The purpose of this study is to analyze the readability of reading passages used in 5th and 6th grade elementary school English textbooks under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, all the reading passages of each textbook were calculated with ATOS (Advantage-TASA Open Standard) formula as a readability index. The results of this study indicate that, firstly, the average readability score of 6th grade English textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones. Secondly, the readability of 6th grade English textbooks is about six months ahead of that of 5th grade ones. Thirdly, the readability scores are similar in all reading passages for 5th grade, while the readability scores of 6th grade differ from textbooks to textbooks. According to the textbook writers, the readability score of 6th grade textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones in four out of five textbooks. Lastly, In terms of the units in each textbook, the readability scores fluctuate and do not increase sequentially as expected.

The purpose of this study is to examine how cohesion features can be used to distinguish between essays written by Korean and NS college students. A total of 800 essays from the ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English) corpus were analyzed using the newly-developed automated analysis of cohesion program, TAACO (the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Cohesion). In order to examine whether there are statistically significant differences between NS and Korean students, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted. The multivariate test result showed that the combined cohesion indices were significantly affected by L1, indicating that Korean and NS students differed in terms of various cohesion indices. A stepwise discriminant function analysis was also carried out to characterize the nature of cohesion differences in essays between NS and Korean students. The best two predictors for distinguishing between Korean students’ essays and NS students’ essays are the overlap of function words and the use of demonstratives. Overall, NS students produced a more cohesive writing than Korean students in that they employed overlapping words, demonstratives, and lexical subordinators as a way to connect ideas across sentences. Implications of this study for English writing pedagogy are discussed.

Given the view of tests as mechanisms within a language policy framework (Shohamy, 2006), Korean proficiency tests are not only used as a way to measure language knowledge, but rather as tools to impose national ideologies about langage use and diversity. The field of Korean language testing needs to embrace sociopolitical dimensions, and engage what is going on value and consequence in test development and validation. By drawing upon a combined approach of Messick’s (1989) validity framework, Fairclough’s (2001) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Bachman and Palmer’s Assessment Use Arugment (AUA), this study aims to illustrate how the practice of testing can be discursively interpreted as a multilayered phenomenon, constituted through discourse. It discussed the applicability of AUA’s two claims (decisions, consequences) to the validation of Korean language proficiency or related certification testing for immigrants with foci of value implications and consequences. The interconnectedness of test validation and CDA is modelled through the procedure of Faircough’s (2001) analytic methodology. In an effort to illustrate that language testing is discursively value-laded, this study not only offer a theoretical and methodological addition to the current inquiry of test validation, but also re-emphasize that language testing is sociopolitically driven from a discursive angle.

This study explored the effects of outlining on the summaries of thirty six L2 college students across three text genres and their opinions on the use of outlining in writing the summaries. Over the eight weeks, the students were divided into an outlining group (experimental group) and a keyword group (controlled group) wrote three summaries after reading articles across three genres (e.g. argumentative, expository, and narrative) at two weeks intervals. Additionally, a follow-up questionnaire on the use of outlining in writing summaries was conducted. Data were analyzed by the Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2010) under 14 indices, and the responses to the questionnaire were analyzed by percentages. The results found a statistically significant difference appearing only in the aspect of CT (i.e. clause per T-unit). In addition, a majority of students utilizing outlining for summary writing believed that they were helped not only to understand the contents and the structure of the articles, but to write summaries with their own words. These results have a pedagogical meaning in that outlining can be more efficient for specific reading genres when teaching summarization in L2 classes.

The current study examined the validity of classroom-based English assessment in the elementary school context using a validity analysis framework, which includes cognitive, instructional, and inferential validity components. As a case study, it evaluated two unit achievement tests administered to 142 6th grade students. Three types of data (i.e., the curricular learning goals, instructional contents covered for the two units, and two unit achievement tests and scores) were collected and analyzed for the classroom-based assessment validity argument. Results revealed that the two tests were relevant to the curriculum and instruction; however, there was a lack of correspondence between the two tests and the curriculum (cognitive validity); moreover, the instructional contents were not sufficiently covered with representative test items (instructional validity). While the test items functioned as expected, students showed a wide range of achievement, which was not expected in the achievement test context (inferential validity). The findings suggest implications for the development and use of classroom-based assessment for young language learners.

