The usefulness of self-assessment for evaluation purposes has been controversial among language testers and teachers, pointing to the long-held psychometric concerns of its low-leveled reliability for assessment. This study aimed at exploring the possibility of enhancing the reliability of self-assessment used in a college English classroom (n=32) by diagnosing a cause of deteriorating the reliability quality of self-assessment and seeking measures to offset the negative factor for future use. In order to achieve the goals of the study, internal consistency reliabilities were obtained before and after an improvement was made in the self-assessment. Students’ feedback on the self-assessment was sought through a focus-group interview. Next, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to see if self-assessment can be a significant predictor in students’ final grades in the course. The independent variables used for this study were final exam, midterm exam, and five self-assessments. The results of the analyses are as follows: 1) from the focus-group interview on the 6th week of semester, a subjectivity problem of self-assessments was found and a new set of items in a quiz format were added for its modified version, 2) Cronbach’s α’s of self-assessments have drastically gone up from its original ones (.514-.546) to modified ones (.614-.850), and 3) four variables were included in the final model predicting students’ final grades: final exam, midterm exam, third and second self-assessments. Based on the findings, a new perspective on reliability issues in self-assessment was proposed.

The goal of this study is to better understand the attitudes of students towards pronunciation in order to better evaluate the current university curriculum, as well as to make recommendations on how to improve the quality of education for students of English in South Korea. A total of fifty-five students were given both a questionnaire and a short interview which were utilized for the present study. The results demonstrate that the students agree pronunciation is important in English, and they wish to sound like a native speaker. It was also found that students are slightly worried about their own English accent, however they have not had much instruction on pronunciation. In addition, the participants of the study appeared to be more concerned with their accents, rather than comprehensibility or intelligibility. The most widely preferred accent by the participants was American accent followed by British accent. Although the participants acknowledged the importance of pronunciation or accent in English, they were reluctant to receive a class focusing on pronunciation. Based on the findings we suggest that there should be more collaboration between native and non-native speakers of English in Korea. Furthermore, we recommend that Korean students be exposed to more varieties of World Englishes through the integration of students from other countries into the classroom as well as conducted a class on World Englishes.

The purpose of this study is to examine if Japanese and Chinese language learners of Korean, whose native language has a CV syllable structure, can apply the liaison rule when C2 of Korean the CVC syllable structure is followed by a vowel, where the application of liaison rule is necessary. For this purpose, Japanese and Chinese learners of Korean were divided into two groups by their Korean proficiency levels: beginner and advanced learners. Then the study examined if these learners can apply the Korean liaison rule in the sentence reading task. The result showed that learners in their higher proficiency level were able to apply the liaison rule better. The degree of increased application was more drastic, especially in the cases of Japanese learners. The performance varied by their native languages, it appears that Japanese learners better apply the liaison rule than Chinese learners. In addition, the result also differed by the familarity of the vocabularies used in the reading task. The liaison rule was used more accurately in more familiar vocabularies than less familiar vocabularies.

This study examined whether learning context and language aptitude affected the use of pronunciation learning strategies and pronunciation proficiency. One hundred thirty-eight Chinese learners (88 KFL Ss & 50 KSL Ss) learners were investigated for the correlation between learning context(KSL, KFL), language aptitude (high/low), pronunciation learning strategy and pronunciation proficiency. Participants' sound discrimination ability was measured by PLAB and then they were divided into high group (upper 30%) and low group (lower 30%) by scores. SPLS and personal information survey were also conducted. The results showed that (i) a significant difference was found in pronunciation proficiency pursuant to learning context and language aptitude, (ii) use of pronunciation learning strategy differed significantly pursuant to learning context and language aptitude, and (ⅲ) use of pronunciation learning strategy could predict pronunciation proficiency. The findings suggest that effective pronunciation learning strategy should be investigated and taught in L2 Korean classroom.

This study aims to analyze the aspect of coherence realization of narrative discourse of female marriage immigrants. Considering that discourse structure and cohesive devices are engaged in the coherence of discourse, this study attempts to examine the aspect of structure development of narrative discourse and the utilization of reference and conjunction. The participants in the study are intermediate and advanced-level female marriage immigrants. The analysis results of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) the female marriage immigrants selectively contained [abstract] and [evaluation] while essentially containing [setting], [complicating action], [resolution] when comprising narratives; the coherence of discourse was found to be disrupted due to insertion of extraneous contents, lack of information, excess of information, or delaying of the introduction utterances; (2) the use of cohesive devices was concentrated in a particular expression. Suggestions based on the findings of the study are provided.

