This paper investigates Korean EFL students’ learning (de)motivation factors according to the level of students’ English learning motivation. A total of 41 undergraduate students reflected on their past ten years of English learning experiences and submitted autobiographic essays with ‘motigraph,’ marking their annual changes of English learning motivation from 0 to 10. The data were analyzed with Grounded Theory. The findings revealed that the factors that increased or decreased English learning motivation were different according to students’ level of motivation. Students with low-level motivation were influenced by their teacher or parents, while those with high-level motivation were influenced by their past L2 learning experiences perceived positively by themselves. In both groups, the factors of emotional experiences caused by negative L2 learning experiences were the main reasons for demotivation. This paper emphasizes the importance of subjective appraisal in maintaining students’ L2 learning motivation and recovering from the state of demotivation.

An, Soyoung. 2018. “An Analysis of University Students' English-Learning Motivation Change through Portfolio Assessment”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(1). 251~275. This study aims to analyze university students' English-learning motivation through making a learning portfolio. I conducted an experiment to know whether motivation could be changed by different assessment systems, a result-oriented assessment and a process-oriented assessment. First, there were no statistically significant differences in English-learning motivation between the two groups subject to a result-oriented assessment and a process-oriented assessment by independent T-test. Second, the variable “attitudes toward learning English” significantly changed when students created a learning portfolio by paired T-test. Students showed their preferences for studying English through an authentic learning portfolio method. Therefore, even though the new assessment system such as a portfolio assessment brings us innovation, the assessment system had a partial impact on students' English-learning motivation.

The purposes of this study are to examine the effects of the speech-analysis software on Korean college students' pronunciation improvement, and to find out ways to enhance the efficiency of computer-based visual feedback in the teaching of English pronunciation. The participants of the study are 89 English-major college students who are required and expected to have native-like pronunciation. A total of 178 recorded pronunciation data of pre-and post-tests were analyzed in terms of consonants, tense/lax vowels, consonant clusters, and phonological changes. The major findings of the study are as follows: First, the use of speech-analysis software was effective in improving the students' pronunciation. Second, the use of speech-analysis software was more effective at the discourse-level than at the word-in-isolation or sentence levels. In addition, it was more effective to students with low level pronunciation proficiency than those with high level proficiency. Third, the use of speech-analysis software was the most effective in training word-initial [h]-deletion of function words at the sentence level. Fourth, the participants responded that the visual feedback of speech-analysis program was useful in self-monitoring and self-correcting their pronunciation errors. Based on these findings, some pedagogical suggestions are made with respect to the didactic use of speech-analysis software in the teaching of English pronunciation.

This article reports on research into self-directed English leaning of Korean university students, focusing on their motivation and metacognition. In general, university students in Korea undertake independent learning to improve their English competence outside the classroom, rather than relying on English courses provided by their universities. Although much of their English learning is self-directed, little has been known about how they carry out their out-of-class English learning. To obtain a better understanding of their self-directed learning, this study, employing a qualitative approach, analyzed reflective journals written by 25 university students during one semester. From the analysis, students’ motivation and metacognition emerged as important themes involved in the students’ self-directed learning. The findings of this study suggest that student motivation continuously ebbs and flows as a result of its complex interrelationship with contextual factors. In addition, it was found that students’ metacognitive knowledge played a crucial role in directing their out-of-class learning as students adopted learning strategies based on their metacognitive knowledge, which was again formed and revised in the course of their learning process. Finally, this article presents suggestions for promoting students’ self-directed English learning.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a university English conversation program which had employed on-line homework and outside-class interviews with native English instructors. After over 1,200 sophomores took the conversation course for a semester, questionnaires were administered to measure the students' satisfaction for the program and their perceived usefulness and effectiveness of the in- and outside-class activities. The results showed: first, students perceived the in-class lessons and outside-class interviews with the native English instructors as useful, but not the on-line conversation practice; secondly, the students' perceived usefulness, affective effects, and content evaluation of each activity were shown to have significant effects on their perceived effectiveness of the outside-class activities. Lastly, significant differences were not found by the different groups of proficiency level in their perceptions of the usefulness, affective effects, and content evaluation of the outside-class activities. However, different proficient groups showed different amount of study efforts and preference for activities.

This paper examines whether Korean students learning English are familiar with gender-neutral language. A total of 149 first-year university students were asked to choose the words they would use when speaking or writing English. The questions in the questionnaire consist of two types: Type I asked the students to arrange the given two words (e.g., gentlemen, ladies; boys, girls) in the parallel-pair form conjoined by and; Type II asked the students to choose one of the two words or phrases (e.g., policeman, police officer; anchorman, anchor). Of the eight parallel pairs in Type I, four were chosen where the word order of Korean and English is reversed (e.g., ladies and gentlemen) and the other four pairs have the same order (e.g., boys and girls) in both Korean and English. The students did better with the same order pairs than with the reversed order pairs with the exception of ladies and gentlemen. Of the nine pairs in Type II, a majority of both female and male students picked five gender-neutral words: anchor, firefighter, mail carrier, police officer and flight attendant. The four gender-specific words they preferred were chairman, salesman, freshman and actress.

