Literature has been repeatedly recognized as an effective source of authentic materials in EFL classrooms. Literature exposes learners to coherent and expert writing which can enable them to write better and facilitates students’ creative writing skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the teaching procedures of using short fiction in a Korean high school EFL course in which English writing and reading skills are integrated and to provide pedagogical suggestions for using authentic literature in EFL classrooms. First, this paper introduces a theoretical discussion of the advantages of using short fiction in an English writing instruction, and discusses reasons for selecting the Korean short novel Dongbackkot and the English short story “Araby” as resources for writing. After that pedagogical steps with practical classroom activities are described. We hope that the pedagogical suggestions provided here may inspire English teachers to design their teaching materials using appropriate literary texts to improve their students’ English essay writing and balanced communication skills.

The main materials composing the outdoor space are the landscape plant materials. Even though grass plants out of landscape plant materials are efficient for water consumption and management, still, the types of grass used for landscape are extremely few. Thus, this study explores the preference on grass plants in apartment complexes to provide basic information for grass planting plan and design in the future. For this study, 171 questionnaires of two sites in Daegu and one site in Seoul were used for final analysis and the results are as follows. First, in the results of the awareness of grass plants, “do not know” (80.7%) was considerably higher than “do know” (19.3%). Second, in the results of the most preferred place for planting grass plants in apartment complexes, “trail” (31.2%) was the highest, followed by “space around the apartment building” (17.5%) and “waterscape” (15.4%). Third, for the preference on the shape of grass plants, “Upright-arching” (38.0%) was the highest, followed by “Upright-divergent” (29.2%), “Tufted” (19.9%), and “Mounded” (12.9%). Fourth, for the preferred height of grass plants, “Short size” (50.3%) was the highest, followed by “Medium size” (36.8%), and “Tall size” (12.9%). Fifth, for the preferred color of grass plants, “white” (27.7%) was the highest, followed by “green” (25.7%), “red” (20.5%), “yellow” (17.2%), and “blue” (9.0%). This information could be used as reference in case when planning and designing of grass plants in apartment complexes and further research including different regions is needed.

We report the development of solar flux receivers operating at 2.8 GHz to monitor solar radio activity. Radio waves from the sun are amplified, filtered, and then transmitted to a power meter sensor without frequency down-conversion. To measure solar flux, a calibration scheme is designed with a noise source, an ambient load, and a hot load at 100℃. The receiver is attached to a 1.8 m parabolic antenna in Icheon, owned by National Radio Research Agency, and observation is being conducted during day time on a daily basis. We compare the solar fluxes measured for last seven months with solar fluxes obtained by DRAO in Penticton, Canada, and by the Hiraiso solar observatory in Japan, and finally establish equations to convert observed flux to the so-called Penticton flux with an accuracy better than 3.2 sfu.