This collaborative action research aimed to develop and evaluate an academic Korean curriculum for immigrant students in grades 5~6, analyzing its effects on students’ academic Korean achievement and examining teachers’ perceptions of teaching academic Korean during the process. For this purpose, the collaboratively developed academic Korean curriculum was reviewed, and the academic Korean achievement of immigrant students was quantitatively analyzed through three assessments. Additionally, qualitative analysis was conducted on student interviews and teacher discussions regarding their experiences with the curriculum. The results indicated that the developed curriculum had a positive impact on the students’ academic Korean proficiency and their learning in other subjects. However, learning difficulties and elevated levels of anxiety during the course were common among students, regardless of their achievement levels. The teachers involved in the collaborative process proposed several strategies for more effective academic Korean teaching, such as expanding individualized support and strengthening connections with students’ families and homeroom classes. The significance of this collaborative action research lies in its empirical demonstration of the characteristics of academic Korean teaching, an area that has not been extensively covered in existing research on Korean language education.

This study explores whether there are differences in the types and characteristics of teacher talk between primary English teachers with different degrees of teaching professionalism. Two primary English teachers who were different from each other in their teaching professionalism were selected. They both taught sixth grade students and used the same English textbook. The data for the study were collected while they both were teaching the same unit of the textbook. Their classes were video-recorded and their interaction was transcribed and analyzed based on the framework of ‘constructive’ and ‘obstructive’ teacher talk (Walsh, 2002). The results show that the two teachers differed in the amount of the use of ‘constructive’ and ‘obstructive’ teacher talk. The more professional teacher used more constructive talk while the less professional teacher used more obstructive talk, and the more professional teacher encouraged the students to engage in the interaction by using constructive talk, such as error correction, content feedback, scaffolding, and so forth. On the basis of these results, some pedagogical implications were made.