In the dearth of pre-service and in-service teacher education in gifted education, particularly in foreign language education, teachers have difficulty in learning theory and principle. This study describes the secondary teachers" perception of gifted education in foreign language after they participated in a teacher training program. The research questions are: 1) How did the teachers perceive gifted education?; and 2) Did the teacher training program influence the teachers" perception of gifted education? If so, in what ways did it influence the teachers? The data include surveys of the 21 teachers, their class assignments and observations. This qualitative case study indicates despite the teachers" initial negative perception of gifted education, the program helped them see it in a renewed perspective. Briefly, through the program, the teachers familiarized themselves with the basic theory and principle in gifted education. More importantly, they gained hands-on experience by discussing various issues in gifted education and creating class materials. The study concludes with pedagogical implications.

This interview study aims at exploring how two Korean college graduates strive autonomously to manage their English world before, during and after college-graduation. The participants were two very autonomous students out of 34 students the researcher met at a 15-week autonomy-based English Speaking/Writing class at a college in 2003. Two major findings emerged from the interview data collected in April 2005: (1) B"s initial interest in English came from teachers" urgings to get good test scores, but his visit to America and Australia made him more interested in learning communicative English; (2) S"s interest in non-Korean people and countries, inspired by her first English teacher, made her go abroad and practice English very actively in and beyond Korea. The findings shed light on a critical issue concerning the application of the learner autonomy theory with Korean students who learn English in Korean educational contexts: the limit and effectiveness of classroom-English-learning. Pedagogical implications of the findings are added at the end.

This study aims to identify differences of teachers" attitudes toward World Englishes (WE) for language teaching and language testing, and to investigate their perceptions of various rating criteria for the L2 oral proficiency test. Data were collected through questionnaires from 72 English teachers in the UK, Malaysia, and Japan. The analysis revealed that there are significant differences in their attitudes toward WE among the groups of English teachers depending on their teaching contexts. With regard to the perceptions on rating criteria, it was found that different groups of English teachers considered various rating criteria for the L2 oral proficiency test differently. The English teachers showing negative attitudes toward WE perceive grammar, pronunciation, native-likeness as more important rating criteria than the others such as vocabulary, organization, task fulfillment, and appropriateness for the assessment of non-native speakers" English language oral proficiency compared to the other group of English teachers showing positive attitudes toward WE.

In the language class combined with "creative drama", one of the approaches in educational theatre, the stories told by a teacher are organically developed into an original drama with several drama techniques. Even though there are some research studies on using creative drama in the ESL context, there are few in the EFL situation. Therefore, this study presents the result of a study investigating how creative drama affects young language learners" English learning in a Korean primary school. An English drama class, at after-school program in Seoul, combined with creative drama had been observed once a week for a semester. Seven first graders in the class were presented with 6 different stories, which contain certain phonemes each and dramatized the stories in a creative way. They were assessed through pre-and post- tests and surveys in terms of their linguistic improvements and affective changes and analyzed quantitatively. In addition, participants were individually analyzed according to their characteristics in linguistic and affective aspects by using field notes from classroom observation and interviews. The results show that participants made progress in linguistic aspects including phonics and vocabulary skills and that their affective factors including language anxiety level had shown a positive development throughout the semester. Moreover, each participant showed particular characteristics respectively in terms of linguistic and affective perspectives.

This study explored how instructors teaching in the same EFL program rated content in compositions. Twenty-one writing samples written on three different topics were rated by five teacher-raters. The transcribed comments made by the teacher-raters showed that 1) their rating behaviors varied to a great extent as to the ways of commenting on and viewing the content of the compositions, 2) when a composition failed to address the topic given, it negatively affected the assessment of the quality of writing, and 3) the teacher-raters made fewer comments on the content of the formal essays than on the content of e-mails. A couple of suggestions are presented with respect to the necessity of establishing written guides for rating criteria for students" essays and of rater training.

