The benefit of language play for language learning is not recognized in English education. Based on the idea that teachers’ perception of teaching and learning affects their teaching practices, this study sought to examine teachers’ perception of language play in the English classroom. The specific purposes of the study were to discover commonalities and differences in elementary teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ perception of language play and to provide suggestions for including language play in teacher education and classroom instruction. Separate group interviews were conducted with 7 in-service and 9 pre-service teachers at the elementary level, in which the participants shared their responses to 3 language play texts that highlight rhyme, rhythm, and nonsense compound words. The topical analysis of the data revealed that both the teachers and pre-service teachers focused on understanding the words in the texts and did not recognize their playful aspects. However, the in-service teachers interpreted the texts more actively than the pre-service teachers and shared ideas for using language play texts in the English classroom. Based on the findings, the paper emphasizes that pre-service English teacher education needs to include language play as one of curricular contents, which should continue into teacher education.

The purpose of this study was to investigate university learners’ preferences and other related factors for two general English courses, one course focusing on reading and another on conversation, with students divided by their language proficiency level. The participants were 554 students at an engineering university. A 4-point Likert-type scale was used to record general tendency. Students were evaluated and divided into three and four proficiency levels for the reading and conversation course, respectively. 88.1% of participants had a favorable opinion of the level-divided conversation course, and 87.7% had a positive view of the level-divided reading course. Cross tabulation analysis was conducted to examine any relationships between the preferences and other factors such as sex, favorable feelings toward English, students’ majors, and English proficiency. The chi-square analysis showed no significant relationship between level-divided course preference and factors like sex or fondness for English. However, there appears to be a significant relationship between students’ majors and level-divided course preference for both the conversation and reading courses as well as a preference relationship between English proficiency and the reading course. The participants liked the effectiveness of the level-divided course content and the tailoring of educational content according to students’ proficiency.

This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of the process-genre approach on EFL learners’ writing improvement. A total of 48 Chinese college freshmen students participated in this study, and they were divided into high-level (n=20) and low-level (n=28) groups. All the participants were instructed by the same teacher in the College English class for 14 weeks, during which they were taught how to compose in three writing genres: narration, exposition, and argumentation. After comparing the writing scores of pre- and post-tests from both groups, it can be concluded that the processgenre approach is helpful in enhancing the EFL learners’ writing competence because both groups of students had significantly improved their writing abilities. Besides, both group learners attained a salient achievement in expository writing after they were trained by the process-genre approach. Compared with the high-level learners, the low-level learners made larger progress in all three writing genres. It indicates that enough teaching time and teacher’s scaffolding systems are crucial for the learners’ writing development.

Despite the validated EIL status, native English accents are commonly regarded as the most appropriate pronunciation-teaching norms, while nonnative accents are still considered inappropriate. This study attempts to explore Korean-speaking elementary teachers’ perceptions of native and nonnative English accents and find out the extent to which the teachers’ ratings of the accents show variance and correlations as regards likeability, familiarity, intelligibility, comprehensibility, and instructional model suitability. For these, 53 in-service Korean-speaking elementary teachers were asked to evaluate two native (American and British) and two nonnative (Filipino and Korean) English accents by the five variables. The results were as follows: 1) The AmE accent was rated most positively, while the FiE accent was least favorable in all the variables; 2) The KoE accent was evaluated to be more familiar, intelligible, and comprehensible than the BrE accent at a significant level. In contrast, the two accents exhibited an insignificant difference in likeability and suitability; 3) Significant correlations were obtained among the variables except for comparisons of likeability-intelligibility, likeability-comprehensibility, and familiarity-comprehensibility; 4) The instructional model suitability had a significant correlation with the four remaining variables. Based on these results, pedagogical implications and implications for teacher education were suggested, followed by this study’s limitations.

This study investigated the effect of automated writing evaluation (AWE) feedback on Korean university students’ revision behavior. Specifically, it explored the extent to which the quality of essays differed between first drafts and second drafts. Furthermore, the way individual students dealt with incorrect feedback in revising essays was examined. In this study, ETS’ Criterion program, one of the most popular AWE programs, was employed. In cases where incorrect feedback was detected, the first and second drafts were closely compared to find out how students altered the text in response to the incorrect feedback, and this was classified into one of three categories: successful changes, unsuccessful changes, and text deletion. The results showed that students’ second drafts were rated significantly higher than first drafts by two NS raters, which indicates that many students followed the revision suggestions made by the Criterion program. As students’ Criterion scores increased, their ability to identify and make successful changes in response to incorrect feedback improved. The findings of the study can advance our understanding of AWE use in an EFL context and should contribute to broader examination of how Korean university students engage in revision of their essays.

