Since the introduction of teaching English as a regular subject into primary schools in 1997, it has been said that the discrepancy between students who are receiving private instruction at learning institutions and private tutoring and those who are not receiving private English instruction is steadily increasing. The purpose of this study was to investigate what impact private English instruction had on English achievement and attitudes of fifth- and sixth-grade students in primary schools. For this purpose, an English achievement test was developed based on the 7th National Curriculum and administered, along with two attitude questionnaires: One questionnaire was administered to 696 fifth- and sixth-grade primary school students, and the other questionnaire given to 12 primary school teachers of the students. The results showed that students started learning English at the average age 7.9-years-old and about 80% of the students were receiving a variety of private English instruction. In line with expectations, tutored students outperformed non-tutored students on the English achievement test. In addition most of the teachers, as well as students, thought it helpful to learn English through private English instruction. One implication from the results suggests that to ensure quality English language teaching at public schools, the government should put forth efforts to nurture qualified English teachers through intensive teacher training.

It has been reported that primary school students have difficulties in the reading process and their interests and achievement in reading is low, in spite of the various methods that have been introduced. This study aims to examine the reading approaches at the primary school level. To achieve this purpose, the primary English curriculum and textbooks were analyzed in order to explore the approaches that were adopted for primary English reading. The textbooks were analyzed in two aspects: the selection of words and the teaching methods for reading. The data revealed that the curriculum looked well-structured according to the developmental stages of reading, but that the textbooks did not facilitate reading for early readers. Although the reading text increased gradually from the letter to the sentence level, the words in each unit were not organized to help readers recognize the text efficiently which impinged on the students’ reading comprehension. Since words at each unit were selected meaning-based, students had to memorize them as a unitary whole. On the other hand, it was rare to find words structured on the basis of letter-sound relations between words. This lack of structure prevented students from recognizing the alphabetic principles of English. As a result, the textbooks did not consider the bottom-up skills at all in its development process. Therefore, students failed to acquire the basic principles of alphabetic language in the early reading stage. Some suggestions for curriculum and textbook development are presented in the end.

English is now commonly called an international or a global language. Korea starts to face some changes in terms of the situational and functional status of English from EFL to ESL. A bilingual education approach called 'immersion education' to teach English is urgently needed to be taken in Korea, especially in the primary school level. The present paper aims to investigate perceptions of primary school teachers about the introduction of English immersion education program. A total of 171 primary school teachers were surveyed employing a questionnaire asking about their knowledge, opinions and attitudes with regard to the introduction of English immersion education in primary schools in Korea. It was found that there are lots of things to take into consideration introducing the English immersion education system in the areas of preor in-service teacher training system, governmental assistance, and other practical issues of deciding starting grade and the subjects for immersion, for example. Some suggestions are provided for a practical guide for the introduction of English immersion education.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of strategy training in teaching English for Korean elementary school students. It also attempted to provide some empirical data for more successful strategy training in elementary English education. Sixty six fifth grade elementary school students from two intact classes (33 each) participated in the study as the experimental group and the control group. For 17 weeks, the experimental group was given strategy training in addition to traditional instruction, while the control group was taught in the traditional way only. Some of the major findings are as follows: 1) Strategy-trained group did not show significantly better improvement over the traditionally-taught group in their English proficiency; 2) Strategy-trained group used all categories of learning strategy significantly more frequently at the end of the experimental period than traditionally-taught group; 3) Both the quantity and quality of strategy use was affected by the learner's English proficiency. From these results it was concluded that a strategy training program for elementary school English learners could be fruitful and viable. Suggestions for further studies are presented along with limitations inherent in the present study.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between MI and web-based learning in elementary school English education. For this purpose, this paper first examined MI and instructional models of web-based learning, which was based on constructivism. In order to verify the effects of this experiment, we proposed a web-based English learning and teaching model and applied it to the 5th grade students in an elementary school. After the experiment, we analyzed the effects that MI affects students' English achievement. The results of the study were as followings. First, students' intrapersonal intelligence, linguistic intelligence, musical intelligence, and spatial intelligence had a positive effect to their English achievement. Second, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, and interpersonal intelligence did not have a positive effect on their English achievement. This study indicates that all kinds of multiple intelligences should be thoroughly considered when we design and practice web-based English learning and teaching models.

