A large number of foreign students enroll at Korean universities each year. Although a good command of the Korean language is crucial for them to be successful in their studies, and both university authorities and teaching staff now agree that students’ language ability needs to be tested before their admission, a valid and reliable test of academic Korean is still to be developed. The aim of this paper was twofold: to determine the Korean language proficiency level and language task types that are necessary to succeed at the university level in Korea; and to determine test specifications that could be used by examiners to appraise university candidates’ language skills. To develop such specifications, Common European Framework (CEF) descriptors of language proficiency were used. These descriptors can be used as indicators showing which language tasks a candidate should be able to do at a certain level. To create test specifications, academically relevant descriptors were selected and task types associated with each were analyzed. Many descriptors associated with the B2 level of the CEF were used to determine the language achievement level necessary for university students in Korea. Information about linguistic input and output associated with each language task type was also gained and applied from CEF descriptors.

This study attempted to examine the relationship between pragmatic transfer and the proficiency level. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to examine the developmental pragmatic competence of Korean learners of Japanese as compared with Japanese native speakers (JNs) and Korean native speakers (KNs). Written complaints were collected from 160 people, composed of 40 JNs, 40 KNs, and 80 Korean learners of Japanese (40 intermediate level and 40 advanced level), and their pragmatic competence was analyzed quantitatively in terms of complaining strategies and the length of their complaints. We found that pragmatic transfer exists at the lower and the higher proficiency levels. But the advanced learners reflect more transfer than the intermediate learners. The results imply that increasing proficiency in the target language can apparently facilitate negative pragmatic transfer.

The present study aims to examine the types of professors" discourse strategies that are used by Spanish native professors in the classes given to Korean university students. For this purpose, we recorded 15 hours of professors" lectures in Spanish of 6 compulsory subjects on a video tape and transcribed them. After the collection of the data, we identified 17 strategies and their representative examples. On the basis of this, we recorded frequency of each discourse strategy. In this way, we were able to identify the most frequently used strategies, and tried to explain the cause of their use taking the educational situation into consideration. Because we were concerned about the use of strategies for each of the 6 subjects: grammar, conversation, culture, vocabulary, composition, and reading comprehension, we determined by analysing the frequency the particular discourse strategy that were used in each individual subject.

Education usually begins with setting a suitable goal. The education of interpreters/translators is no exception here. As the profession of interpreting/translation is based on practical business, the training of interpreters/translators is to be influenced by diverse business-related variables, including supply and demand of interpreters/translators. We should therefore take these variables into consideration when we set a goal for interpreter/translator education. Interpreting/translation education in Korea has been till now an elite training at the graduate level, With the diversification of interpreting/translation modes and languages, however, we need an increasing number of interpreters/translators with various focuses (court interpreting, document translators etc.). That is why interpreting/translation education at the undergraduate level is inevitable. We start this paper with analysis of the current situation of the Korean interpreting/translation market, utilizing statistical data. Then, general goal and principles of interpreter/translator education which are derived from the analysis are presented. Setting a goal, the bond with the social and educational demand should be taken into consideration. Again from these principles and previous researches, we suggest a curriculum and pedagogic methodology for future interpreter/ translator education, with an example of Korean-German department. We put a focus on Interpreting/translation practice as well as acquisition of language, linguistic, translational theories and general knowledge.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether or not ‘focus on form’ instructions can be applied to 7 year old children"s communication classes and how many uptakes are observed from each class. And if it works, what types of ‘focus on form’ will be observed and which types of ‘focus on form’ are most useful for learners" uptakes. This study observed 9 different kinds of ‘focus on form’ types and divided into two higher types: Reactive Focus on Form and Preemptive Focus on Form. From this study, there were 103 ‘focus on form’ episodes which were recorded in order to identify occasions where there was attention to linguistic form. After 98 times, learners’ uptakes were examined from 103 ‘focus on form’ episodes. Learner uptake was generally higher and successful, to a much greater extent than has been reported for ESL adult classrooms. Uptake was higher in ‘reactive focus on form’ than in ‘preemptive focus on form’, in teacher-initiated ‘focus on form’ than in student-initiated ‘focus on form’, and also higher when blended with reactive and preemptive focus on form. Having accomplished this research I conclude it is necessary when attempting to examine young learner uptakes during ‘focus on form’ instructions in a communication class, the teacher should plan to use the most effective types of focus on form ‘recast’ and teacher-initiated episodes as possible, rather than student-initiated episodes.

