This article focuses on analysis of 11 storytelling samples produced by Korean adult test-takers of an English speaking proficiency test. The process of telling stories, hearing the stories, and retelling them is a commonly used way of communication with others not only in a classroom but also in everyday life, and moreover storytelling is a task often used in English speaking proficiency tests. Although it is surely an important part of our lives as mentioned above, there has not been much research on structure and characteristics of storytelling and its value in English language education. It should be discussed in public that what storytelling can do for English education in Korea, more specifically in teaching English speaking. This study provides what cyclical structure of storytelling is and what it means to English language education in Korea. It is illustrated that storytelling task samples of advanced learners of English can be well understood from the framework of storytelling components (Bidell, Hubbard, & Weaver, 1997).

The purpose of this study was to examine how a recently arrived male English as a second language (ESL) student’s social interaction processes changed as he moved from the periphery of the mainstream toward its core. Using the notions of From a Perspective of Community of Practice and legitimate peripheral participation proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991), this study described what identities, interactive practices, and interactive resources were available to him in a new milieu. Multiple sources of data were utilized, such as participant observation, fieldnotes, the participant’s conversation activities, interview, and the participant’s journal. The results revealed that his identities, interactive practices, and interactive resources were interrelated because he gradually increased his participation in interactive practices and gained access to a wide range of interactive practices and resources as he moved toward full participation in the mainstream.

Learning style instruments continue to enjoy widespread use despite the questionable reliability and validity. The study examined whether reliability and validity of Reid’s (1984) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) hold true across Korean EFL college students. The PLSPQ was administered to 309 students from eight major areas. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, ranging from .65 to .81, yielded good reliability with the exception of the Auditory scale. Exploratory factor analysis indicating the dimensionality of the PLSPQ, however, produced that certain items did not clearly group into the six learning styles as Reid hypothesized. Thus, seven-factor solution in the present study was not conceptually consistent with Reid’s learning style model. Subsequently, a four-factor solution as an alternative would provide a more orthogonal and conceptually acceptable learning style framework for the students sampled. The study further identified the students’ preferred English learning styles and explored whether their gender and major fields of study affect the learning styles in terms of the four-factor solution. Due to the mixed evidence for the reliability and validity of the instrument, the study suggested more replication studies of the factor structure that shows distinct characteristics of Korean EFL students.

Factors other than a time-sense relationship govern tense selection. Thus, it is misleading to teach verb tense choice based on time lines only. We need to point out the communicative purposes of verb tenses in discourse frames. Motivated by a concern for the pedagogical significance of studying tense choice in relation to rhetorical functions, this paper investigates tense choice in English research article abstracts written by English native speaking authors and Korean authors, using Hyland’s (2004) model. Few differences were found between the NS and the NNS. However, we can see that tense use conventions are changing, especially in the Product move, which corresponds to the Results move in general terms. Quite a few authors employed the present tense in the Product move which has conventionally preferred the use of the past tense. The results show that a question of tense choice in the Product move can not be clear-cut because choosing the present tense does not exclude the possibility of the past and vice versa. Nevertheless, the discussion in this study gives us the confidence to make judgements of modality we intend in appropriate ways.

This paper seeks to analyze the passive voice in English textbooks in terms of sufficiency, sequencing, variety, interest, authenticity, and appropriateness. A total of thirty textbooks was randomly chosen for the analysis, six exemplars being selected from each grade from intermediate middle school through advanced high school. The results show that the subtypes of passives presented were substantial enough to fully understand the nature of the passive, and that the various sub-types of passives were sequenced reasonably. However, limitations were revealed in providing enough variety of activities/exercises on the one hand and of visual aids on the other. The textbooks were also found to contain several non-authentic language patterns such as wrong choice of the verb, collocation problems, etc. More serious was not only heavy reliance on sentence-level mechanical practices, particularly conversion exercises, but also the lack of attention paid to function-oriented instructions on the passive. These findings are expected to contribute to the effective design of new textbooks under the revised curriculum.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of perceptual training of American English front vowel sounds /i, I, ε, æ/ on the production by comparing two teaching methods: perceptual training and audiolingual method. Subjects were 10 students enrolled in a language program at Arizona. They were randomly assigned into an experimental and a control group. The perception and production test were conducted to assess the subjects’ development of accuracy, and one hour and half training sessions are carried out with no explicit production practice for the experimental group and with the audiolingual teaching method for the control group for a total period of three weeks. The results for the post-test revealed that there was no significant difference between the groups. However, it should be emphasized that the experimental group, who went through the perceptual training without being forced to produce, resulted in better improvement both in perception and production in comparison to the control group when observed pre and post test. In addition, the results revealed that there is a positive co-relation between perception and production.

