This study reports Chinese and Korean university EFL students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward online and face-to-face English language learning modes during COVID-19. Few previous studies have focused on how students thought of online and face-to-face learning experiences of subjects regarding new concept learning and delivery of new contents. Research gravitating around English courses showed students' mixed perceptions. The survey was conducted for 302 Korean and 337 Chinese university students who took communication-oriented English courses. Descriptive statistics and qualitative data analysis were used for analysis. Results indicated that students preferred face-to-face English learning with some specific indications of achieving a stronger help and quality for communicative competence in language. Online learning also benefited students with a sense of both flexibility and independence. Positive components of face-to-face learning for language education might be considered for online education while incorporation features such as flexibility and independence to enrich language education during COVID-19.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the research trends in Korean education for learners in the Arab region. This paper also suggests directions for the future research on the field of Korean education for these learners. To conduct this study, a process of collection and sorting of research papers was held as the first step. Consequently, 64 papers were chosen. Among 64 papers, 31 academic journals and 33 theses were included. The study then reviewed the research trend by years, publishing types, and topics. Although there were very few studies in the 2000s, the number of studies has steadily increased after 2010. This was related to the Korean Wave in Arab countries and the increase in Arab students who study in Korean from 2013. In the topic analysis by the topics, ‘Teaching and Learning’ accounted for the largest proportion. The second largest proportion was ‘Korean Education Content’. Next was ‘Korean Education in general’, followed by ‘Contrastive Analysis’. Overall, there have been many studies based on contrast or error analysis between Arabic and Korean languages. In terms of contents, there were many studies on phonetics and culture. However, it was found that there are many studies that need to be addressed in each sub-topic. Lastly, based on the analysis in this study, the characteristics and limitations of research trends were analyzed, and future research directions were suggested.

The present study aims to investigate the patterns and characteristics of impoliteness strategies and impoliteness formulas in Korean learners’ interlanguage complaints, focusing primarily on advanced Chinese learners. Discourse Completion Test(DCT) was utilized to investigate interlanguage complaints, with each scenario providing the research participants with information on publicness, familiarities between the interlocutors, and their social status levels. Impoliteness, as well as politeness, were examined. In the meantime, the effect of those three factors above on the selecting impoliteness strategies or politeness strategies were also investigated. According to the results of the patterns of impoliteness strategies, learners were more inclined to use impoliteness strategies in private scenarios compared to those public scenarios, to hearers with equal or lower social status compared to those with higher social status, and to familiar hearers compared to those unfamiliar. In terms of the characteristics of impoliteness formulas, learners showed a high proportion of bald-on impoliteness strategies in all the 12 scenarios. Secondly, some of the learners failed to use honorifics in certain scenarios, damaging decencies of their hearers and even in being regarded as interlocutors with improper manners. Lastly, most of the learners neglected negative politeness, which is by no means less important that its positive counterpart.

The purpose of the study is two-fold: (a) to investigate L2 learners’ receptive and productive collocational knowledge concerning the learners’ lexical proficiency levels, and (b) to explore the degree of their productive collocational knowledge. A total of 358 Korean university students participated in this study and completed a Vocabulary Size Test, two receptive collocation tests, and one productive collocation test. The results revealed that there was significance among the scores of three collocation tests. It is also observed that receptive and productive collocational competence tends to increase as L2 learners’ vocabulary size develops. Regarding productive collocational knowledge gains, significant differences were found among collocation combinations but no interaction effect was found between combination types and vocabulary levels. The findings indicated that L2 learners need to be aware of the importance of learning collocational knowledge while teachers need to attempt to help them notice high-frequency collocations that regularly occur in various contexts.

Learner initiative and very young learner talk have not been fully investigated despite the growing recognition of their importance in English education. Therefore, the present study examined the sequential development of talk-in-interaction observed in an after-school English program in a Korean kindergarten classroom by investigating how children contributed their behaviors to class participation using the methodological framework of conversation analysis. Data was collected from one intact classroom interaction between a native teacher and 28 seven-year-old children. The analysis highlighted a noticeable interactional phenomenon, learner initiative, which was revealed through children’s turn position in the Initiation-Response-Follow-up (IRF) sequence. In particular, this study presented evidence that learner initiative could be displayed through learners’ self-selected turns: initiating repair of the teacher’s previous utterance, asking a question, and displaying knowledge of words. These findings were discussed in relation to the view of learners as active agents through the process of interaction and suggested pedagogical implications of very young learners’ classroom interaction.

This paper analyzes the Korean conjunctives –ko and –ese, and the Turkish converb –Ip, which have various meanings, and reveals their similarities and differences visually using the semantic map model. –ko and –ese are learned at the beginner level but Turkish learners have shown many errors. Those two Korean conjunctives express different temporal meanings, however, the corresponding Turkish converb expressed them in a single form. Korean textbooks have introduced the meanings of –ko and –ese as [sequential] and [continuous], but it can be made more confusing for learners by presenting the meaning using the same term. Therefore, it is necessary to teach the meanings of the two connectives in more detail according to their syntactic characteristics. Since most textbooks of Korean do not clearly present the differences between the –ko and –ese, effective teaching methods for Turkish-speaking learners based on the Focus-on-Form approach are proposed. To teach the conjunctives –ko and –ese, distinguishing between features of different meanings and to recognize those differences is encouraged.

