The paper observes that grammatical competence has been interpreted as the ability to judge grammaticality ever since the employment of communicative competence as the core basis of curriculum design in the 6th national English curriculum of Korea. It contends that this interpretation is different from what has been widely accepted in the literature on grammatical competence, that is, the ability to understand and express propositional meaning of utterances. The study suggests that a new and fresh look at grammatical competence needs to be taken in developing and implementing the national English curriculum which is to provide English learners in Korea with more potential opportunities for success in acquiring communicative competence.

It is well-known that grammar rules learned in class are hard to use in communication. This paper explores an answer to this puzzle, focusing on the so-called third person singular present -(e)s in English. Observing that the core nature of the hard-to-use rules is best described in terms of 'form', rather than 'meaning' and 'use', the paper shows that the formal descriptions of the grammar rules presented to learners do not correctly represent the syntactic nature of the linguistic phenomena concerned. It proposes that an essential prerequisite for more efficient and systematic grammar teaching and learning is a comprehensive understanding of the linguistic nature of grammar categories and items to be taught to learners.

This paper overviews the college English teaching system at Seoul National University, and discusses possible changes prerequisite for the betterment of its system. It observes that improvement of college English education is hard to achieve without reestablishing its roles and objectives, paying special attention to its intrinsic relation with English teaching at the pre- and post-higher education levels. The paper suggests that colleges and universities lay more emphasis on quality education, which is best tuned to their students’ future needs and wants.

This paper observes how the third grade elementary English textbook does not provide target-like balanced language input. It proposes that the unbalance is attributed to the usefulness-based listing of communicative function expressions in the 7th National English Curriculum. The paper concludes that the problem is hard to resolve unless due and proper attention is paid to formal and structural aspects of the target language in designing national English curriculum and developing English textbooks.

The is the commonest word in English. This word is also known as one of the most difficult grammatical items for Korean learners of English as a foreign language. This paper focuses on the non-generic use of the English definite article, and examines the grammatical descriptions of the article in Advanced English Grammar and English Grammar in Use. It reveals that some of the important usages of the definite article are not included in 'the grammar books', and observes, following Park and Song (2001), that these unlisted usages cause much difficulty for Korean learners to improve accuracy in the article use. Underscoring the organic view of language, the paper proposes that a comprehensive and systematic understanding of 'grammar' is prerequisite for optimum efficiency in teaching the English definite article to Korean EFL learners.

This paper reports the current situation of English and English education in North Korea. Two approaches are taken to achieve the goal: One is to examine social attitudes and government approaches to English education. Interviews with defectors from North Korea, newspaper reports and other related literature are used. The other is to analyze middle school English textbooks and research articles to reveal the current practice of English language teaching at schools. The results show that North Korean government and people are interested in learning and teaching English and they take various measures to improve English learning to meet national or individual goals. English seems to be considered as a way of improving their economic situations and finding a better opportunity for many North Korean people. However, English education in North Korea is still limited in terms of resources including learning materials and native teachers of English. Also academic research and practices in English education are still heavily influenced by Kim Ilsung and Kim Jungil’s words so that scientific investigations are limited. It is an impending issue to narrow a gap in English education between South and North Koreas to overcome difficulties encountered in the future.

Universal grammar has exerted meaningful influence on the development of second language acquisition theories. SLA researchers working within UG have addressed the question whether second language developments are constrained by universal language principles. This paper reviews current developments in UG-based SLA research with a view to providing a better understanding of the role of UG principles in foreign language sentence structure development.

This paper explores grammar-based organization of English teaching content, paying special attention to some grammatical properties of the expression "How are you?". The paper reports that "frequency" and "simplicity" are two of the most important organizational principles, and proposes that full-scale detailed grammar description is the prerequísite for "simplicity-based" content organization.

For a new direction of college English programs, this study is designed to analyze Korean university EFL leamer needs. With this goal, this study discusses the results of questionnaires provided for 405 students in the College of Education, Seoul National University. The study also discusses a new direction of desirable English programs on the basis of the needs assessment.

πle purpose of this paper is to suggest the feasibility of a new direction of EFL learner needs assessment in Korea. π1Îs paper relates theoretical concepts and methodological frameworks in needs assessment in general to the p때lC비따 concem with needs assessment in TEFL. 까le paper also discusses a new direction of the needs assessment in terms of the “ leah1er-centered” system, thc 폐 needs" type, the “process-oriented" interpretation, and the “democratic" approach.