In this study, a researcher transcribed Korean negation sentences presented on four episodes of the [Love of 7.7 Billion] and analyzed the discourses of foreign panel members by focusing on Korean negation sentences. The aims of this study are to (1) analyze types and accuracy of Korean negation sentences in foreign panel members’ discourse and (2) present pedagogical implications for efficient Korean education on negation sentences. This study was launched as an attempt to analyze how correctly and variously foreign panel members in the program use Korean negation sentences in their discourse. Since discourse is closely related to the ordinary life of humans, discourses which appeared on the [Love of 7.7 Billion] would be suitable data to analyze since it is a discussion-based program. Therefore, discourse is useful from a pedagogical standpoint to look into the Korean language proficiency of them. Through discourse analysis, several implications were found. (1) foreign panels tended to use short negation sentences rather than long negation sentences; (2) panels’ use of Korean negation sentences was not various; (3) panels divided Korean negation sentences into often-used negation sentences and rarely-used negation sentences; (4) the use of negative polarity was not found that much.

This study explored in what directions the 2017 KSL curriculum should be improved in order to be properly implemented in the field. To this end, it was analyzed according to the implementation factors, direction of action, validity, clarity, and feasibility factors, and the following improvement measures were derived: (1) From the action direction factor, it should be designed as a framework in which teachers can reconstruct the curriculum from the perspective of mutual adaptation. (2) In terms of validity, the contents of teaching and learning and language materials should be organized according to achievement standards. In addition, it is suggested that the 2017 KSL curriculum could be organized so that it can be cross-referenced with the achievement standards of this curriculum by establishing the relationship between upper or other curriculum. (3) In terms of clarity, the contents of culture and academic language proficiency must be presented in detail. In addition, it is required to specify the details of teaching and learning methods by each school level and Korean level. (4) In terms of feasibility factors, it is suggested to present an effective teaching and learning methods of this curriculum operated as a grade-free system, and to provide a curriculum manual.

This study analyses the communicative functions of listening scripts extracted from the 2015 elementary school English 6 and middle school English 1 textbooks in terms of continuity. Auditory data corpora were drawn from all five elementary school English textbooks and five most widely used middle school English textbooks. Each sentence of listening scripts was manually tagged based on the classification of communication functions presented in the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. The corpora were analyzed using 14 syntactic complexity measures with the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2010). The findings of this study show that the continuity between the elementary school English 6 and the middle school English 1 textbooks is relatively well-organized. However, concerning the sequence, the elementary school English 6 was found to be more complex than the middle school English 1 in terms of syntactic complexity. It is suggested that future textbook development should correct the reversed complexity in listening scripts found in this study.

This study investigated the effects of self and peer evaluations and learners’ involvement on the development of assessment criteria in higher education English literature classes. A total of 40 college students participated in the study, extracting five main criteria with 10 sub-standards to assess their group assignments and conduct self- and peer evaluation on their presentations. The results of the learners’ selfand peer assessments were compared with instructor’s assessments and their final grades using one-way ANOVA and correlation analysis. The study also examined the correlation among the assessment criteria to find which factors affected learning outcomes. The study concluded that their participation in the development of assessment criteria positively, affected their critical thinking ability and the selection of subjects for the group presentations. Logicality of writing also affected the outcomes of final assessments. The study concluded that self- and peer assessments can be highly effective in learning processes when learners actively participate in setting the assessment criteria.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among English learners’ motivation, strategies, and achievement. The participants were 61 Korean college students specializing in Aviaition Service and they took a mock TOEIC and completed a questionnaire on learning motivations and strategies. T-test and multiple regression analysis were used to determine the relationships among all variables. The findings revealed that, first, variables in integrative motivation were found to be a statistically significant predictor of achievement while variables in instrumental motivation’ was higher order motivation type. Second, participants used ‘compensation strategies’ most frequently and higher-achieving students used more strategies than their peers did. ‘Metacognitive strategies’ and ‘affective strategies’ had statistically significant impacts on their achievement. In conclusion, the relationships among learning motivation, strategies and achievement was found to be definite. Implications for more effective study habits are suggested.

