In this study, the continuity of reading passages from high school mock College Scholastic Ability Test (CAST) English exams across grade levels was investigated using Coh-Metrix. A corpus consisting of 525 reading passages, evenly distributed with 175 passages from each high school grade level, was compiled from the 2017-2023 mock CSAT English exams administered by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. Coh- Metrix measures included basic counts, word frequencies, word features, lexical diversity, personal pronouns, connectives, standard readability, syntactic complexity, coreference, and semantic cohesion indices. The analysis revealed significant differences among grade levels in the reading passages of the mock CSAT English exams in measures such as word counts, average word and sentence length, nouns, age of acquisition, second person pronouns, standard readability, and subject density indices. These findings highlight the potential for refining the design and construction of reading passages in mock CSAT exams to better prepare students for the linguistic challenges presented in the actual high-stakes CSAT.

본 연구에서는 BTS의 노래가사 언어 코드 비율 변화와 트위터 내 팬 덤 아미(ARMY)의 메타언어적 코멘트를 통해 BTS 현상에서의 언어 이 데올로기를 탐구하였다. 분석대상은 2013년부터 2022년까지 BTS의 앨 범에 포함된 121곡의 노래이다. 연구결과, 영어 코드 선택 비율은 꾸준 히 증가하여 2013년 21.2%에서 2022년에는 57.5%까지 상승하였으며, 반면에 한국어 코드 선택 비율은 2013년 78.8 %에서 점차 하락하여 42.5%로 감소하는 양상을 확인했다. 또한 트위터에 나타난 팬들의 메타 언어 코멘트를 분석한 결과, 언어 민족주의적 순수주의의 태도와 반-언 어 민족주의적 순수주의의 태도가 대립하는 형태를 관찰하였다. 언어 민 족주의적 순수주의의 태도를 가진 팬들은 한국어 사용을 한국적 정체성 의 실현으로 연결 짓고, 영어 코드의 증가를 우려하는 경향을 보였다. 한 편, 반-언어 민족주의적 순수주의의 태도를 가진 팬들은 BTS의 언어 코 드 선택과 정체성의 연결을 지양하며, 언어 코드 선택에 대한 비판에 저항하는 모습을 보였다. 이러한 연구결과를 바탕으로 BTS는 적절한 언 어 코드를 사용하여 글로벌 팬들과 소통함으로써 다양성과 포용성을 장 려하고, 팬덤 "아미"는 언어 선택 행위에 대한 이해와 존중을 확대함으로 써 언어 이데올로기에 대한 인식을 높일 수 있는 방안을 제공하였다는 점에서 의의가 있다.

This study investigates the effect of the DDL (Data-Driven Learning) approach on the English sentence writing ability of 6th graders in elementary school. To this end, a total of seven English textbooks were used to build a corpus. Five teachers were then asked to conduct five lessons using a weak version of DDL in their 6-grade EFL classrooms. Students were asked to complete a pre- and post-test and a pre- and post-survey, and a selected number of students and four of the five teachers had in-depth interviews with the researcher. The results are as follows: First, DDL using the textbook corpus was found to be adequate for helping elementary students improve their sentence-writing ability. Second, DDL had a significant effect on upper, middle, and lower level groups of students. Third, the students felt that DDL was neither unfamiliar nor difficult. Fourth, teachers with little teaching experience found it easy to conduct their classes using the DDL approach. This study implies that DDL is an effective approach to teaching communicative functions and language forms in the elementary English classroom and can be useful for all levels of elementary students.

This study explored if and to what extent foreign language high school students would benefit from participating in a school English drama contest in terms of English proficiency, affective attitudes, and collaborative competence. For this purpose, questionnaires were constructed to measure students’ perception of their growth in those areas after participating in the contest. Pre- and post-questionnaires were administered to 85 students, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 of the survey respondents. In a comparison of the pre- and post-test measures, the study found that the drama contest contributed to reducing students’ anxiety and enhancing their intrinsic motivation. Although pre- and post-test differences in language proficiency and collaborative competence were found to be non-significant, the participants addressed positive aspects of their experience in the contest. For example, they reported that they improved their pronunciation, speaking, and writing skills and that they collaborated and learned from one another by sharing ideas, providing feedback, and exchanging opinions.

This study attempts to examine the distributions and characteristics of language forms and learning activities necessary for communication used in the middle school textbooks based on the 2015 revised national curriculum. To this end, 12 textbooks were analyzed and compared by grades and 4 textbooks by different publishers. The results are as follows: 1) Of the 38 language forms required for communication in middle school textbooks, 23 forms were commonly addressed in all the textbooks, while 12 forms were optional or missing, which may cause problems in articulated learning. 2) Even in the same language form, the level of difficulty increases as the grade goes up, which follows spiral curriculum. 3) Some language forms were omitted in the list presented in the 2015 revised curriculum, where only examples were presented without explanation. Explicit explanations need adding with elaborately classified examples. 4) Although the activities in the textbooks focus more on language acquisition than language use, they are well-organized to practice core language forms focusing on meaning in a controlled manner and gradually apply them to real life situations.

