This study examined whether explicit or implicit teaching is more efficient in improving Korean middle school students’ English verb−noun collocation knowledge. Forty Korean EFL middle school students participated in the study and they were assigned to either the explicit instruction or implicit instruction group. The participants’ English verb−noun collocation knowledge was measured through pre-, immediate post-, and delayed post-tests over the 5- week experimental period, and a survey of participants’ opinions on the instruction they received was carried out. The results showed that the students who received the explicit collocation instruction displayed better learning outcomes, suggesting the immediate influence of the explicit instruction, and more importantly the sustained initial advantage. That is, the explicit group students did retain the target items significantly better than the implicit group students. The responses from the two groups also indicated the positive effects of the explicit collocation instruction. The explicit group students were mostly satisfied with the instruction and showed increased confidence in acquiring English collocations while the implicit students did not. This study provides L2 teachers with valuable information on how to teach L2 collocation more effectively.

This paper investigates how an intermediate Korean learner of English uses overt and null pronouns in writing short essays and also whether topic-prominent properties of the first language transfer to and affect the interlanguage. The results of this case study show that this learner was able to provide overt subjects and objects with relative ease, which is consistent with the previous study by Hwang (2005), but that he is somehow still under the influence of the L1 topic-prominent features. The unlearning of topic-prominence seems to be a lengthy process, during which L2 learners utilize some strategies based on surface form in order to avoid producing ungrammatical sentences.

This study explores ideologies of English that came into play when two different schools, Yugyŏng kongwŏn and Paichai School, were established in Korea in the late 19th century, a period in which a modern kind of English education was initially demanded and formed in the history of modern Korea. Drawing upon language ideology from linguistic anthropology as a theoretical framework, this study analyzes primary and secondary sources of relevant historical documents. This paper argues that the discursive condition that led to the necessity of English education in late 19th Korea was concerned with Munmyong kaehwa, a discourse that the cultural elite called the Kaehwa party introduced and supported to create a modern type of nationalism in Korea. Perceiving English as a language for civilization and enlightenment, this elite group contributed to building the two schools. On the other hand, common Koreans tried to enter these schools simply to learn English, believing that English would serve their individual success. This narrative shows that although the two ideologies of English, that is English for civilization and English for success, were coexisting in the late 19th century, the social discourse of Munmyong Kaehwa was not fully indexed with the ideologies of English.

Manner-of-motion verbs show both unergative and unaccusative behavior, namely the variable behavior. The variable behavior of these verbs is a problem for Perlmutter's (1978) Unaccusative Hypothesis, which claims that the unergativity or unaccusativity of a verb is based on the meaning of the verb. The Unaccusative Hypothesis loses its predictive power if a certain verb can be both unergative and unaccusative. Mateu (2005) argues that the unaccusativity of manner-of-motion verbs, which are basically unergative, is derived by their conflation into a phonologically null verb heading the canonical unaccusative structure, which is associated to the directed motion event. Despite its apparent simpler manner of explanation, this paper argues that Mateu's (2005) l-syntactic approach to the variable behavior of manner-of-motion verbs is problematic in that it induces the overgeneration problem by exploiting the overly powerful operation of generalized transformation. Although his analysis may give a correct syntactic description of the problem of the variable behavior of manner-of-motion verbs, it cannot gain the status of syntactic explanation without an additional constrained grammatical device to distinguish grammatical structures from ungrammatical configurations, such as Hale and Keyser's (2005) revision of conflation in terms of selection.