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 is to examine the effects of English oral presentation strategy training (OPST) in EFL contexts. For this study, eight university students of 4 high and 4 low proficiency level are selected. The participants were provided with an OPST over 5 weeks including 8 times of training. During the OPST, the participants learned 25 strategy, 17 verbal and 8 non-verbal strategies. The verbal strategies were again divided into two parts: general verbal strategies and genre specific strategies. For the validity of the present study a “triangulation” was achieved through the use of video recording, classroom observation, questionnaire, in-depth interview, and the native English speaker’s evaluation. The results of the study demonstrated that the participants showed some improvement in the use of presentation strategies, especially organizational and verbal components of the strategies rather than nonlinguistic components. The proficiency level of the participants had an effect on the frequency of use of strategies after the OPST. Overall, the OPST was found to have positive effects on the participants’ attitude toward English oral presentations. On the basis of the results of the study, some teaching implications for improving presentation skills in university EAP contexts are provided.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of using and authoring web-based vocabulary learning tasks on Korean EFL learners' vocabulary acquisition. The subjects of the study were seventy-seven EFL college students in Korea. They were divided into three groups: a traditional control group, and two experimental groups using and authoring the web-based vocabulary tasks, respectively. The major results of the study were as follows: first, the two experimental groups performed significantly better on the vocabulary recognition and use posttest than the control group did. This result indicates that both the use of the web-based tasks and the participation of students in authoring the web-based tasks are more effective in vocabulary acquisition than the use of traditional vocabulary learning methods. Second, both the experimental groups performed significantly better on the delayed posttest than the control group did. This result provides evidence that using and authoring web-based vocabulary tasks are effective in helping students retain newly acquired words in the long-term memory. Third, the learners' responses of the two experimental groups prove to be positive with respect to the use of the web-based task authoring tools in vocabulary learning. Based on these results, some pedagogical suggestions should be made on the effective use of the web-based task authoring tools in Korean English classroom settings.

For a new direction of college English programs, this study is designed to analyze Korean university EFL leamer needs. With this goal, this study discusses the results of questionnaires provided for 405 students in the College of Education, Seoul National University. The study also discusses a new direction of desirable English programs on the basis of the needs assessment.

Eye-tracking approach allows us to collect and analyze data for a wide range of measures of eye-movements, to relate these to language processing, and to have insight of language processing (Conklin, Pellicer-Sánchez, and Carrol, 2018). The current study aims to investigate how ESL university students process the sentences with complex noun phrases modified by relative clauses. Two types of sentences with complex noun phrases were examined: complex noun phrases modified by relative clauses located in a sentence subject (syntactic-based processing) and those located in a sentence object (semantic-based processing). In total, 32 EFL university students participated in this study. Fixation count, regression rate, first reading time, and total reading time of areas of interest were examined. The eye-tracking results showed that the participants showed significantly higher regression rates on noun 2 than noun 1 in both types of complex noun phrases. In terms of verb selection, however, the results showed contrasting aspects : noun 1(verb 1 selection) preference in syntactic-based processing whereas noun 2(verb 2 selection) preference in semantic-based processing,

Working memory is defined as the mechanisms or processes that allow humans to store information in the face of interference such as processing other information during sentence processing. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between working memory capacity and PBL task performance with EFL university students. Forty university students participated in this study and they were divided into two groups according to working memory scores (higher and lower groups). Reading span test has been implemented for working memory task. PBL tasks consist of word, phrase, sentence, and explanation levels. The results show that WM capacity is significantly related to the PBL task performance. The correlation analysis of WM scores(storage and processing) and PBL task performance showed different tendency in WM higher and lower groups according to the task types.

This study investigated Korean university learners' perception of native English speaking teachers(NESTs) and non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in the University English for academic purpose. Questionnaire survey and interview data collection were implemented. For the questionnaire survey, 118 students participated for NEST courses and 127 for NNEST courses. Among them 10 students(5 from NEST, 5 from NNEST) were interviewed to consolidate the data. The results revealed that students perceived more positively in the English speaking courses by NEST with regard to improving their listening and speaking ability, NESTs' teaching attitude which intrigued students to participate in the class, trying to ask questions in class, and keeping their tense during the class with English language code. However, students in NNEST courses felt less anxiety, used more L1 in group work, and tended to ask questions later the class in Korean than in NEST course. Students in NNEST courses perceived positively about L1 use as long as it is controlled. These findings are valuable implications for NNESts to manage their EAP courses effectively.