Since Japanese was taught in secondary schools as a second language, the Korean educational system has faced the decrease in the number of students who take Japanese classes. In such a situation, we need to break out of traditional teaching methods and seek new directions. This research focuses particularly on the assessment and analyzes the items of the regular tests in Korean secondary schools, checking out whether those items are in accordance with the national curriculum and learning objectives. In addition, it is examined whether the intention of evaluators is appropriately tested and whether those items follow the evaluation guides. The results showed that regular assessments were far from enhancing communication proficiency when they were compared with the proportion of language contents for communication proficiency in the Korean SAT. Furthermore, as regards to validity, it was found that many items did not observe the evaluation guidelines of national curriculum and did not fulfill evaluators’ intention. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.

There has been an increasing demand for effective on-line English teacher education programs due to the advantages including cost efficiency and easy access. Despite the provision of a variety of on-line English teacher education programs, only a small number of studies on on-line in-service education program for English teachers have been carried out. This study aims to provide a basic model of on-line in-service English language teacher education based on the critical awareness. To do this, previous studies on on-line in-service English language teacher education in Korea and abroad were critically reviewed and key issues were derived. They are top-down approach to on-line teacher education curriculum development, unsustainability of teacher education, disconnection of teacher education to practice, insufficient establishment of community of practice, and deficiency of reflection on teaching practice. Three on-line English teacher education programs were selected and evaluated by using these key issues. It is suggested that bottom-up approach to curriculum development, establishment of community of practice for the sustainability of teacher education, and reflective learning for connecting teacher education to real classroom practice be included as key components for effective on-line teacher education.

This study investigates faculty and students’ perceptions of English conversation courses in the General English Program (GEP) at a university. A total of 437 students completed the survey and interviews were conducted with 8 of them. Three Native English Speaker (NS) instructors participated in the study by submitting reflective journals and being interviewed. Qualitative as well as quantitative data collection methods were employed to offer a better understanding of the current status of English conversation courses taught by NS instructors. Results about the five research questions are as follows. First, students were satisfied with the courses overall, although it varied across classes taught by each NS instructor. Second, students’ satisfaction with the courses also varied depending on their self-assessment of English proficiency. Third, the results of the stepwise regression analysis showed that NS instructors’ qualifications and attitude were the best predictor of students’ satisfaction with the courses. Fourth, NS instructors expressed dissatisfaction with the current textbooks and administrative support from the university. Fifth, the lack of understanding of both students and Korean culture caused critical classroom management issues, which, in turn, led to students’ negative perceptions of the courses. The findings provide practical implications of this GEP curriculum at the university.

This paper examines the effects of a story-writing class and a digital story-game class for primary school students at an after-school English program. To compare the effectiveness of a story-game p(23 students) and a story-writing class (22 students), this study used preand post- English achievement tests. This study also administrated a survey on students’ attitude towards their learning, and interviewed students as well as teachers. The results showed the two classes improved the students’ English ability in terms of reading, listening, writing and vocabulary over the 16 weeks. However, there were big differences between listening skills and writing skills between the two classes. The students in the story-game class showed a big improvement in listening skills. The students in the story-writing class were highly motivated by writing English stories in a group. Based on the results of the two classes, this paper discusses the factors that lead to an effective class with English story-based language learning. By exploring these elements, this paper suggests the educational implications for those who want to develop and implement a digital story-based language learning program for primary school students.

This paper investigates whether a secondary teacher trainee improved pair/group work management skills in a short-term teacher training program focusing on the development of TEE-related skills. One female teacher trainee, students, and a teacher trainer participated in the study. The participant’s teaching performance, conference on her teaching performance, lesson plans, and the teacher trainer’s feedback on the teaching performances were collected. The data on teaching performance and conferencing were transcribed and analyzed in terms of a moving-in phase, a monitoring phase, and a moving-out phase. The participant showed improvement in changing seating arrangement, selecting students in modeling, increasing various kinds of comprehension check up questions, changing her voice during monitoring, and drawing students’ attention and signaling a new phase of lesson to the students in a moving-out of the activity. This study suggests how to improve management skills in pair/group work in TEE classes.