This paper aims to explore how Korean-Chinese bilingual speakers process Korean final ending -ko. Korean-Chinese bilingual speakers from Yanbian participated in the masked priming experiments through a word judgment task. The masked priming experiments were designed to compare the subjects’ response under three different prime-target conditions: Identical Condition, Unrelated Condition, and Test Condition. The participants’ response time in the experiments was statistically analyzed in two different ways: i.e., subject (F1) analyses and item (F2) analyses. The results of both the subject analyses and the item analyses revealed full priming effects, as is usually found in native speakers’ morphological processing. These findings indicate that Chinese-Korean bilingual speakers are sensitive to each combining morpheme of morphologically complex words including Korean final ending -ko and their processing of the words are not dependent upon the lexical storage of the full form.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how grammatical patterns of command in using hedge strategies function based on the principle of relative status in the Korean language. In order to accomplish the purpose, types of command in using hedge strategies are classified. The results showed that grammatical patterns of command are functioned to save the listener’s face from a listener’s viewpoint, and to strengthen details of propositions used from a proponent’s viewpoint. Also, from a speaker’s viewpoint, they are functioned to reduce the burden of command acts, and to agree with others implicitly or to follow his or her role demanded in the conversation. It also indicated that specific patterns are selected depending on language users, and context factors such as listeners’ reactions, hierarchical relations among listeners and speakers, their closeness to each other, location and formality of context, and publicity of their topics. Based on the findings, a pedagogical implication is suggested to provide language users’ multi-faceted competence in Korean.

The purpose of this study is to analyze two greek prepositions (‘apo’ and ‘se’) and learners’ errors to suggest comprehensible instruction in general. To express spatial meaning, the Greek language uses almost exclusively combinations of local adverbs with prepositions, especially ‘apo’ and ‘se’, with certain case while the Korean language uses ‘adverbial particles’. The first investigation is to look into the meanings of greek prepositions, especially ‘apo’ and ‘se’ which are ‘primary’ prepositions in the Greek language. It is necessary to analyze how they are expressed in the Korean language due to set instructional direction to Korean learners. There are many adverbial particles which correspond with each meaning of two greek prepositions so that it is not that clear for Korean learners to understand scattered semantic category of each preposition. Subsequently we will analyze learners’ errors of their use of prepositions. The result shows that the learners are problematic to use ‘apo’ and ‘se’ properly. In some cases their use of the prepositions seems mixed up. It is important to know problematic points of greek prepositions ‘apo’ and ‘se’ to Korean learners to set some efficient instruction. At the conclusion, there are some suggestions on the effective teaching of greek prepositions ‘apo’ and ‘se’ especially in ‘complex prepositions’ using images and example sentences.

Despite the extensive research on second language learning motivation, very little research has been conducted with Chinese learning motivation and the focus of the research has been limited mainly to identifying types of motivation. Considering the popularity of Chinese as a second language and the lack of research on Chinese learning motivation, the study aims to illustrate the process of motivational changes in learning Chinese from the sociocultual perspective. The data were collected from the researcher’s own autobiographic diary written while she was learning Chinese. Using the framework of an Activity Theory, the data were analyzed to find factors affecting the participant’s motivatonal changes. The findings indicate that the participant’s motivation was affected by dynamic interaction of mediational tools, relationships within the community, and different roles of the learner. The findings imply that the level of motivation is affected by how the learner resolves the tensions among those factors to move forward to the goal of becoming a multilingual speaker. The study may provide a methodological insight into L2 motivation research by analyzing and describing a longitudinal Chinese learning experience from a first-person point of view.

Le but de cette étude est de suggérer un échantillon d’ensembles d’outils de test pour évaluer l’évaluation basée sur les performances des tâches dans l’enseignement intégratif de la langue et de la culture françaises. À cette fin, cette étude a analysé les caractéristiques de l’évaluation basée sur la performance des tâches, la compétence communicative de Hymes, Canale, Swain et, Bachman et la compétence culturelle. En outre, cette étude a examiné les compétences de l’apprenant/utilisateur fournies par le Cadre européen commun de référence. Les résultats montrent: 1) les critères d’évaluation: compétence linguistique(connaissance du système linguistique, compétence du discours, compétence sociolinguistique), compétence culturelle(connaissance culturelle, attitude, compétence), compétence d’exécution de la tâche(connaissance procédurale, compétence d’exécution, compétence stratégique), 2) sous-catégorie et construction, et 3) auto-évaluation et évaluation par les pairs.