This paper demonstrates the findings of an investigation into Korean secondary school English teachers’ practices and perceptions regarding writing instruction. The research employs in-depth interviews with a small number of teachers to identify: (a) teachers’ practices of writing instruction and assessment in the classroom; (b) teachers’ perceptions of writing instruction; (c) teachers’ evaluation of students’ writing abilities; and (d) teachers’ concerns or problems in teaching of writing. The results indicate that there exist discrepancies among teachers’ practices, perceptions, the National Curriculum and the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT): the curriculum provides writing goals that are too high for students; teachers cannot help focusing on low-level features of writing mainly due to students’ poor writing ability; and teachers and students do not have an urgent necessity to teach and learn writing, since writing is not tested in the CSAT. The paper concludes by providing implications and suggestions for future development of writing instruction in the Korean secondary school English classroom.

This study investigated how task involvement should be practiced to fulfill the theoretical assumptions of Task-Based Instruction (TBI). As the task involvement is to be understood as an indispensable component of TBI, how a high degree of task involvement can be secured and exerted in a most effective way was examined. Having analyzed the data obtained from questionnaire, interviews, reflection papers and proficiency tests, the study indicated that customized and timely feedback and comments on the learners’ performances as well as learners’ sense of responsibility were critical if the task involvement leads to desirable learning outcomes. The study also showed that consciousness-raising (CR) task originated from an authentic task was effective enough to help learners acquire linguistic knowledge in a contextual situation. It made suggestions for how to promote task involvement to better implement TBI, through which the learners can improve language proficiency fully taking advantage of their educational and cognitive experiences.

This paper discusses what the basic principle of Korean consonantal assimilation and tensification is and how to teach the two processes to learners. Since some of the Korean phonological changes including these two processes are complicated and cannot easily be seen in other languages, students may face difficulty in learning such processes. It has been claimed that these processes are due to the "principle of economy" in pronunciation. That is, certain consonant clusters or consonantal sequences that are difficult to produce undergo changes in a way to make them easy to pronounce. In this paper I argue against such a claim by adopting the principle of English, which has two different types of consonant clusters, namely "word-initial and word-final clusters". The phonotactic constraints of the word-final clusters in this language, which are opposite to the case of word-initial clusters, have the ascending structure in the consonantal strength between the two consonants. We see that the two consonants in sequence in Korean have almost the same structure. Unlike English, these constraints must be obeyed whether words are simple or complex in Korean. The two consonants that are not kept up to these constraints by the morphological process undergo phonological process. This is the principle of consonantal assimilation and tensification in Korean, and thus, teachers (and also possibly learners) of Korean should recognize the principle to understand the processes correctly.

The description of the nature of Korean - Chinese interlanguage is a very useful way to understand the situation and characteristic of Chinese learning by Korean learner. Korean ？ Chinese interlanguage represents linguistic characteristic of Korean learner, which is related to the various elements of mother tongue (Korean) and Chinese learning of learners. In the aspects of pronunciation, the most remarkable characteristic of Korean learner is a pronunciation that is mainly focused on segments, which is closely related to the fact that Korean is not a tone language. Korean elements are mixed in the rule of sound change and pronunciation of partial consonants and vowels. In the aspects of vocabulary, its systematic character is relatively weak but it has characteristic coming from Korean. Some are substituted by Korean words, some are Korean way in meaning and function and some are due to the complexity of Chinese words. In the aspects of grammar, interlingual interference is negative transfer that is caused by the rule of word arrangement in the Korean sentence which has elements like object and complement etc. The interlingual interference results from the syntactical complexity of Chinese elements like complement, liheci (？合？), cunxianju (存？句) and so on.