Numerous studies have supported the simple view of reading by showing the significant predictive roles of oral language comprehension ability and decoding skills in the reading comprehension of monolinguals and second language learners. However, little is known about its applicability to young foreign language learners who do not have much access to the target language and literacy input outside the school and especially those whose first and second languages are typologically different. This study was designed to examine the contribution of English oral language comprehension ability and decoding skills to the reading comprehension of fifth-grade Korean EFL learners. In doing so, the indirect effects of oral language ability and phonological awareness were also considered, and English reading fluency and Korean reading comprehension abilities were controlled for. The findings not only support the simple view of reading but also highlight the indirect effects of oral language comprehension ability and phonological awareness on reading comprehension abilities via the effects of decoding skills.

The purpose of this study is to examine phonetically if the spelling errors produced by foreign Korean learners are related to learners’ pronunciation by analyzing the pronunciation of plain, tense, and aspiration sounds of foreign Korean learners using a Praat. A statistical analysis was performed on the listening, reading, and writing data produced by 18 foreign university students at the beginner level. The results are summarized as follows. First, foreign Korean learners accounted for the majority of errors in plain and aspiration sound among initial obstruent words. This can be interpreted as an extremely strong or very weak pronunciation of the word, because learners do not properly recognize the intensity of range in plain sounds. Second, the more accurate the learner’s perception was, the more accurate production can be made. Statistically, it was found that the production rate increased by 0.178 each time the perception rate increased by 1. Therefore, the correlation between perception and production is established. Third, the relationship between pronunciation and spelling is a relationship that increases by 0.652 each time the pronunciation increases by 1. It can be explained that there is a possibility that the learner may often write words as they pronounce them.

The study investigated how task types such as input or output could affect Korean EFL learners’ vocabulary learning at both short- and long-term periods after treatment. Forty two college students in Korea were randomly assigned to one of the four tasks. Based on Involvement Load Hypothesis, each task induced the same or different involvement loads: Read without glossary (Input), Gap with glossary (Input & Output), Gap without glossary (Input & Output), and Sentence and write (Output). Receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge was measured right after the treatment and a month later. The output-oriented tasks were found to be more effective than the input-oriented tasks regardless of type of vocabulary knowledge. The current study concluded that modalities such as input or output other than task-induced involvement load can contribute to Korean EFL learners’ vocabulary learning. The pedagogical discussion will be made at the conclusion.

This paper examined factors affecting Korean EFL learners’ word association types in their L2 mental lexicon. Specifically, vocabulary size of the learners was examined to see if it had any significant relationship with word association types. To this end, experiment procedures that included vocabulary size test and the lexical decision task as well as the word association task were conducted on 40 Korean EFL learners. Reaction time and accuracy of responding to word associations in the lexical decision task were measured. Subsequently, a correlation analysis was conducted with their vocabulary size. Additionally, learners’ word association types were analyzed based on the results of word association task. The results showed that Korean EFL learners’ vocabulary size had significant correlations with their accuracy in identifying syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations, but not in the phonological association. However, their accuracy was not correlated with reaction times. The results indicate that L2 learners’ mental lexicon is partially dependent on their vocabulary size of the target language, and it is variable depending on word association types.

The act of refusal takes place in everyday lives, but it has been discussed to be a difficult speech act for nonnative speakers. This study seeks to investigate Korean EFL learners’ refusals in extended discourse along with their pragmatic perceptions. Sixteen college students were engaged in oral role-plays with two native English speakers and instructed to refuse the interlocutor’s request. The refusal performances were analyzed using conversation analysis framework with respect to the interlocutors’ different powers and the learners’ proficiency levels. Learners also participated in retrospective verbal reports. Findings depict different verbal and nonverbal features illustrating learners’ sensitivity towards higher status and their different linguistic abilities. Furthermore, their verbal reports revealed that despite their pragmatic awareness, learners were not fully equipped with appropriate L2 pragmatic knowledge.

The purpose of this study is to present the contents of ‘Korean politeness’, which can be used to learn ‘Korean as a Second Language’, from the perspective of ‘conversational performance’. To this end, first, the concept of Korean politeness was examined in two elements: ‘sociocultural norm consciousness’ and ‘conversational strategy of individual speech act’. A conversational performance model of Korean politeness was also investigated as a educational unit of politeness contents. This performance model is composed of ‘adjacency pair’ and based of ‘common ground’ including honorific and speech act requirements. In order to construct educational politeness contents for KSL learner, conversational scenes of the revised KSL textbook, Standard Korean for Elementary Schoolchild were then analysed. In conclusion, politeness contents of KSL textbook were revealed in three aspects: ‘practice of using honorific style’, ‘politeness routines’, ‘politeness expressions and strategies’. Based on the results of the analysis, the direction of politeness education for KSL learners in elementary school was finally proposed in both ‘speech act’ and ‘conversation type’ pragmatic education.