This paper investigated interaction patterns of L2 learners and their native speaker counterparts in EFL classrooms and proximal social settings. To this end, data were collected from an English cafe at a university (i.e., pseudo-natural setting) and from an English conversation class at a university (i.e., classroom setting). Data analysis focused on teachers" question types, feedback patterns, and learners" responses towards feedback. The analysis based on utterance frequency revealed that students displayed higher participation rate in the pseudo-natural settings. With regards to teacher questions, teachers used more referential questions than display questions in both settings. However, there were twice as many teachers" feedback in the pseudo-natural setting compared to the classroom setting, but the frequent feedback did not slow down the conversation and did not always lead to self-repair. In addition, students in two settings differed in terms of their preferences to feedback in different linguistic categories.

This study investigates how language teaching in middle school English classrooms takes place in terms of teaching methods and TETE classes. One-hundred and seven middle school English teachers in Seoul and Kyunggi Province participated in this study. Participants were asked to answer the questions on the web. Among the participants, 8 teachers were interviewed. Regarding teaching methods, some teachers used communicative teaching methods most frequently, while others still preferred grammar-translation and audiolingual approaches to communicative approaches. Pair work was actively used in classes rather than teacher-dominant explanations. Regarding group work, some teachers chose it as one of their preferred activities but others avoided group works for reasons of difficulties with control, time management, and lack of presentation in textbooks. Most teachers considered reading as the most important but dealt with a great amount of listening, reading, and speaking in textbooks. Multimedia were used to stimulate motivation from the students in classes: CD-ROM was used most frequently, followed by powerpoint. Most teachers, who used English about 30~50% of their class time, agreed on the effectiveness of TETE and came up with the effective ways in teaching. Teachers had different experiences with native English teachers. Some teachers had doubts about usefulness of native English teachers in classes. To bring about good teaching from native English teachers, they should be acquainted with characteristics of Korean students and culture and should discuss lesson plans with Korean teachers in advance.

Textbook is very important in English learning and teaching. The goals of this paper are (i) to analyze the distributions of modal auxiliaries in middle school and high school English textbooks and (ii) to compare the analysis results with those of the general- purpose English corpora. Our study is based on Corpus Linguistics, and we are using corpus-analysis methods and tools in our research. In our study, we consider English textbooks as corpus texts and we will analyze them with NLPTools, which is a corpus- analyzing program. After we survey the distributions of modal auxiliaries, we will focus on a modal auxiliary can. We will examine not only syntactical distributions of a modal can but also semantic/functional distributions of this modal in English textbooks. In order to analyze the semantical distributions of can, we will use semantic tags and divide its semantic/functional category into three groups: ability, permission, and possibility. We will also divide the syntactic distributions into the nine verb phrase structures. After we closely examine the syntactic and semantic/functional distributions of a modal can, we will compare the analysis results with those of the LLC Corpus, the LOB Corpus, and the British National Corpus. Through the study, we want to show that the actual distributions and usages of a modal can in middle and high school English textbooks are a little different from those in other general-purpose English corpora.

This study aims to investigate the current status regarding the utilization of native English teachers in elementary schools focusing on its benefits and problems and to explore better ways of utilizing them for elementary English education. The participants of this study were 1024 elementary school students, 80 Korean elementary English teachers, and 56 native teachers of English. The data were collected through questionnaires and interviews. Through the analysis of data the followings were revealed: 1) the native teachers of English considered that their working conditions including wages and the amount of teaching time were appropriate, but the pre-training program was not satisfactory; 2) the Korean English teachers felt that their workload related to native teachers of English was too heavy; 3) the students perceived that studying English with native teachers of English had positive effects on their English abilities in terms of cognitive and affective aspects; 4) in most schools team teaching between native teachers of English and Korean teachers were being performed and both teachers were satisfied with it; 5) however, several issues such as the role relationship between the Korean English teachers and the native teachers of English, the quality of pre-training, and reconstruction of teaching materials should be resolved in order to improve English program of utilizing native English-speaking teachers in elementary schools.

