This paper discusses diverse ways of improving college English education program based on previous studies. In particular, the discussion focuses on three issues: the goals of college English education program, the content of the program curriculum, and the implementation of the curriculum. The purpose of the paper is to assess the current state of Korean college English education, diagnose its problems and weaknesses, and suggest various measures for enhancing it. The importance of taking into special consideration the characteristics of the college and its students as well as the students’ own learning needs in designing any college English education program is underscored. Given that the curriculum of English education program is developed by each college rather than by the government, the information that this paper provides is expected to help colleges upgrade their English education program.

This study reports on an experimental study that investigates Korean EFL college students" acquisition of English verbs (such as break and change) that participate in the transitivity alternation. The experiment was devised specifically to examine how the distinction of the three types of transitivity alternation verbs - unaccusatives, middles, and passives (all with non-agent subject on the surface) - is revealed in the development of learners" interlanguage. A total of 80 college students were divided into two proficiency groups and asked to perform a production task and a grammatical judgment task on the target structures. The overall results show that the learners acquire passives earlier than unaccusatives and middles. The results also reveal that with increased proficiency, the learners perform better on all the target structures regardless of the task type. The results show, however, that even higher proficiency learners are not sensitive to lexico-syntactic properties associated with unaccusatives and middles. Another finding from the results is that the major type of the learners" interlanguage error is overpassivization of unaccusatives and middles, which confirms that Korean EFL learners, like learners with other L1 backgrounds, rely on a universal mechanism of subject―agent and object―patient/theme mapping.

This interview study aims at exploring how two Korean college graduates strive autonomously to manage their English world before, during and after college-graduation. The participants were two very autonomous students out of 34 students the researcher met at a 15-week autonomy-based English Speaking/Writing class at a college in 2003. Two major findings emerged from the interview data collected in April 2005: (1) B"s initial interest in English came from teachers" urgings to get good test scores, but his visit to America and Australia made him more interested in learning communicative English; (2) S"s interest in non-Korean people and countries, inspired by her first English teacher, made her go abroad and practice English very actively in and beyond Korea. The findings shed light on a critical issue concerning the application of the learner autonomy theory with Korean students who learn English in Korean educational contexts: the limit and effectiveness of classroom-English-learning. Pedagogical implications of the findings are added at the end.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a practical English program for college students which had been administered both on- and off-line. After over 1,400 freshmen took two TOEIC-based courses consecutively, questionnaires were administered to measure the students’ satisfaction of the program and their perceived usefulness of on-line learning. The effectiveness of the English program was measured through the improvement in the students’ TOEIC scores, their perceived usefulness of online learning, and their satisfaction with the program. The results showed a statistically significant increase in the students’ TOEIC scores in both semesters, with greater improvement in the second semester as compared to the first. Although the students’ overall perception of the usefulness of e-learning was in the middle on the scale, those who perceived online learning as useful were shown to have spent more time studying for the courses outside class, thereby improving their TOEIC scores and enhancing their level of satisfaction with the program. Pedagogical and research implications are suggested.

In the paper, the development of college English teaching and testing in China in the past two decades will be reviewed focusing on the promulgation and implementation of the National College English Teaching Syllabuses since the 1980s and the launch of the National College English Test (CET) in the late 1980s. The second part of the paper focuses on the achievements made and problems encountered in the development of college English teaching and testing. The English proficiency of college students in China will be presented by referring to the CET Syllabus. Examples of students’ performance in the CET will be given to illustrate their communicative competence. The imbalanced development of the English proficiency of college students across the country will also be discussed and possible explanations given for the discrepancy. The paper will then move on to a discussion on the impact of language testing on teaching with special reference to the washback of the CET on college English teaching in China. Both beneficial and detrimental effects of the CET on teaching and learning will be presented and the social consequences of the large-scale standardized test will be discussed in some detail. The paper ends with a brief introduction to the recent reform of the college English teaching and testing in China.

This paper presents the rationale behind a newly-developed and implemented college freshman program designed to improve writing skills and the outcomes after one year running. In line with the current teaching trend of colleges in Korea, this program has several features such as placing the freshmen into different levels based on their writing skills, running class focusing on writing skills and giving a S/U grade. Comparisons between a pre-writing test and two post-writing tests show that this program has contributed to increasing the students’ writing skills. The students’ responses to the questionnaire of the program also endorse the test results. A couple of pedagogical implications concerning EFL writing education are suggested.

Motivation is one of the main determinants in the success of attaining a foreign language. Accordingly, there has been a considerable amount of research on L2 motivation in the last three decades. These studies on L2 motivation, however, tend to depend heavily on quantitative approach rather than qualitative approach regardless of educational context. Although we have gained our knowledge on relationships among motivational factors, we do not have enough evidence to understand Korean learners’ L2 motivational ups and downs in a classroom foreign language learning. Suspending our current beliefs about L2 motivation, and investigating what facilitate, debilitate, and sustain learners’ motivation in a Korean classroom will provide us invaluable insights to understand the nature of L2 motivation. The purpose of this paper is to find out factors that is facilitating, debilitating, and maintaining learners’ motivation in an ESP classroom in a university. The participants were 115 university students enrolled in a business English class. The participants’ responses on the open-ended questionnaire were analyzed by the NUD*IST program (V.4.0). There seem to be some difference in facilitating, debilitating, sustaining motivations in learning English in classroom. Classroom implications are discussed in light of these findings.

The present study aims to design a web-based syllabus for teaching college English. The theoretical premises underlying the study are drawn from recent developments in relevant fields including web-based instruction, classroom observation and supervision, in-service teacher development, and program evaluation. The model is characterized by its learner-centeredness, teacher observation and supervision for professional development, and process-oriented program evaluation. Data for the program evaluation are gathered from various sources such as questionnaire responses, observation records, supervisory notes, teacher diary entries, and assessment. The information from the evaluation is then fed back to improve the course in a cyclical process. Through a small-scale application of the model some suggestions for its effective implementation are made in terms of institutional support, copyright, student autonomy, teacher roles, and e-learning course evaluation.