Since the teaching of English was introduced into the primary school as a required subject in 1997, no achievement test has been administered for the purpose of comparing English achievement of primary school students who are receiving private instruction with that of those who are not. The purpose of this study was to investigate what impact private instruction had on English achievement of third- and fourth-year students in the primary school. For this purpose, an English achievement test was developed based on the 7th national curriculum and two questionnaires were administered: one questionnaire among 743 third- and fourth-year primary school students and the other among 22 primary school teachers. The results showed that students who were receiving private instruction outperformed those who were not on the English achievement test and that teachers had difficulty in handling English class due to the discrepancy of overall English proficiency between tutored students and non-tutored students. The findings suggest that teacher training needs to be intensified to ensure quality English language teaching in the primary school.

In the early stages of reading, word decoding skills are prerequisite to reading. Word decoding involves word discrimination, phonemic decoding, and understanding of meaning. In this process, phonemic awareness enables students to examine language independently to manipulate its component sounds, and to use letter-sound correspondences to read and spell words. The 7th national curriculum of English and the primary school English textbooks fail to provide systematic language structure focus to facilitate efficiently student acquisition of the English phonemic system. Therefore, many students suffer from lack of word decoding development as well as encoding development, particularly in the 5th and 6th grades. This study explores the English phonemic awareness of Korean primary school students. To achieve the purpose of this study, a test for phonemic awareness was developed and Korean students' phonemic awareness was examined. The test deals with six areas: phonemic segmentation, phonemic manipulation, syllable splitting, blending, oddity, and invented spelling. The results are as follows: Firstly, many students showed successful results in phonemic segmentation and oddity. However, they have difficulties with syllable splitting and invented spelling. While students have strengths in the awareness of consonants except for r-l, f-p, and b-v, they suffer from lack of awareness of vowels. Secondly, errors of invented spelling and blending showed that students have differing development stages of phonemic awareness, e.g., some students master the phonemic system perfectly whereas others perceive only the alphabetic sounds. Finally, this research suggests that a balanced approach to reading is necessary in the early reading in the Korean context.

The 7th national curriculum takes a strong stance for a student-centered curriculum as well as operating and management flexibility at the school level. This study explored the procedures of and the status on implementation of the 7th national English curriculum at the primary level. It examined the processes taken by the local boards of education in due course of facilitating the schools with the school level curriculum implementation, and the schools and teachers for the actual curriculum implementation. To achieve the goal of the study, it was conducted by questionnaires for teacher and supervisors, classroom observation, and teacher interviews. Results were interpreted by the core aspects of the 7th national curriculum: curriculum reconstruction, student-centeredness, and specialization of the curriculum. Three major elements were found in the process of curriculum modification: firstly, the local boards of education was not enough to support so that the schools developed and implemented the school-based curricula secondly, teachers did not exert autonomy in interpreting and applying curriculum to their classrooms, and finally, there was a high demand for teachers and experts with potential in the schools as well as in the board of education. For the successful settlement of curriculum, continuous efforts are needed to involve teachers in the process of curriculum implementation.

The purpose of this study is to propose the development phases and the directions of the electronic textbook for English education. In order to achieve this purpose, above all, the conception of electronic textbook based on electronic book is defined. Second, the electronic and traditional printed textbook is compared. Third, the types of electronic textbook are classified, and the practical process of developing CD-ROM titles in the primary English education is presented. In this study, it is suggested that there are six phases in the development phases of the electronic textbook: analysis - design - development - experiment - evaluation - revise - application. Furthermore, the directions of the electronic textbook are proposed in terms of the design of learning contents, functional components, and technical components systematically. Particularly, learning contents based on the national curriculum should be designed in detail. Accordingly, the characteristics of English education and the possibility of application should be considered in designing the electronic textbook.

This study investigated the relations among Korean phonological processing skills, English vocabulary knowledge, and the learning of new English words in 6th grade children. The children were tested in phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and naming speed tasks, as well as English vocabulary and paired-associate learning of Korean-English word pairs. Most tasks were significantly correlated with English vocabulary and paired-associate learning. In regression analyses, phonological awareness, short-term memory, and naming speed significantly predicted English vocabulary; and English vocabulary and naming speed predicted paired-associate learning. These results suggest that Korean phonological awareness, naming speed, and short-term memory are associated with English vocabulary knowledge and learning. These findings support the transfer of phonological processing skills across second languages.