This study explores an exemplary case of an English immersion program originally initiated by some primary school teachers. It investigates how an immersion education was initiated by the members of an English teachers" study group and later supported by a provincial office of education. The contents of the program and the three examples of immersion classes are briefly illustrated and commented. The innovative endeavors for the successful execution of the immersion classes include the use of the daily morning English practice and various ways of exposing students to English. It was found from the interview conducted with 5 immersion teachers that the strong motivation of the immersion teachers was the first empowering factor for this program and the appropriate financial and administrative help from the provincial office of education was another crucial one. Several practical problems from implementing the immersion program are also reported. From these results and findings some suggestions are made for better ways for implementing immersion programs in elementary schools.

The purpose of this study is to examine the roles which English dictionaries play in learners" production activity and to raise awareness about the necessity for more explicit guidance for English learners who wish to use English dictionaries to enhance their accuracy in production and vocabulary knowledge. For this purpose, first of all, the notion of knowing a word or a set of lexical items, along with the problems that learners possibly encounter when they attempt to encode their messages are reviewed with previous studies. Second, it illustrates the elements and characteristics of information which typical English learners" dictionaries provide for users in the light of difficulties involved in production activity. Third, this study analyzes the content and structure of current major encoding dictionaries of different types and purposes, assessing their distinguishing features and complementary advantages. It is hoped that the findings of this study develop the dictionary awareness among English learners and educators in Korea.

The purpose of this study is to analyze writing activities in Korean high school English textbooks and suggest more effective writing activities in comparison to Chinese textbooks. For the analysis, two Korean and two Chinese high school English textbooks are selected. Writing activities are investigated in terms of three research procedures. The study begins by typifying writing activities as controlled, guided, and free writing, guided by Raimes’ controlled -to-free approach (1983) and Rivers’ five writing instruction stages (1981). Next, it examines writing activities according to the writing criterion prescribed by the Korean and Chinese national curricula, respectively. Finally, it investigates writing activities in relation to other language skills, such as listening, speaking, and reading. The results are as follows. First, while Korean textbooks include more writing activities than Chinese textbooks, there remain substantial imbalances in both. Both textbooks contain the most controlled writing activities and lack free writing. Second, Korean textbooks provide more writing questions than do Chinese textbooks in order to satisfy the national-level writing criteria. However, in comparison to Chinese textbooks, they lack writing activities designed to satisfy paragraph- level writing standards which enhance logical organization competence. Third, Korean textbooks offer more writing activities integrated with other language skills. Both textbooks most frequently contain writing activities integrated with reading skills.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the storytelling performance of Korean elementary school students by using the framework of narrative assessment profile (Bliss, McCabe, & Miranda, 1998). Story samples were collected from ten six-grade students during the English storytelling class. The English storytelling class consisted of mini lesson, storytelling activity, storytelling practice and self-assessment. Every class student was asked to practice storytelling in performing three tasks: picture book, family photo, and story stem. In this study, family photo storytelling samples were used to investigate. They were analyzed from six dimensions: topic maintenance, event sequencing, explicitness, referencing, conjunctive cohesion and fluency. From the diagnostic profile of strengths and weaknesses, five types of storytelling performance were presented. The implications for classroom practice and assessment were discussed.

This study describes the development principles of the Elementary English Digital Textbook (MEDT) and provides suggestions for the future development of English digital textbooks based on the evaluation of MEDT contents. With these purposes, the study firstly presents relevant theories about the instructional design, e-learning strategies, second language acquisition, and English teaching theories to investigate on what theoretical foundation the MEDT was developed. It then examines how the MEDT integrates and incorporates new technologies such as speech recognition, automatic writing scoring system, games, flash animation, and digital storytelling into a wide variety of English learning activities such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Thirdly, the study reports the learners" and experts" evaluations of MEDT with respect to contents, learning activities, interest, levels, and technological functions. Lastly, based on the evaluation of the MEDT, some suggestions are made on the effective use of MEDT for the implementation of enhanced, high-technological, and motivating English learning environments in Korean elementary schools.

This study investigates a teacher"s practice regarding how Dynamic Assessment (Dixon-Krauss, 1996) is realized in his evaluative activities in a language classroom. First of all, the study pinpoints eight properties of dynamic assessment, and operationally defines and classifies the teacher"s evaluative activities into 6 categories: prior knowledge check, assignment review, task comprehension check, task customization, instance quiz, and achievement check. Furthermore, the study examines how the teacher"s evaluative activities are worked out for a small group of children who are learning their heritage language (Korean). The effectiveness and potentiality of dynamic assessment for a language classroom organized by special purposes are also discussed.