The present study examines the usage patterns of stance that constructions in Korean EFL learners' written corpora by two different proficiency groups (KEFL 1, KEFL 2) to figure out some developmental features of marking stance in L2 academic prose. Focusing on three main categories (stance verbs, adjectives, and nouns) controlling stance that clauses, the study compares the frequency of each feature by the categories and their subcategories across the corpora. Employing both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study found a marked developmental path across the corpora as a cross-sectional study. Indeed, less proficient L2 learners tended to use spoken involvement features as ‘a subjective transmitter’, emphasizing the writer's view only with a private authorial voice. However, more advanced learners showed remarkable features as ‘an objective interpreter’ with more implicitly detached stances. Despite a few chunk expressions considered as being memorized, more complex grammatical resources appropriate for academic discourse were observed. Finally, as the final stage, this study suggests ‘a refined stance-taker’ referring to an expert writer in the academic discourse community, which may be devoid in untrained native speakers' writing. In accordance with the need for university students to transition into more advanced academic discourse sooner, this study provides some practical insights into teaching and learning of stance patterns in using that complement clauses in English academic discourse.

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 study explores how Korean English learners process English caused-motion constructions (CMC) through online and offline experiments. The focus was on how Korean learners’ processing of English CMC is affected by the typological difference between English and Korean. Of the 77 volunteer participants recruited, 17 were native English speakers and 60 were Korean EFL learners. The experiments included a sentence completion task (SCT) as an online experiment, and an acceptability jugment task (AJT) and a translation (correction) task as offline experiments. The results showed that in the SCT, the Korean learners showed difficulty in combining process and result events with intransitive manner verbs. In the AJT, they rarely accepted the CMCs with intransitive manner verbs, but easily accepted the ‘causative verb + byphrase’ structures with the same type of verbs. When the sentences were employed in the AJT were asked to be translated into Korean, the low-intermediate Korean learners were likely to drop the result meaning and interpret the preposition phrase as a locative rather than a goal. In sum, Korean learners showed similar patterns to native English speakers in processing path verbs and transitive manner verbs, but different pattern in processing intransitive manner verbs. These findings demonstrate that Korean learners' processing of English CMC is heavily influenced by their L1 when the construction accompanied intransitive manner verbs.

In argumentative writing, writers are expected to use hedged expressions and stance devices through specific linguistic expressions to convince their proposition effectively. Yet little research attention has been paid to whether the inclusion of such devices is related to the overall quality of second or foreign language learners’ argumentative writing. In this study, hedges and stance devices that are included in 28 advanced Korean EFL writers’ argumentative writing were analyzed to identify their potential relation to the overall writing quality. Analyses demonstrated that although hedges and stance devices were related to argumentative writing quality in general, the specific linguistic forms that predicted two different aspects of writing quality – formal and content quality – were different. Specifically, hedges played a significant positive role in only content quality of writing, and the specific stance devices that significantly predicted formal quality did not contribute to the content quality, and vice versa. The findings from this study provides important pedagogical implications for EFL writing instruction.

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 investigates individual verb differences in Korean learners‟ use of English non-alternating unaccusatives as well as the factors that influence various errors. Specifically, it focuses on the effects of L1 transfer and animacy of subjects on overpassivization errors. Concordance lines from a learner corpus consisting of 6,572 essays written by Korean college-level learners were analyzed to observe the syntactic distribution across ten non-alternating unaccusative verbs. The results revealed that overpassivization errors show disproportionate dispersion across the ten unaccusative verbs, and that Korean L1 influence is not a significant factor while inanimate subjects influence overpassivization. Furthermore, salient error patterns such as transitivization and overgenerated be were identified from the Korean learners‟ use of unaccusative verbs. This study proposes that some unaccusative verbs are more susceptible to overpassivization errors, and that Korean learners of English will benefit from being able to identify the factors contributing to errors for each unaccusative verb.

As research evidence for the facilitative effects of reading strategies on reading comprehension has been accumulating, research and pedagogical interests in prereading strategies such as prediction and schema activation are increasing. Yet, little research evidence of how actual performance on such tasks may be related to reading comprehension is sparse. This study explores whether prediction abilities and content schema are related to Korean middle school EFL learners’ reading comprehension abilities in English, and whether such potential relations may differ for factual and inferential comprehension. The study participants were one hundred thirty-seven Korean seventh grade students, and their performance on schema activation, prediction, and reading comprehension abilities was investigated, while controlling for their overall language proficiency and literacy skills. The findings indicated that although both prediction abilities and content schema facilitated reading comprehension, prediction abilities were a relatively stronger predictor of both factual and inferential comprehension. The results further suggest the need to provide effective trainings on pre-reading strategies.