This study explored if and to what extent foreign language high school students would benefit from participating in a school English drama contest in terms of English proficiency, affective attitudes, and collaborative competence. For this purpose, questionnaires were constructed to measure students’ perception of their growth in those areas after participating in the contest. Pre- and post-questionnaires were administered to 85 students, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 of the survey respondents. In a comparison of the pre- and post-test measures, the study found that the drama contest contributed to reducing students’ anxiety and enhancing their intrinsic motivation. Although pre- and post-test differences in language proficiency and collaborative competence were found to be non-significant, the participants addressed positive aspects of their experience in the contest. For example, they reported that they improved their pronunciation, speaking, and writing skills and that they collaborated and learned from one another by sharing ideas, providing feedback, and exchanging opinions.

The aim of the present study was to examine factors affecting Korean university EFL learners' English reading comprehension across two reading tasks (i.e., literal vs. inferential reading). To this end, five latent factors (linguistic, cognitive, affective, social, and English reading) were targeted, and the structural relationships among these five factors were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results of the present study demonstrate that for literal reading comprehension task, linguistic, cognitive, and social factors made a significant and direct impact on Korean university students' English reading performances, whereas the effect of affective factor was not significant. Regarding the inferential reading task, only linguistic and cognitive factors were significantly and positively associated with Korean university students' English reading comprehension. Implications for pedagogy as well as for future research directions were also provided.