This study explores the effects of teacher feedback on engineering students’ perceptions of learning a business subject and English development in the context of English-medium instruction (EMI). Using a mixed method, it examines specific contributions of teachers’ extensive feedback to the students’ emerging perceptions of interdisciplinary education and EMI. The quantitative section includes questionnaire responses of two groups of students enrolled in four sections of an entrepreneurship course: the control group (CG) in which the students received limited feedback in the lecture-style EMI (n=137) and the experimental group (EG) of extensive corrective feedback (n=133). These results are cross-examined by a semi-structured focus group interview with four respondents. The analysis shows that the university seniors’ mean satisfaction score with EMI, despite staying around the mid-point, was higher than that of the others, and significantly more so than the freshmen group. Notably, EG students appreciated EMI more than CG students. Subsequent findings establish that extensive feedback correlates with the increased positivity towards learning entrepreneurship and, more importantly, English development. This study thus proposes English programs for specific purposes and a support system including an EMI-specialized teaching methodology.

This study focused on the perceptions of the use of different types of songs on Korean EFL students in language learning. For this study, two other variables, proficiency and gender, were also examined. In the study, 197 undergraduate students took part. All participants were taking an English course at a university in Korea. The three types of songs-pop songs, children’s songs, and movie songs-were used in class for nine weeks in 2019. A perception survey about stress, confidence, and interest in EFL learning was carried out. A one-way ANOVA was utilized to compare the participants’ perceptions and learning through the three different types of songs. Findings revealed significant difference between children’s songs and pop songs regarding stress. There were also significant differences in confidence and interest depending on proficiency levels. Participants’ gender also affected stress levels during the use of songs for English learning. This study shed light on the use of songs in the EFL context with a more comprehensive view of students’ reactions and preferences towards the different types of songs. Limitations of the study were suggested at the end of the paper.

This study is about meta-language used for teaching the Korean language in Serbia, where it is not a native language. This study examined meta-language for teaching preferred by Korean language learners of Serbia and explored efficient methods of meta-language use for teaching. First, meta-language and meta-language for teaching were discussed, and meta-language for Korean language teaching was defined. After setting up the research question and hypothesis, a survey was conducted on Korean language learners at the University of Niš in Serbia to determine their preferred meta-language for teaching. According to the survey, many learners wanted to take classes in ‘Korean-Serbian languages.’ Beginner and intermediate learners of vocabulary, grammar, and conversation preferred ‘Korean-Serbian’ meta-language for teaching, and advanced learners preferred ‘Korean’ meta-language for teaching. Based on such grounds and existing theories, this paper proposed a usage model of meta-language for teaching in beginner, intermediate, and advanced Korean language classes in Serbia and presented the necessity for fostering professional Korean language instructors overseas.

This study investigates the use of cohesive devices in the corpus of Korean college students’ compositions. In particular, it attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the lexico-grammatical contexts in which cohesive referential devices are employed in argumentative essays. For this purpose, a Korean EFL corpus and a native speaker corpus were analyzed based on Gray’s (2010) coding scheme. The coding scheme included variables such as the place and unit of the antecedent, the grammatical role and place of demonstratives, and their preceding or following structures. The results of the analysis showed that Korean EFL learners and native writers were similar in that they tended to use demonstrative pronouns as a subject and demonstrative determiners as objects/complements. Besides this general tendency, non-prototypical uses of the determiners were observed. The learners’ corpus manifested an overuse of an extended antecedent which could reduce the clarity of meaning. The most frequent verb following demonstrative pronouns was the copula (i.e., be) in both corpora. Finally, the learners tended to use a much smaller number of abstract/shell nouns than their native speaker counterparts.

This study analyzes the research trends of PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) in Korean English classes from 2005 to 2019 across ten journal articles, two master’s theses, two doctoral dissertations, and five research reports. This was intended to provide hints for the future direction of English PCK studies. Six criteria—subject-matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, learner knowledge, curriculum knowledge, social context knowledge, and action research knowledge— have been applied to the analysis of the selected English PCK studies. The findings are as follows. Study on the subject-matter knowledge was the most frequent, appearing in 15 studies, mainly dealing with linguistic knowledge. In the field of pedagogical knowledge, studies on class design were most common, and in the field of learner knowledge, learner background and learner characteristics were equally studied. In the social context knowledge field, there were relatively few studies on parents, and in the field of action research knowledge, the number of studies corresponding to three sub-factors was the same. Our study concludes that to systematize the study of PCK for teacher professionalism in the subject matter of English, English PCK education should be done in both pre-service and in-service institutions and that PCK research environments should be provided to this end.