This study examined how smart device applications affected elementary school students who have learning difficulties in English. Five 6th grade students who needed remedial instruction were selected and given 50 hours of instruction using English vocabulary flash cards in a smartphone application. one hundred vocabulary words were chosen and developed for flash cards for the students to examine their intellectual and emotional changes in English learning. The research results showed that the students' vocabulary improved in listening, reading and speaking. It also revealed that the students gained confidence and interest in English learning, and their anxiety decreased. In addition, the application was easy and convenient for the students to use, especially in recognizing the pronunciation and the meaning of the vocabulary words. This study recommends further development and use of smart device applications for elementary school English instruction.

With an effort to verify the involvement load hypothesis, this study investigates the effects of three different vocabulary learning tasks - reading, filling in blanks, and sentence writing - on learners' short and long term memory when they are provided with the theoretically identical level of involvement tasks. It is also to examine whether there are any differences of learning effects between input and output vocabulary learning tasks. The experiments were conducted with 86 Korean middle school students grouped by three different task types. Pre-/post-tests and delayed tests were administered and analyzed. It was found that three vocabulary tasks with theoretically identical levels of involvement do not have the same learning effects: the involvement load hypothesis was not completely proved in the case of Korean students' vocabulary learning. The findings implied that (i) the difference of vocabulary learning tasks should be considered even though they have the same involvement load; (ii) given that EFL students learn new words in a limited amount of time in class, the reading task using a dictionary is found to be very helpful; and (iii) it is important to study target vocabulary repeatedly during class and to expose the vocabulary with different tasks to enhance students' retention of the newly learned vocabulary.

The purpose of this study is to explore one bilingual person’s language development in relation to the changing environments in which she has lived. Bronfenbrenner's (1977, 1979, 1992) bioecological model provided insight as a theoretical framework in that the model emphasizes active interactions and strong interconnectedness between the individual and her surrounding environments, as well as interactions among environments (micro, meso, exo, and macrosystem). As a main data source, a two and half hour semi-structured interview was conducted with the participant, who is a Korean-English bilingual pursuing a graduate degree at an American university. The analysis of the interview data revealed that 1) the participant's developing characteristics (e.g., outgoing personality, age of language learning), 2) the changing environments (e.g., parents’ belief and philosophy, home residential location), and 3) the interactions between the participant and her environments (e.g., the participant’s intrinsic motivation and the mother’s philosophy) and interactions between inner and outer environments (e.g., school system and national educational policy) played out for the participant's reach on the current language development in Korean and English.

The present study explored the effects of different task types on the autonomous vocabulary learning of EFL learners. To this end, two types of tasks with similar but slightly different levels of involvement loads were developed: a corpus-based task and a word map task. The participants of the study were 41 EFL students from a university in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: a corpus group (n=20) and a word map group (n=21). A total of 33 target words were selected and the experiment was administered during a period of five weeks. Major findings from the study were as follows: First, the corpus task proved to be more effective than the word map task in productive vocabulary learning, whereas the two tasks showed similar effectiveness in receptive vocabulary learning. Second, the two tasks varied in the effectiveness of vocabulary learning depending on the learners' vocabulary proficiency levels and the specific domains of vocabulary knowledge (receptive and productive). Lastly, the corpus group responded more positively than the word map group to their task and to the vocabulary learning. The findings indicate that the corpus task has advantages over the word map task and provide ‘residual’ empirical support for Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) involvement load hypothesis. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications were made for the effective teaching and the autonomous learning of vocabulary.

L2 learners tend to encounter and use morphological derivatives more frequently as their L2 skills develop. To pronounce the morphological derivatives correctly, L2 learners have to be aware of the phonological changes occurring in the derivatives with affixation. The four phonological rules (stress shift, vowel laxing, consonant coalescence, and vowel reduction) in English, applying to morphological derivatives, are examined with respect to the entities that the rules affect (stress, vowels, and consonants); the number of rules (only one and more than one rule); and rule interaction (interacting and non-interacting) in L2 phonological acquisition. This study reveals that 1) the accuracy of consonant coalescence is highest although its significance with respect to the accuracy of stress shift and vowel laxing varies according to the number of rules; 2) stress shift and vowel laxing show different order in accuracy depending on the number of rules; 3) the three rules (stress shift, vowel laxing, and consonant coalescence) exhibit distinct behaviors with respect to the number of rules; 4) in the interacting rules, the accuracy of the fed rule (vowel reduction) is significantly lower than the feeding rule (stress shift) while in the non-interacting rules, the accuracy of one rule appears to have no influence on that of the other rule. Based on the results, implications for teaching pronunciation of the derivatives are suggested.