This study investigated the structural and functional differences between formulaic sequences in College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and SAT reading assessment texts. The results of the RANGE program showed that SAT used more diverse and difficult words compared to CSAT. The frequency analysis revealed that CSAT used more formulaic sequences than the SAT counterpart. This suggests that CSAT used more repeated expressions, whereas SAT used diverse vocabulary items. The structural analysis showed that noun phrases were the most dominant in CSAT, whereas prepositional phrases were pervasive in SAT. The functional analysis showed that both corpora relied heavily on referential expressions. The results indicate that referential bundles are dominantly used in institutional writing (Biber & Barbieri, 2007). In accordance with the previous studies, the results suggest that high frequency formulaic sequences can be different according to the register. In CSAT, connectives and discourse organizers were prevalent. This may be due to the characteristics of question types in CSAT. The results may indicate that formulaic sequences in texts are partly influenced by the characteristics of a register.

This paper explores the historical development of English education in Korea regarding the second and third National Curriculum period. By using the historical research method which analyzes newspaper articles in four major newspapers in Korea, we compared the similarities and differences between these two periods. The research questions are: 1) what are the characteristics of the second National Curriculum? 2) what are the characteristics of the third National Curriculum?, and 3) what is the implication of these previous curricula on the current English education in Korea? It was found that the second National Curriculum Period showed steady development in English education in terms of its emphasis on oral skills instead of the traditional emphasis on reading and grammar skills. However, the lack of coherence among various English textbooks, the lack of English teachers fluent in English, and the exam-oriented social atmosphere were the significant challenges in fully implementing the second National Curriculum. The third National Curriculum Period overlaps with the Yushin Regime propagated by the late President Park Junghee. During this period, a systematic effort to introduce communicative language teaching continued, whereas the exam-orientation persisted which made the English class employ teacher-centered grammar-translation methods. This paper concludes with educational suggestions and future research directions.

The aim of this study is to apply flipped learning in teaching General English courses in university and examine its impact on English self-efficacy and students’ English achievement. The researcher implemented flipped learning by recording videos based on the students’ textbook and up-loading those videos on the SNS before each lesson to provide opportunities for active interactions in class. The students of the experimental group (n=56) were required to learn through SNS the videos to learn in the pre-class. They also practiced what they had learned under the teacher’s supervision by completing collaborative tasks in groups or pairs. Meanwhile, the control group students (n=66) received in-class only traditional English teaching. The statistical analysis of the results showed that adopting the flipped learning strategy appeared to play a role in enhancing the students’ English self-efficacy and English achievement. Also the students’ responses indicated that their satisfaction towards the flipped learning is positive.

Although the use of Grammatical Metaphor (GM) has been regarded as one of the representative features of academic writing in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), not many studies have explored its role in second or foreign language writers’ writing quality. This study aimed to discover the potential relationship between GM development and argumentative writing quality of advanced Korean EFL learners, while controlling for their overall language proficiency and reading comprehension ability. The findings from this study unveiled significant contribution of the use of both premature and mature GM and also identified transcategorization as the specific GM that has relatively stronger predictability of writing quality. The results from current research yield meaningful pedagogical implications for writing instruction in Korean EFL contexts.

This paper explores a group of lexical bundles identified in a corpus of research article (RA) introductions in applied linguistics written by native speakers of English and second Korean learners of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). In a further step in this analysis these lexical bundles were matched to the moves and steps which fulfill communicative functions of RA introductions (Swales, 2004). The findings show that considerably different lexical bundles were used in each step in the two corpora while some lexical bundles were exclusively identified in one step in a move. In addition, it was found that two groups of writers have different priorities for selecting lexical bundles in terms of function in each move/step. This study provides pedagogical implications by establishing English experts’ bundle-move connection as a yardstick for EAP writing instruction. Longitudinal analysis of the emerging patterns is needed in the future studies.

