The study investigated whether Korean EFL students' vocabulary used in reading-based writing differed according to writing topic and their reading and writing proficiency. College students enrolled in writing courses (n=95) were asked to write argumentative essays in response to two readings on judging people by appearance (JPA) and disclosing personal information of serious criminals (DPI). These students were divided into high and low proficiency writer groups and into high and low proficiency reader groups according to their writing and reading scores respectively. The students' vocabulary used in writing was then analyzed by VocabProfile, which provided four lexical frequency lists: the first 1000 frequent words (K1) including function words (FW) and content words (CW), the second 1000 frequent words (K2), academic word list (AWL), and off the list words (OLW). The results indicated that the topic JPA produced a higher proportion of K1 and content words, whereas DPI generated more K2 and off the list words. None of the vocabulary profiles, however, significantly differed according to the students’ reading proficiency. In contrast, proficient writers were found to use significantly more K1 and function words than their counterparts. With the topic effect further considered, for JPA, proficient writers used more K1 words and function words whereas less proficient writers used more K2 and off the list words. With regard to DPl, proficient writers were found to use more function words than low proficient writers. Findings are discussed in more detail, along with implications.

This study investigated whether the simple view of reading framework is supported among Upper elementary Korean EFL learners. Specifically, the relative contributive power of two emergent literacy factors, word decoding and linguistic comprehension abilities, which have been identified as the main determinants of successful reading comprehension, was examined. Ninety nine fifth grade students in Korean elementary school participated in this research, and their decoding skills, listening comprehension abilities, and reading comprehension in English were measured. The findings revealed that both English decoding skills and linguistic comprehension ability were significant predictors of their English reading comprehension, which supports the simple view of reading within the Korean EFL context. Specifically, decoding skill explained more of the variance, compared to linguistic comprehension, in reading comprehension when controlling for each other. The result is discussed in terms of the overall development of L2 proficiency and the role of L2 exposure in L2 reading comprehension development.

This paper replicates the sorting task conducted on Bencini and Goldberg (2000) to examine whether Korean learners of English only concentrate on the meaning of verbs or they also pay attention to constructional meanings in English sentence processing. The results were broadly consistent with the original study―Korean learners of English were able to recognize the existence of English argument structure constructions and utilize the configurations in sentence interpretation. However, the experiment detected discrepancy in learners' understanding constructions according to the types. Language learners generally have a sense of English argument structure constructions and try to make full use of the representations, but their cognitive ability has not been sufficiently trained to access the internal relation among the constructions. Consequently, the learners feel difficulty in interpreting other types of argument structure constructions except transitive constructions and they tend to stick to the representations. Constructionists regard argument structure constructions as impetus and facilitator in language acquisition. Based on the perspective, the materials and the instructions provided to language learners need to be developed in a way that promotes the learners' access to the characteristics of English argument structure constructions.

This study investigates the interpretation of scopally ambiguous sentences involving a universally quantified direct object NP and negation (e.g., The boy didn’t eat every cookie) from a processing perspective. Using an online truth-value judgment task implemented with a self-paced reading technique, data were collected from native Korean speakers, native English speakers, and Korean L2 learners of English. The results indicate that native Korean speakers strongly preferred the full set interpretation (every > not). In contrast, native English speakers strongly preferred the partitioned set interpretation (not > every). L2 learners showed a developmental divergence according to the learners’ L2 proficiency; the low proficiency group showed a strong preference for the full set interpretation, whereas the advanced L2 learners showed no preference for either of the patterns. The main findings were examined within the framework outlined by O’Grady (2005), who proposes that the nature and acquisition of scopal contrasts are best understood with reference to the operation of an efficiency-based processor.

This study investigates the effects of the types of tasks and feedback on Korean adult EFL learners' fluency, accuracy, and complexity. A qualitative approach was also added to determine the perceptions that learners and teachers have about task-based instruction (TBI) and feedback types with learning journals, interviews, and stimulated recall. Although the experiment had the limitations of a small size of subjects and short length, certain findings are worth noticing. For both levels of group learners (lower intermediate and higher intermediate), fluency was highest in the descriptive tasks receiving implicit feedback. For accuracy, the rate was highest when both groups performed descriptive tasks receiving explicit feedback. For complexity, only higher intermediate level learners showed substantially higher rates in narrative tasks with explicit feedback. Planning time and the freedom to choose the topic (picture to describe) presumably might have affected fluency and accuracy in descriptive tasks. Accuracy was found to have been more affected by explicit feedback that primarily provided corrections on morphosyntactic errors. In addition, the qualitative research on the perceptions that L2 learners and teacher had about their experience with TBI and feedback provides insightful perspectives that are hoped to contribute to designing more effective TBI and interactional corrective feedback. (201)

