The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(3). 1~30. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the awareness and attitudes of Korean learners about Academic Writing and to identify the problems which should be solved in academic writing education for Korean learners. For this, 62 foreign students were conducted a questionnaire survey, and 18 of them were interviewed to elicit their attitudes, perceptions about academic writing. A result of analysis showed that students have a very negative attitude towards writing. Moreover, they are not aware of the importance of writing. Therefore, they are negligent of writing and do not actively participate in academic activities. Second, students know the connection between general purpose writing learning and academic writing learning, but they have no systematic understanding of Korean academic writing. They simply gain knowledge of writing by imitating. Third, although they showed a willingness to be good at academic writing, they lacked subjective initiative on writing learning. And their writing study was centered on TOPIK. In order to solve these problems, this paper suggested solutions from an ecological perspective: language knowledge entry, learning environment, and learner’s self - growth. First, it is needed to help foreign students to have a systematic knowledge of academic writing as soon as possible. Second, outside the classroom, students should be offered a variety of opportunities to participate in academic activities. third, it is necessary to study the internal motivation of interest which attracts students’ attention and allow them to have a positive attitude about academic writing.

Guo, JunHua. 2018. “A Study on Test-takers' Awareness and Attitude about TOPIK Writing”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(1). 61~81. The purposes of this study are to investigate how TOPIK students perceive the writing area and analyze it from the point of critical assessment, and to suggest improvement directions of TOPIK writing assessment and Korean writing education. For this, 80 test-takers were conducted a questionnaire survey, and 20 of them were interviewed to elicit their thoughts, attitudes, perceptions about the TOPIK writing. As a result of analysis, the power of high - stakes testings such as TOPIK has a great influence on learners. TOPIK test-takers had difficulty and great anxiety about writing. They thought that to study for TOPIK writing is only for the sake of examination and that extra study was needed to improve their actual writing ability. Although the test-takers showed a willingness to write well in Korean, they had a negative attitude about studying writing. To solve this problem, it is necessary to solve problems of difficulty level in writing assessment such as ambiguous assessment criteria. In addition, it is also need to pay attention to the phenomenon of ‘test-oriented learning’ in Korean writing education, and to study the motivation of interest which attracts Korean learners' attention and let them have a positive attitude about writing.