根據志願機構的統計數字，生活於香港的非華語家庭，大部份的經濟環境並不富裕。香港政府提供十二年免費教育（小一至中六），並不包括幼兒教育，因此幼兒教育的學費十分昂貴。香港的非華語家庭較難負擔年幼子女的幼稚園學費，故此過去較少非華語家庭送他們的年幼子女就讀幼稚園。近年，香港推行「幼稚園學劵制」，政府為幼兒就讀幼稚園提供學費津貼，於是愈來愈多非華語家長送他們的年幼子女到幼稚園學習中文。由於這些幼兒的母語並非中文，中文是他們的第二語言，因此他們的學習需要和困難都與本地學生不同；教師教導這些學生時遇到很多困難。本研究參考「綜合高效識字」課程，並按照非華語幼兒的學習需要和困難，為他們設計適合的中文識字課程、教材、教學法、評估等；是香港第一個大規模及有系統的非華語幼兒識字研究。參與本研究的幼稚園共有三間，參與人數約110人。本研究的課程設計，以幼兒常用的口語詞彙類別及頻率作為指標，安排教學主題的次序，並教導他們認識簡單的漢字結構。此外，教師透過運用不同的識字教學法，包括遊戲識字、部件識字、基本字帶字識字法、字根識字法、韻語識字、生活經驗識字、情境輔助識字法等，幫助幼兒有系統地學習漢字，提高他們對學習漢字的興趣，加強他們對漢字字形結構的感敏度，從而促進識字學與教的成效。此外，通過讓幼兒寫字和閱讀兒童故事，進一步鞏固和擴闊他們的識字量。本論文將報告是次研究的結果，並提出促進非華語幼兒識字的方法。

A continuing challenge for English educators and policy makers in Korea is how to provide the right amount of good English education in an effective and efficient way, to help achieve the needed level of English communication skills. No efforts would turn out successful if the amount and the quality of public English education did not meet people's expectations. In order to plan and implement successful English education policies, it is necessary to figure out what kind of English education and how much of it are needed for Korean people. The current study aims to investigate what levels of English speaking proficiency Korean people perceive they need. The study first reviews some widely-used international English oral proficiency standards, then, compares those with the level descriptions of the Korea’s national curriculum of English. To gather information on the current level of English speaking proficiency, and the expected level of English speaking proficiency, 356 teachers (123 elementary school, 114 middle school, 119 high school), 696 students (179 elementary school, 222 middle school, 295 high school), and 650 parents (164 elementary, 212 middle school, 274 high school) from all the 16 district education authorities, were surveyed and interviewed. The results are presented with the discussion of the future directions of English education in Korea.

This study investigates secondary school English teachers’ perceptions and psychological burdens involved in the implementation of the speaking and writing tests of the National English Ability Test, which is being developed by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The study surveyed 138 secondary school English teachers in Seoul. Although more than half of the teachers were aware of the new test, 18% of the surveyed teachers were not aware of the fact that speaking and writing skills would be assessed in the new test. Also, 22.7% of the teachers were opposed to the productive skills test. More than half (56.2%) of the teachers felt some psychological burdens toward the inclusion of the speaking/writing tests. Although the teachers admitted that serving as raters for the new test would help improve their teaching, the majority of them were reluctant to participate in the actual rating process. The teachers felt that the difficulty of subjective rating and the lack of time for the speaking and writing tests were serious problems in implementing the new test. The teachers were sensitive toward the students’ test anxiety. They also indicated that they feel a strong psychological burden when making judgments on the students' performances. Implications and suggestions are made based on the findings.

This study investigates the effects of shadowing, the oral repetition of what is said right after the language spoken, on L2 listening and speaking abilities of Korean middle school students. It also examines whether shadowing has a positive effect on students’ affective aspects in terms of self-confidence, preference, and perception. The experiment was conducted with 108 middle school students in Gwangju. The participants were divided into three groups, listening only, shadowing only, and listening plus shadowing, and received six weeks of treatment. The data collection consisted of the result of listening tests, speaking tests and questionnaires. The results showed that listening plus shadowing had a positive effect on L2 listening abilities compared to listening only techniques. The results also showed that there was no positive effect of shadowing on L2 speaking abilities. In addition, the results indicated that shadowing increased students’ self-confidence in using English, their shadowing preferences, and the positive perception about the efficacy of shadowing on English speaking skills improvement. This paper therefore argues that shadowing techniques need to be considered as an effective supplementary technique for practicing English listening skills in EFL middle school context.

