early English education on children's bilingual language development to see whether the early exposure to English education affects children's competencies of both English and Korean. Based on this purpose, it attempts to examine whether it supports additive or subtractive bilingualism. The competencies of both English and Korean of the children with early English education were, therefore, compared with those of the children without it, and the relation between the two competencies was also studied. For this research, two different groups of children - one with 48 children who attend English kindergarten and the other with 60 children who attend only Korean kindergarten - took PPVT-R in Korean and in English each. The result shows that children with early English education have more English competency than those without it. No significant differences, however, are found in Korean competency between the two groups. The relation between the two competencies proves positive in children with early English education. It can thus be concluded that the effect of early English education is partially positive on children's language development, which may support the additive bilingualism that children's second language can improve without losing their native language competency. In addition, this result will be able to provide for us the direction and the guideline to the policy of foreign language education and early education.

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The Influence of Follow-up Activities after Reading Picture Books on Language and Socio-emotional Development of Infants (그림책읽기 후속활동이 영아의 언어 및 사회.정서발달에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Wha-Jin;Seo, Hyun-Ah
    • The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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    • v.22 no.3
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    • pp.455-469
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    • 2011
  • The purpose of this study was to find out how follow-up activities of reading picture books influenced infants' language and socio-emotional development. Subjects of this study were 27 2-year-old infants at public day care centers in Busan. After implementing follow-up activities of reading picture books for 8 weeks, this study tried to investigate changes in infants' language and socio-emotional development. Results of this study are as follows. First, follow-up activities of reading pictures have brought positive impacts on infants' language ability. Results indicate a positive influence on infants' expressive and acceptive language ability. Second, follow up activities have also enhanced infants' socio-emotional development. Sepcifically, they have been effective in improving infants' low-level socio-emotional development such as 'internal control', 'peer interaction', and 'achievement motivation'. It is expected that the follow-up activities developed by this research would help to enhance infants' language development and socio-emotional development.

Extraction of Pattern Language for Communal Housing of Families with Children - Using Contents Analysis Method - (육아가구 공동체주택 계획을 위한 패턴언어 추출 연구 - 아동과 육아가구 환경 관련 문헌의 분석을 통해 -)

  • Lim, Yea-Ji;Lee, Yeun-Sook
    • Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Planning & Design
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    • v.35 no.9
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    • pp.77-88
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    • 2019
  • This study started with the aim of creating a parenting environment for raising children as a solution to the problem of low fertility. Communal housing is a type of housing where professional childcare environment and lives of family with children can be achieved in community space. It is an environment that supports the development of the child and life of family. However, there is no guidance system for planning such an environment. Therefore, this study aims to develop a pattern language for communal housing of families with children. The research method comes in two steps. First, the documents that provided pattern language and design guidelines about the environment of child and families with children were analyzed. Second, experts specialized in child education, women and family, environmental design were interviewed. As a result of analysis of characteristics of derived pattern language, convenience, safe feeling, comfortability in residential unit, movement, safe feeling, convenience in intermediate space convenience, safe feeling, control in community space were high. The pattern language of this study grafted the items that have proven to be important over a long period of time and the environmental design concepts for families with children in the community space. So it enabled differentiation from existing pattern language or design guidelines.

Design of a Korean Speech Recognition Platform (한국어 음성인식 플랫폼의 설계)

  • Kwon Oh-Wook;Kim Hoi-Rin;Yoo Changdong;Kim Bong-Wan;Lee Yong-Ju
    • MALSORI
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    • no.51
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    • pp.151-165
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    • 2004
  • For educational and research purposes, a Korean speech recognition platform is designed. It is based on an object-oriented architecture and can be easily modified so that researchers can readily evaluate the performance of a recognition algorithm of interest. This platform will save development time for many who are interested in speech recognition. The platform includes the following modules: Noise reduction, end-point detection, met-frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) and perceptually linear prediction (PLP)-based feature extraction, hidden Markov model (HMM)-based acoustic modeling, n-gram language modeling, n-best search, and Korean language processing. The decoder of the platform can handle both lexical search trees for large vocabulary speech recognition and finite-state networks for small-to-medium vocabulary speech recognition. It performs word-dependent n-best search algorithm with a bigram language model in the first forward search stage and then extracts a word lattice and restores each lattice path with a trigram language model in the second stage.

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Modal Auxiliary Verbs in Japanese EFL Learners' Conversation: A Corpus-based Study

  • Nakayama, Shusaku
    • Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.23-34
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    • 2021
  • This research examines Japanese non-native speakers' (JNNS) modal auxiliary verb use from two different perspectives: frequency of use and preferences for modalities. Additionally, error analysis is carried out to identify errors in modal use common among JNNSs. Their modal use is compared to that of English native speakers within a spoken dialogue corpus which is part of the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners' English. Research findings show at a statistically significant level that when compared to native speakers, JNNSs underuse past forms of modals and infrequently convey epistemic modality, indicating the possibility that JNNSs fail to express their opinions or thoughts indirectly when needed or to convey politeness appropriately. Error analysis identifies the following three types of common errors: (1) the use of incorrect tenses of modal verb phrases, (2) the use of inflected verb forms after modals, and (3) the non-use of main verbs after modals. The first type of error is largely because JNNSs do not master how to express past meanings of modals. The second and third types of errors seem to be due to first language transfer into second language acquisition and JNNSs' overgeneralization of the subject-verb agreement rules to modals respectively.