The present paper was intended to examine the research trends in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) using python and text mining. For this purpose, data were first collected from domestic and foreign theses as well as academic journals published between 1990 and 2019 and available on Research Information Sharing Service (RISS). Then keywords from the titles of the studies were extracted and analyzed via text mining. The study revealed that (1) Both domestic and foreign studies seemed to share much in common in terms of their favored research topics in ESP-text communication, English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and course/curriculum design; (2) Corpus/needs analyses were most favored in Korean ESP studies, while genre/needs analyses and case studies were in foreign ESP studies; (3) 'Engineering' was the field of study most dealt with in both domestic and foreign EAP research; and (4) Not all trends in the same period coincide in domestic and foreign ESP studies. Finally, the present study offered future directions derived from the results of the study.

The purpose of this research study is to identify the perceptions of both primary ELL(English Language Learner)s and English teachers on MMP(Multimodal Media Production)-embedded English instruction at a primary English class. In order to answer this question, 182 primary ELLs and 2 English teachers participated in this research. A questionnaire survey was administered to the focal participants and an open-ended interview was conducted with the teachers. The results show that overall perceptions on MMP were comparably high among ELLs, and there was significant difference between genders, grades and English levels in terms of learning interest. The teachers’ interview revealed that MMP would trigger deeper understanding of the lesson and ELLs’ voluntary active class participation by heightening motivation, self-confidence and interest in learning English. In sum, the implementation of MMP-embedded English instruction has positive pedagogical effects for young ELLs since it may promote essential literacy skills in the 21st century as well as help in affective domains.

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, creativity plays a pivotal role in the competitiveness of a country. The importance of creativity education therefore cannot be overemphasized. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of discussion-based English reading and writing activities on Korean high school students' creativity, English writing, and self-assessed creative thinking. The participants were 45 high school students in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: the discussion-based English reading and writing group (n=24) and the traditional English instruction group (n=21). The experiment was administered during two semesters of the 2017 academic year. The major findings are as follows: First, the experimental group showed significant improvement on the creativity test, especially in the areas of fluency, flexibility, and original thinking. Second, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the writing test. Third, the experimental group showed positive changes in their self-assessed flexible thinking, convergent thinking, and intrinsic motivation. All of these indicate the beneficial effects of the discussion-based English reading and writing activities. Based on the results, some pedagogical suggestions were made for the effective integration of creativity education into the teaching of English as a foreign language.

This study explored the effect of writing activity on EFL participants’ speaking performance. In order to attain this purpose, three research questions were presented; 1) What are the characteristics of learners’ writing? 2) How does their speaking fluency change during the writing sessions?, and 3) What is the effect of writing practice on learners’ speaking fluency, in terms of features of spoken grammar? Four college students participated in this study. Pre- and post-oral proficiency test scores, the participants’ writing products, and recorded data of their speaking performance were used for data analysis. Results of data analysis showed that, first, the more proficient participants were, the fewer the errors they made in their writing. Second, there was an increase in scores of intermediate- and beginning-level of students between the pre- and post- oral tests while the scores of advanced level of students did not show any differences between those two tests. Lastly, the result shows that the learners with higher proficiency in writing ability have higher recognition to the spoken grammar. Pedagogical implications are also made on the effective teaching of English writing and speaking in the Korean classroom setting.

This study investigates how process drama, with a special focus on the teacher-in-role strategy, brings about change in an L2 teacher’s practice. As a reflective practitioner researcher, the teacher who aims to integrate drama into L2 classrooms investigates how her practice changes during the planning phase of her workshops by analyzing her reflective journals through thematic analysis, interpreting the analysis findings and relating them to data collected through observations and interviews. Both cases of teacher-in-role used within the conventional teacher frame and that used beyond the frame were present. In the former case, teacher-in-role resulted in making a teacher-centered pre-scripted performance. However, in the latter case, the teacher being in role created a drama world where the improvisational and spontaneous side of teacher-in-role was developed, resulting in changing the teacher’s practice as follows: First, the teacher-in-role strategy encouraged the teacher to find ways to enhance learners’ commitment to the drama experience by engaging them in improvisation. Second, adopting the strategy led the teacher to exercise imagination, being sensitive to learners’ responses. Lastly, the teacher taking on a role made the teacher think of ways to provide L2 support that promotes the process of co-constructing the drama world.