This study proposes how to teach aspectual derivations of the verb in the Russian language based on the prefixation and suffixation. The author argues that for the intermediate/advanced learners the traditional aspectual pair system needs to be replaced by the aspectual cluster system and the derivations of the imperfective verbs through the suffixation needs to be taught based on the classification of the infinitives. The hierarchical structure of verb stem in Russian is as follows: superlexical prefixes (po-, etc.) > -yva- > superlexical prefixes (ot-, etc.) > intermediate prefixes (do-, pere-) > -nu-/-a- > lexical prefixes > stem. The study also proposes that the syntactic structure needs to contain the split AspPs (PerfP1 > ImpfP > PerfP2 > PerfP3) outside of the vP and another AspP inside the vP in order to derive the above-mentioned hierarchical structure.

Peu de recherches ont été réalisées sur les cours numériques en français. Donc, ce papier a pour but d'examiner les effets de cours numériques offerts dans les classes françaises d'université. Nous avons une expérience d’avoir donné trois types de classes numériques comme la grammaire française, la traduction et l'écoute. Ces trois ont été organisés par une méthode hybride, en ligne et en présentiel pendant un semestre. À partir de cette expérience, nous avons retenu quelques particularités liées aux cours numériques. Il existe quelques points positifs aussi bien que négatifs. Parmi les points positifs, nous pouvons mentionner les possibilités d'inciter les étudiants à développer leurs potentiels et de faire travailler en coopération avec d'autres. Les points négatifs sont liés à l'incapacité de vérifier comment les étudiants travaillent ou s'ils travaillent réellement en ligne. Et le professeur doit être toujours vigilant aux questions posées par les étudiants. Cela donne un fardeau au professeur.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate a general collaborative model of team-teaching in a university general English program. While positive effects of team-teaching and some suggestions for teamteaching practices have been reported previously, there has been less attention paid to an instructional model where native teachers and Korean teachers collaborate with each other for the best classroom experience for students. A qualitative research guided the design. Twenty teachers’ team-teaching classes were observed and video-taped for analysis. The findings showed that the two teachers’ constant negotiations of meanings in any stage of the lessons and in classes with diverse linguistic goals was helpful to the students’ understanding. Also, in the stage of presenting particular language expressions (duringlesson), complimenting each other with native teachers’ intuition and Korean teachers’ analytic skills was suggested as an important instructional move. When activities were introduced, modeling by the two teachers and bridging roles by the Korean teachers were a tremendous contribution and recommended for model collaborations. An instructional model and educational implications have been suggested.

The present study explored a reading-based speaking task for its potential to develop EFL students' fluency. Based on an L1 speaking model by Levelt (1989, 1993), the task was developed in a way that students can maximize their fluency in a scaffolding-rich condition: one in the stage of message generation and the other in linguistic encoding. The use of reading texts for the development of speaking fluency was also hypothesized to induce authentic interaction among interlocutors. How the reading-based speaking task functions as hypothesized was tested with five Korean college students who participated in a 4-week reading-based speaking program. The analysis of the group activity transcripts and interviews revealed that scaffolding in message generation took place in three types of language episode: a personal experience episode, a vocabulary-related episode, and a contentclarification/ elaboration episode. Linguistic encoding in L2 speaking was scaffolded via shared context, which enabled the participants to develop and utilize a paraphrasing skill. Finally, the participants’ engagement in speaking activities increased, affecting their willingness to communicate and their motivation to improve speaking.

This study explores elementary school students’ perceptions of English pop songs in regular English classes at a Korean elementary school. Seven 6th graders participated in the study and they were divided into three groups based on their English proficiency level. Data were collected from their interviews, written logs, and group discussions for a qualitative analysis. The results indicate that low level learners associate pop songs with the auditory factor only, while intermediate and high level learners associate the songs with both auditory and visual factors. It is also found that each individual learner exhibits his or her own music preference in selecting pop songs for learning. In addition, the socialization effect, which evokes the sense of unity, is found among the English learners who attended the pop song lessons. Finally, the study presents the results that learning pop songs contributes to self-directed learning of English. Pedagogical implications on using pop songs for a teaching material are discussed.