This study investigated how Japanese learners of Korean perceive the similarity of stop sounds between the Korean and Japanese languages. The results found, compared to the beginner’s group, the advanced group showed a lower rating value for the similarity for the same stimulus sound, and the learners with a higher perception ability distinguished lower similarities, even among the inner groups of the beginner’s and advanced group. This study also investigated how the related information in the native language affects how the learners perceive lenis consonants in word-medial position in the Korean language, as Japanese stop sounds are divided into two sounds depending on [±voiced] feature, whereas Korean stop sounds do not have a voiced sound in word-initial consonantal context, but the lenis consonants go through voicing in word-medial position. In result, Japanese learners tend to perceive the lenis consonants in word-medial position much better than other sounds, and it was shown that the related information in native language had played a positive role in perceiving Korean word-medial consonants.

This study purposed to see the effectiveness of a media literacy activity in a Japanese conversation class. For this class, teaching/learning contents and methods were developed utilizing the concept of media literacy. Specifically, a CF production activity was created and its effectiveness was compared with other conventional activities such as free talking and debating. The results showed that the CF production activity resulted in high scores and most students found the activity fun, cooperative, and creative. However, when compared with other course contents, it didn’t show much improvement in the students’ Japanese language proficiency. The results suggest that there is a need to do more research on the concept of media literacy and related methodologies in Japanese language education in order to decrease the gap between ‘having fun and developing creativity’ and ‘improving Japanese language skills’.

This study investigated the use of the amplifier very in high school English textbooks and native corpora by comparing its frequency distributions and collocation patterns. The native corpora, used as the reference of the study, were COCA and BNC, with their built-in sub-corpora further grouped into spoken and written corpora. The High School English Textbook Corpus (HSETC) was compiled from a total of 53 high school textbooks, with the spoken corpus (HSETC-S) from the texts in listening and conversation and the written corpus (HSETC-W) from the reading passages. Analyses using AntConc3.4.4 revealed no prominent differences between HSETC and reference corpora in the frequency of the amplifier very, while the written corpus (HSETC-W) had more occurrences contrary to the native corpora. The combination patterns and their occurrences of HSETC were slightly different from those of COCA and BNC with the gap increased with the spoken corpus (HSETC-S). Pedagogical implications and suggestions are made on ELT materials development and teaching practices.

The study aims to examine whether teaching English through multiple intelligences can suggest one of the solutions for underachievers to facilitate their English learning and restore their learning attitudes. To explore this, the study investigated two research questions: (a) What are the effects of English instruction using multiple intelligences and stories on underachievers’ reading abilities? and (b) How English instruction using multiple intelligences and stories influences on their learning attitudes? The participants of the study were seven fifth-grade underachievers in one elementary school in Seoul. They were first tested what their strong intelligences are and engaged in customized activities based on their multiple intelligences test results during the experiment English classes. The data collected include the read-aloud test, the reading comprehension test, the affective test, students’ learning log and the interview of students and teachers, and these were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of the study showed that English instruction using multiple intelligences and stories had statistical significance in increasing underachievers’ reading abilities and changing their learning attitudes positively. This study is valuable in that it strongly calls for the need to consider multiple intelligences and provide customized activities for underachievers to facilitate their English learning and restore their learning attitudes.

This study is to describe the nature of planning as a cognitive writing process in L2 writing. It aims to examine how Korean EFL learners generate ideas and organize them. It also investigates the relationship between planning and the final product. Given a worksheet for planning, 39 university students were asked to write an argumentative essay during class. Based on their planning notes, five brainstorming types were identified: using the prompt/writing the position, mini-outlining, listing, mind mapping and free writing (in the order of frequency). In addition, the dominant use of L1 was found both in the brainstorming and the outlining. It was found that there was no statistically significant correlation between the amount of brainstorming and the quantity and quality of L2 writing. Only the amount of brainstorming in L2 had a statically significant correlation with the quantity of L2 writing (but not with the quality of L2 writing). In the case of outlining, a statistically significant correlation was found between its amount and the quantity of L2 writing. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between the amount of outlining and the L2 writing quality.