This paper investigates the role of L2 learner beliefs in study-abroad (SA) contexts. To date, the research of learner beliefs has relied mostly on survey methods, missing qualitative, critical evaluation reflecting the learners’ voice. 8y adopting multiple qualitative research methods, idiosyncratic SA experience and learners' perception of it are reported by analyzing the data of two Korean college students experiencing changes in L2 learning beliefs and L2 proficiency before and after the SA. The data were collected through language learning autobiographies, semi-structured interviews, and stimulated recall tasks by using photos uploaded to the learners' personal web blogs. The findings show that 1) changes in L2 learning beliefs are related to thedegree of legitimate peripheral participation in SA contexts and 2) L2 learners' mode of belonging to the SA community is a useful conceptual framework for explaining their L2 learning beliefs and their sense of success in SA experience. The results suggest that the crucial factor for successful SA L2 learning may not be L2-rich contexts per se but be the learners' recognition of and appreciation for L2 participation.

This study examines the patterns of prosodically induced variation in the English stop contrast produced by Korean learners of English. The acoustic realization of the laryngeal contrast in English stops is observed in utterance-initial, -medial, and –final positions either with or without contrastive focal accent. The speech data in English collected from 4 adult male Korean speakers are compared with the result of a previous study by 6 adult male speakers native in American English (Choi, 2005). Overall, statistical results show that Korean adult speakers do not specify variation conditioned by focus and position. Focus-induced acoustic variation in the stops, observed in the speech by native speakers of English, is not significantly replicated in the speech of the Korean learners in the present study. Additional difference in using the acoustic correlates to mark the contrast is detected in the Korean adult speakers. It suggests the adult learners have problem in specifying the postlexical prosodic structure and segmental variations, and thus, rather active instruction of the phrasal prosody is also needed in educational settings.

The present study reports the findings of a study that analyzed the use of formulaic sequences in an NNS corpus (i.e., EFL teaching demonstration data) and an NS corpus (i.e., MICASE data). In order to investigate the structural and functional aspects of formulaic expressions in English, the most frequent 4-word formulaic expressions were identified and classified both structurally and functionally. The result of the analysis demonstrates Korean EFL learners’ overuse of the formulaic sequences. In other words, the repeated use of the formulaic sequences resulted in the high frequency of formulaic sequences in the learners’ data. The analysis of formulaic sequences by the structural subcategories shows the high frequency of the clausal expressions, which is one of the major characteristics of spoken discourse. The present study also reports the results of the functional analysis of the formulaic sequences, which indicate that both native speakers and learners mainly employed formulaic sequences to express epistemic and modality stance.

The present study investigates attitudes, opinions, or characteristics of a group of heritage language learners of Korean in terms of teacher's language use in the US university foreign language classroom compared to those of non-heritage language learners. Data were collected through direct, first-hand observations, students' self-reports and questionnaires. Looking at the process of learning a foreign language, this study considers how foreign language teachers can address the complex histories of language learners by drawing on a qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of a foreign language class. The results of this study reveal that there were indeed no inter-language group (between heritage and non-heritage learners) differences in the perceptions of teacher's language use in the classroom. Both heritage and non-heritage learner groups have quite strong reactions to the teacher's use of L2 for the purposes of giving instructions, evaluating/commenting their oral performances, and building relationships. During the learners' reaction component of the study, most learners indicated that students' ability in the L2 most consistently affected the amount of L2 that teachers could use.

Despite the advantages of the shadowing method in language learning, there has been little research on the use of the method in Japanese language education. Therefore, the current study investigated the effectiveness of shadowing for the pronunciation and listening skills of Korean learners of Japanese. The study was conducted with the beginner and intermediate learners of Japanese in a college in the second half of the academic year (September to November, 2007). The results indicate an　improvement of the listening skills for 80% of the students (20 students). Furthermore, the false using of the pronunciation in 7 categories disappeared. The study suggests implications for the adequate application for Japanese education in Korean universities.