The present study aims to categorize common word choice errors in Korean EFL writing and help teachers understand students’ word choice patterns. This study reassures that both L1 and its background cultures affect language learners’ choice of vocabulary in English learning. Korean first-year undergraduate students with low levels of English proficiency participated in this study. The students were required to carry out a writing log, a collection of nine pieces of weekly assignments of paragraph writing during the semester. They were allowed to use any type of automatic translation such as Google Translate or Papago for revision and editing. The errors that the students produced were classified into three categories, and significant findings were obtained regarding lexical errors caused by literal translation, cultural differences, and L1 word order. The findings are interpreted in terms of cultural and linguistic differences between the first and target languages. They can give ideas for teachers to instruct EFL writing strategies on students’ word choice errors.

The present study suggests that science fiction is a beneficial teaching resource to encourage students to develop ethical creativity. Liberal arts education is to cultivate a free and/or flexible thinker and introspect humanity and reading literary texts can help enhance ethicality as well as empathic understanding under the contexts of social acts of human relationships and interactions. Including these two features, science fiction suggests how to cope with two-faced future technology with both benefits and harm for humankind. This quality of science fiction helps students think critically but flexibly so as to make thoughtful choices considering humanity. Lowry's The Giver throws a question on the balance between technology and humanity, showing that memory and emotion are the most fundamental and essential value to be true humans. This study presents the reason why literature is beneficial to construct ethical reasoning by identifying the two key factors – memory and emotion – to understand humans and humanity. Also, the study attempts to share some ideas of how to adopt the text to help students enhance ethical/moral thinking skills, discussing the idea of humanity.