This study aims at investigating the effects of phonological short-term memory (PSTM), learning styles, and oral repetition on middle school students" learning of English vocabulary. Two groups had different treatments (semantic learning and oral repetition) and vocabulary learning was assessed in spelling, meaning, and production twice, immediately after the learning sessions and two weeks thereafter. The results reveal that oral repetition and the PSTM capacity affected the vocabulary learning significantly, but not learning styles. The students with a higher PSTM capacity learned significantly more words but didn"t remember them better for a longer period than those with a lower PSTM capacity. No clear effects of learning styles were noted, while the PSTM capacity of auditory learners was higher than that of visual learners. The oral repetition group learned significantly more words than those who did only semantic learning, which suggests the usefulness of oral repetition in learning new vocabulary.

The national curriculum for English in Korea emphasizes the development of communicative competence through the use of task-based learning and communicative activities that suit the student’s needs and levels, as well as the integration of the four skills. This not only requires sophisticated teaching skills, but also a high degree of proficiency in English. The English Teacher Selection Test, which is meant to select quality English teachers, has never been free from being criticized for its lack of validity, consistency, and proper feedback. This study thus analyzes the English Teacher Selection Test items from 2004 to 2006 in terms of percentages of different fields of major and suggests some ideas to make the Test more efficient in serving its purpose, which is selecting quality English teachers.

This study investigates English education in Korean kindergarten from inside through kindergarten English instructors" description of their classrooms. 18 kindergarten English instructors who were affiliated with commercial kindergarten English program providers were interviewed on their 1) attitudes toward English, 2) English studying experiences, 3) kindergarten English teaching methods, 4) understanding of kindergarten learners, 5) opinions on their English programs, and 6) understanding of their teaching position. From the analysis of their description, the following patterns of kindergarten English education are identified: kindergarten English education is under a heavy influence of business orientation; and it is operated under the traditional teaching-centered educational principles. Being financially uptight, kindergartens seek English programs which would not burden their budgets, and this tendency seems to direct the English program developer/provider and the instructor toward business-oriented management of kindergarten English teaching. As a result, English programs offered in kindergarten adhere to teaching-centered methodologies, which are traditionally accepted in Korean society and are not costly to implement. At the same time, the programs are operated to create English classrooms of a set frame which can be characterized as "presentation"-centered class with the main aim of "keeping the young learners entertained and occupied." This study concludes that the kindergarten English classroom described by the 18 instructors falls short of expectations. Finally this study suggests government-level official involvement in kindergarten English education for provision of a proper curriculum and teachers who are trained and certified for teaching kindergarten English.

The present study aims to examine vocabulary analysis programs suitable for English textbook authorization in the amended version of the national curriculum. The analysis of WordLister 2002, a conventional vocabulary analysis software, reveals that it fails to meet the needs necessary to authorize textbooks in terms of user-friendliness and limited uses of the vocabulary analysis output. The design of WordLister 2002 is too complicated to be used without special training. While it provides useful information on new vocabulary, it fails to provide information in comparison with the existing research on vocabulary. NLPtools, on the other hand, applies corpus analysis techniques to the analysis of textbook vocabulary. In this program, texts in the textbook are seen as a corpus. Another characteristic is that NLPtools employs analysis methods based on dictionaries. It is found that NLPtools processes special characters in the text, so that the user does not need to process them by using specified input codes as in WordLister 2002. Wordlister 2002 requires its user to register a number of words in the process of vocabulary analysis, whereas the user with NLPtools does not need to register words as its built-in dictionary has a wide range of information on words. NLPtools also provides its users with functions, by which they can get and analyze the information they need. With these advantages over the conventional software, it is suggested that NLPtools can be used as a vocabulary analysis program for textbook authorization in the amended curriculum.

The aim of this study is to illustrate the relationships among topic-interest, topic-usefulness, and motivational orientation. A total of 138 students in six different English language courses in a university in Korea took part in the study. Two sets of identical questionnaires were used before and after the semester. They asked the learners to rate the degrees of motivational orientation and the levels of interest and usefulness on the topics in the textbook. The results show that there was an interesting pattern that the level of correlation between topic-interest and integrative motivation was higher than that between topic-interest and instrumental motivation. In case of the correlations between topic-interest and topic-usefulness, moderate levels of positive correlations are shown. However, it was difficult to find a strong relationship in the levels of topic-interest between before and after the use of the textbooks. The average correlation is calculated as .27, indicating a very low level of relationship. The overall results suggest that teachers need to identify their learners" reasons for studying English to choose a textbook that meets the learners" motivational orientation. Teachers also need to evaluate how textbook writers maximize their creativeness in presenting topics in textbooks.