This study aims to investigate the major themes and contents of studies on teaching English as an EFL in elementary schools in Korea since TEFLES (Teaching English as a Foreign Language in the Elementary School) was first introduced in elementary schools as a regular subject under the 7th National Curriculum in 1997. For the purpose of the study, a total of 218 research was examined in terms of the research methods, topics and main contents, and implications. The results of the study show that more than a half of the research was oriented toward quantitative approach. In addition, the main foci were the effects of certain tasks, pronunciation, dramatization, the use of a variety of multimedia materials on elementary school students" speaking skills. However, a large number of studies dealt with speaking skills in an integrated manner with other factors such as language skills, motivation, interests, and confidence. On the basis of the results, pedagogical implications on the teaching of speaking skills are suggested.

This study examines the effects of Korean EFL learners’ motivation and anxiety on their English speaking skills with a structural equation approach. The participants of the study are 193 college students enrolled in English conversation classes. The questionnaire on learning orientations, attitudes toward the community of native speakers of English, motivational intensity, class satisfaction and anxiety are given to the college students and their English speaking skills are assessed in terms of IATEFL’s criteria: Range, ease of speech, attitude, delivery, and interaction. Reliability and factor analysis are employed to confirm the internal consistency of questionnaire items and the validity of construct, and a structural equation model is run to examine the relation of Korean EFL learners’ affective aspects to their English speaking skills. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) while Korean learners’ attitudes toward native speakers of English and their community do not contribute to their desire to learn English, their learning orientations are found to affect their desire to learn English. (2) class satisfaction and desire to learn English are found to affect learners’ efforts to learn English, while anxiety is found to negatively contribute to leaners’ motivation intensity. (3) both integrative orientation and anxiety have direct effects on English speaking skills, integrative orientation affirmatively but anxiety negatively. Based on the findings, some suggestions are given for effective second language learning and teaching.

Face-to-face interview format has been widely used to elicit English language samples in oral proficiency testing. It is desirable to replicate target language use situations in oral testing, and the direct testing format is believed to assess more authentic and interactive language abilities. However, it has been argued that speech samples from unstructured face-to-face interviews are quite different from those in natural communication settings. The purpose of this study was to understand the construct to be assessed through an unstructured face-to-face interview, which was adopted to an English speaking contest. Data from the English speaking contest were analyzed in terms of how they were different from the characteristics of naturally occurring conversations. It was found that the test construct in the English speaking contest did not reflect the features of natural conversation specifically in the areas of turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and topic nomination due to asymmetrical power relations between interviewer and interviewees. Therefore, it was suggested that we need to incorporate diverse discourse-based approaches into current speaking skill assessments, which can interpret spoken language data in many ways.

Although interactionists’ input, interaction, and output hypotheses offer a clear picture of what goes on in one's language learning product as well as in one's process, they fail to explain why interaction is not possible or even desirable for certain groups of learners. To explore negative factors which hamper selected Korean learners' oral interaction processes (N=14) in-and-out of class, a one-year ethnographic study was conducted with different methods (interviews, observations, and social network analysis) and multiple sources of data. Participants strongly voiced the importance of interpersonal relationships among students, between the students and the instructor, and their effect on second language learning. The results of this study indicate that both institutional and social contexts impact learning far more greatly than the choice of teaching method, material, or techniques. This result contradicts the popular belief that learners are ready to learn once the educational environment is optimalized. This study is significant in that it raises the importance of understanding the students' group dynamics that originate in their own culture. Based upon the findings of this study, coping strategies for interactional barriers are provided for the future Intensive English Programs (IEP) for students and teachers.

Even though performance-based language tests are often multivariate by design, previous validation studies have analyzed the dependability of ratings of such tests within univariate analytic frameworks. In an attempt to address this limitation, the present study investigated the dependability of judgements made based on ratings of a German speaking test using a multivariate generalizabilitiy theory (MGT) analysis. Data obtained from 88 students were analyzed in G- and D-studies of a two-facet crossed design. A D-study with two raters and two tasks supported the high dependability of the ratings and the placement decisions made at the pre-determined cut scores. An optimization analysis of the measurement procedure suggested that the desired level of dependability of ratings has already been achieved by the use of two raters and two tasks. The MGT analysis also generated other useful information about the convergent/ discriminant validity of the five subscales. Specifically, the universe score variance-covariance matrix obtained from the D-study showed that the underlying subscales were interrelated but distinct. Furthermore, the analysis of effective weights of the scales revealed that the Grammar subscale played the dominant role in the composite universe score variance.