The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using movies in an English reading course at the college level. In order to achieve this purpose, the following questions were constructed; 1) How have reading activities through movies affected Korean college students’ reading achievement?, 2) How have those activities affected the students’ attitudes toward English study?, and 3) How have the students responded this movie-used reading class affectively? Thirty two college students participated, and a paired t-test was conducted to compare two observations, before- and after- scores on the students’ reading achievement and their attitudes toward English study. The results of data analysis showed that statistically significant differences were found between pre- and post-reading achievement tests, and those reading activities through movies positively affected students’ interest and confidence in English reading. Also, this quantitative result has been verified by qualitative data such as students’ reflective journals and in-depth interviews with students, that added credibility to the statistical findings. Therefore, this study suggests that using movies in the classroom attract students’ attention, and provide language learners with live language. Pedagogical implications are also made on the effective teaching of English reading in Korean classroom settings.

In this article, we have examined the studies on the reading competence in the context of French as a foreign language. The goal of this study originated from the observation that the pedagogy in Korea focuses on the linguistic and socio-cultural competences of learners. However, this teaching method would not adequately enable learners to read efficiently, nor to become autonomous readers in French. In order to better understand the reading competence, we have proposed to consider the text in which reading activities take place as a semiotic and linguistic object and as a discourse. We have adopted the "l'ordre du scriptural" and the "l'aire scripturale" according to the theory of J. Peytard. From this perspective, we have examined a text used in the reading comprehension part of DELF, level B1. Our study indicates that reading activity is the communication between the writer and the reader, and requires the reading competence, which the communicative competence of which all components also involved. Thus, we have proposed that it is necessary to teach reading in terms of characteristics of the text which concerns the "l'ordre du scriptural" according to M. Dabène.

This study aims at investigating Korean high school students’ reading and writing relations in English with a focus on analysis of effects of reading journal writing which integrates reading and writing. Three groups (reading, writing, reading journal writing) had different treatments for 8 weeks. The results revealed that the reading journal writing group had the highest post-test writing scores compared with the two other groups. This group’s scores were statistically significant different from the reading group’s. The same results were also found in the higher-level group. As for the lower-level group, however, the scores of the writing group were highest. These results support the bidirectional hypothesis with a special emphasis on the interaction of reading and writing. The higher-level and the lower-level reading journal writing group had the highest post-test reading scores; however, no statistical significance was noted among the three groups. The results of the reading test do not seem to be clearly related to any hypothesis of reading-writing relations. The results of the questionnaire survey and interview and of the analysis of reading journal suggest that effects of reading journal writing can vary with reading texts and learners’ language proficiency level.

This study investigates the effects of different vocabulary teaching methods on low- level learners`vocabulary and reading achievement in the high school English classroom. The experiment was administered for two months on three homogeneous groups, each of which was taught vocabulary using the definition-based, the pictionary-based, and the context-based methods, respectively. Additionally, a higher proficiency group was also taught in the context method to see how different proficiency responds to the context method. The post-test results showed that the pictionary group performed the best on the vocabulary test with a significant difference from the context group. The pictionary group and the definition group increased in their reading scores while those of the two context groups remained the same. The vocabulary and reading proficiency difference that existed between the two context groups disappeared after the experiment. The results of the study emphasized the benefits of the pictionary method in teaching voca- bulary to low level students and indicate that implicit instruction of vocabulary using contextual cues and inference may not have pedagogical effects on low-level high school students and that it may even affect their vocabulary acquisition negatively.