The purpose of the present study is to help the high school English teachers develop insights into communicative grammar instruction. In order to examine what the teachers do in their grammar instruction, the study analyzed five video-taped high school English classes. From the analyses it was found that despite all the efforts made by the educational policy to implement the communicative language teaching, the high school English teachers" grammar instruction today is hardly different from the traditional one. What the teachers basically do in their grammar instruction is to explain the grammar points, translate the sentences, and include some mechanical drills. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the high school English teachers lack knowledge and techniques necessary to teach the target language grammar more communicatively. It is suggested that in order to make their grammar instruction more effective in developing the communicative language ability in the students, the teachers need to reduce the time to explain grammar points and increase the time to engage the students in the meaningful use of the target structure. An example of the grammar instruction is provided to help the teachers.

As English has been rapidly spreading to non-Western communities, we have had numerous varieties of English. In the Outer Circle, English gained an official status, which resulted in nonnative varieties of English. In the Expanding Circle, English achieved the status of the first foreign language. With a range of English varieties, educators and administrators have been faced with controversial questions such as: (1) how to define native speakers of English? and (2) which varieties to teach? This qualitative study investigates four Korean EFL teachers’ perception of speakers of English and the issue of target varieties. Using data from semi-structured interviews and personal conversations collected for one academic semester, the researcher found that the participants considered various features when identifying an individual as a native or nonnative speaker of English. They used to consider ethnicity and nationality important in the past, which have been replaced by language precedence, cultural attachment, native speaker’s intuition, and mutual intelligibility. The findings of this study also demonstrate that American English is regarded as the most preferred variety as an educational target in Korean ELT because of the power that its speakers have.

Many studies claimed that teachers are influential in classroom from the perspective; the human beings present in the classroom interact in a complex context to which students are susceptible in many aspects of learning. Especially in language classrooms, teachers are assumed to be more important and influential, which means that a teacher can play a greater part in helping the students to learn the language. Thus, it is worthwhile to focus on teachers in the classroom. The purpose of this study is to explore what two effective ESL teachers do in the classroom. Three different qualitative techniques were used and some salient findings emerging were used as themes. For data, the teachers" teaching was observed in class and they were interviewed outside of class. Students" responses to the teachers" behavior through written diaries and interviews were gathered to triangulate the data, which helped to yield more valid and comprehensive viewpoints. This in-depth examination of the two teachers allows us to better understand teacher roles in terms of encouraging students" better learning behavior in the classroom. It was found that, besides the two teachers" technical attention to teaching purposefulness, their attention to affective factor seems to be also effective.

In eliciting pragmatics data from a particular learner group, selecting an adequate elicitation method is crucial because different populations react differently to different methods. The present study compared the cartoon discourse completion test (DCT) and the written DCT in eliciting requests from Korean high school students. One hundred high school 2nd graders participated in this investigation. The cartoon DCT group and the written DCT group were each asked to write down what they would say in specific situations. The data was analyzed in terms of response length, strategy types of the head act, external modification, politeness marker and vocabulary. The results showed that the cartoon DCT group significantly produced more words than the written DCT group. In terms of strategy types of head acts, the cartoon DCT group was more direct utilizing the highest percentage of Mood derivable and the lowest of Hints. In addition, the cartoon DCT group produced data closer to a spoken discourse in terms of external modification. That is, the categories of Confirmation check, Introducing oneself, and Hesitation, which are features usually shown in the oral interaction, appeared only in the cartoon DCT data. Also, compared to the written DCT, the cartoon DCT yielded a wider range of external modification use. As for the use of the politeness marker, please, the cartoon DCT group produced a higher number of the marker, and showed a pattern for using it under the social factors embedded in the scenarios while the written DCT group did not. The findings imply that the cartoon DCT is more effective to elicit richer and more real conversation-like speech acts from high school students.