Based on the multilingual perspective that emphasizes that non-native variants of English need to be recognized as having values equivalent to the native speakers’ English, this study aimed at discovering elementary school teachers’ perceptions and beliefs of native-speakerism, multilingualism, and monolingualism in English education, and the contradictions and questions they had as they reflected on the language ideologies. Nine elementary teachers participated in the study, and two written reflections on language ideologies and two follow-up group interviews were used as the data source. The findings were as follows. First, the teachers confirmed, consolidated, or realized how native speakerism and monolingualism were deeply rooted in English teaching and learning. However, they showed that they had agency in their own teaching, and also showed changes in their perception through reflecting on their experiences. Last, the teachers had questions and contradictions about implementing a multilingual approach in teaching English, which provides the issues and challenges to be solved for the transformation of English education in the multilingual world. This study has implications for primary English education.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of using films on students’ reading comprehension and attitude toward their English study in the context of a college English class. Specifically, it attempted to examine how a film-based English reading class affected students’ reading comprehension and attitudes toward their study, and how they recognized the film-based English reading class. Thirty-one college students were asked to take pre- and post-tests in English reading, and to respond pre- and post-questionnaires regarding their affective domain, and a focus group of four students was voluntarily interviewed with one of two researchers. Quantitatively, a paired t-test was employed to compare the statistical means from those two samples, and qualitatively, the framework developed by Miles and Huberman (1994) was adopted to describe the major phases of data analysis. The results of data analysis indicated that 1) Using films in the college English reading was helpful for students to comprehend the given text, and to understand other cultures; 2) Also this film-based reading class optimally contributed to the affective domain such as students’ attitudes, interests, and confidence levels. Based on these results, pedagogical implications for effective English reading classes were suggested.

The benefit of language play for language learning is not recognized in English education. Based on the idea that teachers’ perception of teaching and learning affects their teaching practices, this study sought to examine teachers’ perception of language play in the English classroom. The specific purposes of the study were to discover commonalities and differences in elementary teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ perception of language play and to provide suggestions for including language play in teacher education and classroom instruction. Separate group interviews were conducted with 7 in-service and 9 pre-service teachers at the elementary level, in which the participants shared their responses to 3 language play texts that highlight rhyme, rhythm, and nonsense compound words. The topical analysis of the data revealed that both the teachers and pre-service teachers focused on understanding the words in the texts and did not recognize their playful aspects. However, the in-service teachers interpreted the texts more actively than the pre-service teachers and shared ideas for using language play texts in the English classroom. Based on the findings, the paper emphasizes that pre-service English teacher education needs to include language play as one of curricular contents, which should continue into teacher education.

This study is to investigate the correlation between language aptitude and vocabulary levels of 5th graders of a Korean elementary school. The participants of the study were 39 elementary school students in Daejeon Metropolitan City. Language aptitude was elicited using LLAMA B, D, E and F classified respectively into memory retention, sound recognition, sound-symbol correspondence, and inference and application. A vocabulary size test modified from the vocabulary size test (Nation, 1990) was injected to the students to investigate their vocabulary levels. A correlation between each LLAMA score and vocabulary size of students was tabulated for their correlationship along with their statistical significance of 95% probability rate. The findings are: Positive correlations were found between each language aptitude ability and vocabulary ability. Among them, the correlation between memory retention and vocabulary ability is only statistically significant. This finding implicates that memory retention is an important factor to learn and retain new words, and learning vocabulary with pictures is recommended to reinforce the connection between meanings and forms of new words.

This study aims to investigate the effect of DDL on English lexico-grammar learning by Korean middle school students with respect to the types of learning approach (deductive vs. inductive DDL), the student’s level of English (low vs. high level), and the complexity of lexico-grammar items (simple vs. complex). A total of five experimental lessons were given to 36 students divided into two groups: one group received the lessons through the deductive DDL approach and the other group through the inductive DDL approach. The study found that both inductive and deductive DDL were effective in the learning of English lexico-grammar by the Korean middle school students. However, deductive DDL was more effective for the high level students, while inductive DDL was more appropriate for low level students. In addition, both deductive and inductive DDL were effective for teaching simple lexico-grammar items, but deductive DDL was more effective for teaching complex ones. Most of the participants showed positive responses about DDL and expressed a view that they were able to learn the meanings as well as the forms of target lexico-grammar items.