There has been considerable research which investigates whether the underlying linguistic competence of L2 learners is constrained by principles and parameters of UG, parallel to the situation in L1 acquisition. In terms of the Scope Principle (henceforth SP), a principle of UG, which is associated with the scope interaction between a quantified expression and a wh-phrase, some experimental studies in EFL settings were conducted to investigate whether or not interlanguage grammars can be characterized by the principle. These experiments were carried out through the Truth Value Judgment Task (henceforth TVJT) alone, showing contrasting and confusing results, especially between Japanese learners and Korean learners. That is, while Japanese EFL learners observed the SP, Korean EFL learners did not despite the fact that both Japanese L1 grammar and Korean L1 grammar disallow the distributive interpretation, especially in the ambiguous sentence like what does everyone have? Therefore, the present study aims to confirm whether the same results are obtained provided that the identical experiment using the TVJT is repeated in other EFL learners. Noticeably, this study employed an additional, complementary task (Question and Answer Task, QAT) in addition to the TVJT as an attempt to increase the accuracy of the task and reflect learners’ actual knowledge of the target features. In QAT, the subjects were asked to write the answers to the target questions involving quantifiers and wh-questions in English. Results from the TVJT appeared, on the face of it, to provide support for the claim that the Korean EFL learners are under control of the Scope Principle. However, findings from QAT revealed that they are not constrained by the principle. Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that the results of the present experiment do not fully support the claim that the Korean EFL learners’ interlanguage grammar has access to the UG-driven Scope Principle. Instead, it can be argued that Korean learners' interlanguage grammar may be affected by their L1 grammar, which gives rise to the claim that the explicit instruction on the interpretation of those sentences is required as part of overcoming this problem.

We investigated the possibility of whether there is a post-vocalic ‘r’ in phonological representations of Korean L2 English speakers and the extent to which they exploit their knowledge of mapping graphemes onto phonemes within each correspondence between orthography and phonemes. First, the results obtained in the pseudohomophone task showed that R-items were responded to with higher accuracy and shorter RT than Non-R items. It suggests that there is no post-vocalic ‘r’ in phonological representations of Korean L2 speakers unlike Australian native English speakers and that Korean L2 learners are truly non-rhotic speakers. Another striking finding is that accuracy and RT for visual lexical access varied depending on the transparency between orthography and its corresponding phonemes. This indicates that Korean L2 speakers’ knowledge about the association of graphemes and phonemes varies depending on each type of correspondence between spellings and phonemes. Finally, it was found that the frequency of the base words also affected the retrieval of words along with the orthographic depth in grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences.

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.

Today, there are a multitude of papers being written on films that deal with multicultural society. However, it is difficult to find research on German films that deal with multicultural societies from the educational perspective of cultural exchange. This paper chooses the following four German films and aims to examine them from that perspective – Doris Dörrie’s Kirschblüten, Fatih Akın’s Solino and Gegen die Wand, and Percy Adlon’s Bagdad Café. Kirschblüten is about longings for and communication with other cultures, Solino about cultural differences and ways to overcome them, Gegen die Wand about cultural conflicts and identities, and Bagdad Café about cultural connection and communication. What is of particular importance in handling these movies in the classroom will be to raise and discuss relevant pedagogical questions to encourage the students to contemplate the various aspects of cultural encounters as their own issue. Thus, the ultimate goal of the education should be the learning of the values of coexistence, harmony, and exchange that are required of any multicultural society.

In schools, foreign language is not only a means of communication but also a tool used in order to create a whole man in terms of as a student and as an individual as well. French education in high schools has always aimed to develop useful communication skills in students. However, by the end of schooling, students have not obtained the capacity of communication nor the satisfaction of learning the language. The fictional dialogs and the repetitive exercises were not the ideal solutions. According to the new 2009 Official Instructions for French as Second Language, French education in high schools has practical, cultural, and educational objectives. It also strives to find balance between the three. Yet French classes will not improve: the practical objective is always overcharged, the cultural goal is always subjected to communication, and the educational one, vaguely defined as the development of knowledge and personality, leads the teachers to be free to do as they want. This study examined the new direction of French education in schools and redefined three objectives of French education in a way that it ensures the link with the entire education system.

The issue of languages used in Algeria has been addressed by the government through Arabization and is therefore marked by nationalism. The struggle for linguistic independence vis-à-vis French is still ongoing. In addition, the Berber language isn't officially recognized. However, recent economic and social changes have affected the country with the opening of the free market economy and the changes in political landscape and culture. As a result, there has been the emergence of a more objective and pragmatic approach to the question regarding the many different languages spoken in the country. Such changes can be seen, somehow, as the product of the history of Algeria, fueled by large socio-cultural influences that have marked the Mediterranean and the French presence. Here, the Berber language is as important as French in terms of understanding the culture and mentality of Algeria. In fact, the Algerian government is now working hard to better take into account all the different parameters (political, social, educational, economic and historical) for new language policies. All these movements taking place, in turn, are bound to influence adherence to the Francophonie.