Over the last three decades, various disciplines of discourse analysis have shared a common interest in language use, especially in how people use real language. It is therefore of immediate interest to language teachers when selecting and devising teaching materials or when engaging learners in activities aimed at leading them to be more proficient users of their target language. This paper begins with outlining essential written discourse elements, such as grammatical and lexical cohesive devices, clause relations and larger text patterns which play important roles in syntactic and semantic cohesion and coherence in written texts. Then, the procedure of a written discourse analysis on a news text is described. The paper ends with a discussion on the insights from the written discourse analysis, which might be applicable, in specifiable ways, to language teaching, focusing on how to apply written discourse elements to teaching written English in real classrooms.

This paper investigated Korean heritage learners" acquisition of Korean as a second language. In particular, written narratives of 16 Korean heritage learners were analyzed in order to identify errors and strategies observed in Korean heritage learners" second language writing. The findings of the study indicated that learners" errors were not significantly related to their proficiency levels in the target language. Likewise, no significant differences were observed in errors due to their proficiency levels. However, some differences were noted in several grammatical categories. In case- or tense-related areas, learners with higher proficiency levels were not much more accurate than those with lower proficiency levels. However, in terms of the use of inflectional markers, learners with higher proficiency levels exhibited higher accuracy than lower level learners. With regard to their use of strategies, literal translation, code-switching, and approximation were most frequently observed in their writings. The paper concludes with some implications for teaching Korean as a foreign language.

The present study conducted a comparative analysis of use of evaluative adjectives in the essays of Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English. It discussed the characteristics of different types of evaluative adjectives, e.g., frequency, semantic categories, and collocational value of evaluative adjectives. The result of the frequency analysis demonstrates Korean EFL learners’ significant overuse of the limited types of the target items. The analysis of evaluative adjectives by semantic categories shows the similar tendency. For example, the repeated use of a small number of assessment adjectives resulted in the high frequency of adjectives in the assessment category. The present study also demonstrates the collocational associations between the selected evaluative adjectives and intensifiers in the corpus. The descriptive results of the analysis of collocational information indicate that learners employed a less formal/spoken style in the written corpus. As Blagoeva (2004) noted, the differences between the Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English in the characteristics of evaluative expressions might not directly obstruct communication but it is an indication that there is still much to be done in the development of second/foreign language skills.

With restrictions in the target language, taking turns in a timely fashion to participate in class discussions can be a challenging task for L2 learners. In order to understand L2 learners" particular choices and behaviors in taking turns in class discussions, an in-depth investigation of their experiences and views contributed by the learners themselves is called for. This paper pursues a qualitative case study on Korean graduate students" experiences and perceptions of taking turns to participate in class discussions in a content course. Analysis of data from interviews, observations, and documents revealed that Korean students perceived language ability, cultural difference, educational background, context/condition, and personality as responsible for the challenges they faced in taking turns in class discussions in English. The Korean students were also aware of the differences between the native speakers and themselves with respect to the strategies applied to gain turns in discussions noting that the native speakers used certain expressions that eased the turn-takes. Contrary to expectations, the Korean students saw L2 proficiency as just one factor involved in obtaining turns in class discussions and highlighted confidence as a crucial factor for success.

This study aims to explore the placement practices in five college English programs and four university language institutes. Specifically, the present study investigated the types of placement tests they administer, the degree of the correspondence between course objectives and test content, and validation procedures. This study also examined teachers" perceptions on the appropriateness of placement decisions. The data were collected through web site searches, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that proficiency tests were used for placement purposes in the college English programs. The language institutions administered placement tests only for their speaking courses in the form of oral interviews. The content of placement tests did not largely correspond with the course objectives. All English language programs did not have systematic procedures for identifying misplaced students. Finally, instructors reported that more than one third of the classes included misplaced students. The implications of the findings are discussed.

