The purpose of this study is to find out what characteristics of the communicative functions are presented and how these functions are reflected in the elementary school English textbooks based on the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, 20 elementary school English textbooks(5 different textbooks from the third to sixth grade) are analyzed and compared. For data analysis, 11 upper categories and 77 subcategories of communicative functions presented in the 2015 Revised National Curriculum are used. The results represent that first, no grade contains all 11 upper categories of communicative functions in the textbooks. Second, the communicative functions presented in the textbook have a wide variation in the frequency of presentation among the upper categories and subcategories. Third, there are no textbooks that reflected all 77 subcategories of communicative functions, and the degree of reflection in each textbook differs. This study suggests that more various examples are needed and organized in the textbooks in order to foster learners’ basic communicative competence, and connectivity and continuity of communicative functions among grades should be considered when organizing textbooks.

Keong Yeun Ku. 2017. Development of Korean Elementary School Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence through Telecollaboration with American Peers. Studies in Modern Grammar 96, 271-290. The purpose of the study is to investigate effects of asynchronous telecollaboration with American peers on Korean elementary school students’ intercultural communicative competence(ICC) and their perception of the asynchronous telecollaboration. A total of 32 elementary school students of grade six divided into two groups, a control group of 16 students and an experimental group of 16 students, participated in the study. All participants’ ICC levels were evaluated with 21 questions based on Fantini’s ICC assessment scale before and after the telecollaborative learning with American peers. While telecollaborating with 28 American peers of grade five, the experimental group shared information on 8 different topics for two academic semesters. On the completion of collaborating with their American peers, the experimental group was only expected to answer the 20 questions related to the experience on the telecollaboration with American peers. The study found that (1) the elementary school students benefit from asynchronous telecollaboration with American peers in developing their ICC, (2) especially, the telecollaboration is of a great use in developing their knowledge and awareness of other culture, and (3) the students perceived the experience of telecollaboration to be an effective learning in terms of satisfaction, understanding, and concentration on class. At last, the implication and the study limitations were given.

The quasi-experimental study was designed to compare effects of two telecollaborative learning models, asynchronous (ATL) and synchronous telecollaboration learning (STL), on Korean elementary school students’ motivation, anxiety, and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). To evaluate the 27 participants’ motivation and anxiety level, a pre-test and a post-test were administered and the motivation level and the anxiety level were compared between the ATL and the STL group. On the completion of the project, to examine their ICC development, the participants were interviewed by the researcher with questions constructed based on five objectives of Byram’s intercultural competence. The results are as follows: (1) The two groups did not show any significant differences in increase their motivation level. However, when examining in more detail, the participants in ATL increased their instrumental motivation while those in STL increased their integrative motivation. (2) There was no significant difference in anxiety level between the two groups. At last, (3) regarding ICC development, the participants both in the ATL and in the STL greatly improved their knowledge, attitude, and skills, but ATL participants, compared to STL participants, demonstrated relatively limited changes in their critical cultural awareness. Implications to enhance elementary school students’ motivation and ICC by telecollaboration are suggested.

This study investigated the impact of a telecollaborative project with Australian peers on development of Korean elementary school students’ intercultural communicative competence. 57 Korean elementary school students of grade five participated in the project with 11 topics for 8 months. The responses from the 46 participants in the three ICC surveys and the data from 11 voluntary interviewees were analyzed to discover the changing process of their ICC over time within the Bennett’s DMIS framework. The research revealed that the participants were ethnorelatively oriented at the onset of the project, and at the end of the project even though they temporarily displayed an enthnocentric orientation while participating in the project. Among the participants, some shifted toward ethnocentric orientation; however, they still kept the ethnorelative orientation more intensively than the ethnocentric orientation. Examining in great detail, prior to the start of the project, they were ready to accept cultural differences uncritically, and finally reached at the adaptation stage, which is the last second stage in DMIS. Lastly, the pedagogical implication and the limitations of the study were also discussed.

Recent advancement of information, communication, and technology has brought changes in EFL instruction. Of these changes, telecollaboration is introduced as one of the innovative EFL instructional methods and the telecollaborative instruction under the ‘Smart Education’ policy has been applied to K-12 EFL class in Korea. Based on the changes in K-12 EFL class, the study was designed to investigate how telecollaboration with Australian peers influences on Korean middle school students’ English learning, especially their motivation to learn English and their intercultural communicative competence development. Over a 9-month school academic period (from March to December), the subjects in the experimental group engaged in 40-45 minute-long telecollaborative classes, guided by a total of 15 tasks. Right after completing the 15 telecollaborative classes, at the early December, the data were collected using the survey questionnaire with 43 items adapted from Gardner’s AMTB and Chen and Starosta’s Intercultural Sensitivity Scale. The responses to the questionnaire from 75 subjects were analyzed using independent- samples t-test. The results showed that (1) telecollaboration with native peers of English helped Korean middle school students stimulate their motivation to learn English, but (2) telecollaboration with native peers of English did not make any contribution to development of Korean middle school students’ ICC. The limitations and suggestions for future research were concluded.