This study mainly explores the research themes and topics of corpus-based studies published in English Teaching in an attempt to provide future directions and pedagogical implications in this research domain. For the purposes of the study, a total of 42 corpus-based research articles published in English Teaching were reviewed and analyzed in terms of research topics, methodology, and characteristics of the corpora employed in the studies. The thematic and topical analysis of the corpus-based studies showed that much research, i.e., 64%, has focused on the analysis ofvocabulary items. Further, the analysis of the research methods revealed that corpus-based studies published in English Teaching mainly employed quantitative methods to describe frequency and distribution information of the target linguistic items. It also provided the description of the characteristics of the corpora adopted in the corpus-based research. Interestingly, many corpus-based studies published in English Teaching focused on the analysis of the learner corpus data. The paper discusses the future research directions and pedagogical implications for corpus-based studies on TEFL.

The aim of the present study was to examine factors affecting Korean university EFL learners' English reading comprehension across two reading tasks (i.e., literal vs. inferential reading). To this end, five latent factors (linguistic, cognitive, affective, social, and English reading) were targeted, and the structural relationships among these five factors were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results of the present study demonstrate that for literal reading comprehension task, linguistic, cognitive, and social factors made a significant and direct impact on Korean university students' English reading performances, whereas the effect of affective factor was not significant. Regarding the inferential reading task, only linguistic and cognitive factors were significantly and positively associated with Korean university students' English reading comprehension. Implications for pedagogy as well as for future research directions were also provided.

This study compares the phonics instruction with the whole language approach to literacy instruction in elementary English education and investigates the effects of the two approaches on literacy skills and affective factors. The experiment was conducted over eight weeks by sampling 56 fifth-graders at an elementary school in Seoul. The control group was given phonics instruction using English stories, whereas the experimental group was given the whole language approach using the same English stories. The instruments included pre- and post-reading and writing English tests and pre- and post-questionnaires. The analyses showed that the whole language approach had more positive effect than phonics instruction on improving learners’ English reading and writing ability. Furthermore, the whole language approach showed a positive change in the affective domain of interest, self-learning attitude and recognition, whereas two sectors of self-confidence and learning motivation did not show statistically significant difference compared to the control group. These results suggest that the whole language approach is more efficient than phonics instruction in developing learners’ literacy in elementary English education.

This study aims at exploring the theoretical perspectives and research related to second language teacher identities. In particular, this paper focuses on the studies on the identities of English teachers in the Korean educational system. Major findings are as follows: First, based on the previous literature on teacher identities, teacher identities are defined as dynamic, multidimensional, and changing, as they continuously interact with individual, social, and cultural contexts. Second, it was found that studies have focused on (1) the meta-analyses of English teacher identities, (2) native-speaking English teacher identities, (3) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers co-teaching with native-English-speaking teachers, (4) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers including pre- and in-service teachers, and (5) teacher identity development through teacher education activities. Lastly, this paper brings up issues and suggestions on the formation and development of English teacher identities. It also offers directions for the future research on professional identities of second language teachers.

Lee Jin-sung. 2013. Writing Practice of English Chatting Language and its Different Communication Strategies from That of Korean. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 21(3). The purpose of this study is to introduce writing practice of English chatting language, especially focusing on that of text messages. It also discusses different communication strategies of English chatting language from that of Korean. The two characteristic features of text message writing are presented as a violation of conventional writing practice and various manners of shorthand writings. As for shorthand writings, initialisms, vowel omission, clippings, ideograms, pictograms, and phonetic spellings are dealt, together with their functional perspectives. The communication strategies of English chatting language were found to be reflected only on various shorthand writing practice which depicts the degree of formality but manifests lack of articulating detailed emotion or conversational keys. The communication strategies of Korean chatting language, on the other hand, were found to be able to demonstrate various conversational keys with the help of novel inflectional mutation, shortening, syllable extension, consonant addition or with adoption of regional dialects. While English chatting language is associated with positive influence on literacy, vocabulary, and phonological awareness among children as well as adults, Korean chatting language seems to have somewhat negative influence on standard written language and orthography. (188 words)

According to Shohamy (2007), the tests of certain languages deliver messages and ideologies about the prestige, priorities and hierarchies of the languages, leading to policies of suppression of diversity. The test-driven language policies also lead to a narrow view of language as standardized and homogenous. The purpose of this paper is to contextualize English language tests in relation to language policy tools in Korea. The discussion of inappropriately used test-driven policies was supported by several test development cases in Korea, which appeared in newspaper articles, testing companies’ newsletters, or government documents. Different English language tests intended as language policy tools were categorized into three major situations: government-led, school-contextualized, and industry-based. It was argued that the English test-driven policy movement must have influenced teaching, learning, and the curriculum, to the extent that policy-making and testing essentially became synonymous.