This case study examined 10 Korean English teachers who were involved in small group work (SGW) for the purpose of improving their own English language proficiency. Their beliefs about and practices of SGW were closely observed as they actually went through a SGW. A total of 10 teachers (three groups) teaching at elementary or middle schools participated in the SGWs for one year. In the SGWs they were supposed to meet once a week in groups, give a presentation in English on a selected topic, and discuss the topics presented. Throughout the research period, they were interviewed and surveyed periodically. The result of the study showed that teachers generally had positive beliefs about SGWs and were very willing to go on with it in the same way they used to or in a little modified way. Especially, the teachers revealed strong conviction that the most powerful aspect of SGW was that it kept them motivated to continue learning, which has rarely been the case when they tried to study individually.

A traditional assumption has been that written work in foreign language classes must be corrected carefully. If they were not corrected, errors would be deeply ingrained, and it would be difficult for learners to use the language correctly. Feedback has been viewed as a facilitator of learning and provides various kinds of information to the learner. In foreign language learning, this information consists primarily of modifications and upgrade their inter language grammar. Teachers" written feedback is a topic of continuing interest in foreign language teaching. But most experienced writing teachers know that responding to the students" writing can be the most frustrating, difficult and time consuming part of the job. Providing written feedback on student papers is the teachers‘ most crucial task. And it plays an important role in motivating and encouraging students. But in spite of corrections, teachers have found that students continue to repeat the same mistakes. Moreover the return of papers covered with red marks causes disappointment and discouragement on student"s faces. The teacher wonder if lerner"s errors should be corrected. If so, when should learner"s errors be corrected and which error should be corrected? How should learner"s errors be corrected? Who should correct learner"s errors? To this end, this paper will review the researches about these questions. And this paper will discuss and try to find the conclusion on these questions.

This study is aimed at applying conjunctive adverbs of type of "그러-‘ for education site of Korean language by clearing up syntactical condition and contextual meaning and mutual replacement relation of conjunctive adverbs having similar meaning to be able to use opposition conjunctive adverb of type of "그러-’. According to inclination of foreign learner who want to learn Korean by rule and formula instead of meaning explanation. So this study was represented table and chart as suggesting way of each items, and it could be called as new tryout that we could not find in existing studies. This discussion might be little different with meaning of conjunctive adverbs explained in the study of Korean language. In the selection of example, used example of Korean language text book for foreigners by considering level of learners. Therefore, this study was inconvenienced by impractical sentence and non-suggestion of concrete plan to be able to be used in practice lesson. But if teachers fully understood schematic pictures and used them in class, it could become a little help to reduce learner"s confusion occurred by using opposition conjunctive adverbs of type of "그러-."

This paper is to analyze the components the writing textbook should have and offer a plan of the textbook for efficient education. Approximately 20 kinds of the textbooks on the market are analyzed in section 2. Components are selected through examination of related materials and preceding research in section 3. Also, the plan of the writing textbook is presented concretely, focusing on components in section 4. Structural characteristic of Chinese letter is considered, which means that combination of strokes becomes single-component characters and that of single-component characters becomes multi-component characters are regarded when analyzing the components. In addition, rules of stroke order and number of strokes are classified as their basis and examples are presented. It also examined the standard of selection of entries, order of arrangements, type of letter, appendixes, and indexes. To edit the textbook in accordance with the above-mentioned standards, the process of selecting entries would be required and this will be made up for by follow-up research.

The purpose of this article is to show characteristics of complaints of Korean native speakers (KNs), Korean learners (primary, intermediate, and high class) of Japanese language of (KLs), and Japanese native speakers (JNs). When fourteen displeased situations happening occasionally in daily life were given to them, for their complaints about the situations, the degree of complaints and the expression behavior of complaints were investigated. Particularly the complaints by speech act were analyzed with a point of view on the use of strategy and the degree of face-threat (FT). The degree of complaints was higher in order of JNs>KLs>KNs. For the expression behavior of complaints, all of three group (KNs, KLs and JNs) tended to use speech act. For the strategy of complaints and the degree of FT, JNs tended to use strategy of lower degree of FT than that of KN. And KLs showed a tendency of interlanguage which was getting close to targeting language, using strategy of lower FT degree than that of mother language group (KNs) even at a primary class. These results give the following implications for the education of Japanese language for KLs. 1) As the most useful method to resolve the situations of complaints, JNs also use speech act, but JNs recognize the situations more seriously than KNs and their degree of complaints is higher. 2) Nevertheless, JNs are contrasted with KNs by that they would minimize the probable trouble with a person due to their complaints by selecting strategy of low FT degree.

Although fluency is included as one of main aspects to teach and assess in the course of "English Writing" for special-purposed high schools in Korea, any concrete and detailed idea has not been suggested in the guidelines to the course on how this concept could be understood and dealt with both in teaching and testing. This study, therefore, aims at exploring the concept of fluency in writing through both reviewing literature on fluency which is mainly with regard to speaking skills and investigating characteristics in terms of fluency which are observed from 390 writing samples written by 195 Korean students at a foreign language high school. As a result of inductive and qualitative analysis of the data, specific features were observed with regard to quantity, coherence, cohesion and language level. It is suggested that these features could be considered when we trying to understand fluency in depth and establish a rating scheme for it in the context of high school students" writing assessment.

This study aims to investigate the major themes and contents of studies on teaching English as an EFL in elementary schools in Korea since TEFLES (Teaching English as a Foreign Language in the Elementary School) was first introduced in elementary schools as a regular subject under the 7th National Curriculum in 1997. For the purpose of the study, a total of 218 research was examined in terms of the research methods, topics and main contents, and implications. The results of the study show that more than a half of the research was oriented toward quantitative approach. In addition, the main foci were the effects of certain tasks, pronunciation, dramatization, the use of a variety of multimedia materials on elementary school students" speaking skills. However, a large number of studies dealt with speaking skills in an integrated manner with other factors such as language skills, motivation, interests, and confidence. On the basis of the results, pedagogical implications on the teaching of speaking skills are suggested.

The current study proposes the directions of oral communication education for adult learners. It reports the preliminary results of a survey into the workplace oral communication uses of business employees. A questionnaire was developed and administered to 121 employees working at 6 different companies. The questionnaire was constructed based on the oral communication forms, adapted and modified from the oral communication forms categorized by Crosling & Ward (2002). The oral communication forms within the organization were categorized into communication (1) with similar status staff, (2) with supervisors, (3) with lesser status staff, (4) in team works, and (5) in meetings. The most frequently occurring form of oral communication at work was 'communicating for networking' for similar status staff; 'following instructions and responding orally' for supervisors; 'informal conversation' for lesser status staff; 'participating in discussions' for teamwork'; and 'communicating for networking' for meetings. On the other hand, the most difficult form of oral communication at work was 'persuading' for similar status staff, for supervisors, for lesser status staff, and for meetings; and 'chairing and leading discussions' for teamwork. Implications for oral communication education are discussed in light of these findings.

The present evaluation research was conducted to provide program decision makers with judgements about the intensive in-service teacher training (INSET) program"s worth or merits in relation to important criteria. It also purports to provide program staffs with useful information in improving their INSET programs. Setting boundaries and analyzing the context were followed by the procedure of identifying and selecting the evaluation questions and criteria. The overview of recent developments in English language teacher training provided the underlying principle for setting the criteria for evaluation. The criteria were used to describe the characteristics of a successful language teacher training program or implementation. They included features such as goals, curriculum, personnel, and support. Using the specified checklist, evaluation was carried out on the current intensive English language teacher training courses. Information on each area of the checklist was collected from available sources, analyzed and interpreted qualitatively as well as quantitatively. From the findings of the present evaluation study, some implications are drawn for making policies on INSET, for improving the teacher training programs under investigation, and for establishing and operating similar INSET programs.