This study aimed to find out the direction of reinforcing the subject special description as English records. The study analyzed the English subject description data published in 2017 and 2020 by the Ministry of Education. Focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 18 teachers, 6 each for elementary, middle, and high school. Analysis results of the 2017 data showed that the elementary data had a weak link with the curriculum, middle school data focused on functional areas rather than knowledge or attitudes, and high school data only presented examples of students with high achievement levels. On the other hand, the 2020 data includes not only subject special description but also teachers' content of teaching and evaluation materials according to achievement standards. Based on the results, the introduction of Likert scales and the creation of vocabulary groups by achievement standards are suggested.

This study compares AI PengTalk’s assessments of Korean children’s pronunciation with the assessments of Korean teachers. Sixty Korean sixth-graders participated as assessees, and four Korean elementary teachers participated as assessors. Both PengTalk and the teachers rated the children’s production of 10 English sentences on a five-point scale. They focused on segmentals, stress-rhythm, intonation, and speech rate. The findings were as follows: Firstly, PengTalk evaluated the children’s pronunciation in the four elements significantly lower than the teachers across all English proficiency levels. Secondly, teachers’ ratings of the students aligned more closely with their pre-evaluated English proficiency levels than the AI PengTalk’s assessments. The teachers rated students at the upper level significantly higher than those at the intermediate level, who were, in turn, assessed significantly higher than those at the lower level in all four elements. Furthermore, AI PengTalk and the teachers differed in the mean order of the four elements, particularly in segmentals. Based on the results of this study, suggestions were made for the development and implementation of AI-based English programs.

In this study, we applied a model of process-oriented English assessments to primary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic and explored how they perceived it. A series of flexible process-oriented assessments were conducted in the first semester of 2022. A survey was administered to 190 fifth-grade students at the end of the semester. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The respondents were classified into three categories according to their self-rated English levels. The results show that the students appreciated the assessments, and they highly valued the teacher’s feedback. Various opinions were presented on providing opportunities for re-testing, reporting results to parents, writing peer reviews in school records, and mental pressures. The process-oriented assessments were found to be conducive for the majority of the young English learners, although some students from the lower group seemed to have experienced a psychological burden. Based on the findings, suggestions are made for educators in the post-pandemic era.

This paper discusses the limitations of the current practices of English reading assessment in the Korean educational context based on the concept of 'cognitive validity.' It then introduces the Evidence-centered Design (ECD) model as a framework that can guide English teachers and test developers in developing a reading assessment. The paper illustrates how the framework can be applied to the assessment formats and practices widely used in Korean middle and high schools. The ECD framework can help English teachers reconsider reading assessment practices commonly implemented in Korea. The framework contributes to enabling them to focus on the three critical, interrelated questions: what ability to measure with what task(s), how to score students' responses, and how to interpret the test results. Teachers' conscious application of the ECD framework would lead to a more valid and theoretically more sound reading assessment. Such an assessment is expected to align better with teaching and eventually bring a positive washback in English language learning.

The present study investigated students’ preferences for the types of tasks used to assess English speaking performance. It further examined whether students’ task type preferences affected their perceptions of test effectiveness. One hundred eighty-two high school students responded to a self-report questionnaire. A series of frequency analysis and paired samples t-tests were used for the analysis. The results showed that students’ most preferred task types and their least preferred ones overlapped with each other, suggesting that the task types of English-speaking performance tests used in schools are limited. The four key reasons determining students’ task type preferences were identified, including task difficulty, emotional comfort, practical value, and interest. In addition, the results indicated that students’ task type preferences could affect their perceptions of task effectiveness. Overall, the results suggest the need for developing more varied task types for English-speaking performance tests as well as helping students become familiar with English speaking performance tasks. Pedagogical implications were discussed along with study limitations.

상선에 당직사관으로 승선하기 위한 해기사는 승선 전 해기사로서 갖추어야 할 적절한 자격요건을 국제규정에 맞게 충족시켜야 한다. 해사영어 활용 능력은 이와 관련한 중요한 요소 중 하나이다. 해기 교육 과정에 입교한 학생들은 교내 수업을 통해 선박과 관련된 영 문 서류, 검사 문서 그리고 사고 보고서에 이르기까지 다양한 상황에 대한 해사영어활용능력을 습득하게 되며 이를 통해 일반 영어뿐만이 아닌 실무에서 사용되는 해사분야 전문 용어 및 특수 문장까지 학습하게 된다. 하지만 선박 및 해운산업의 특수성으로 인해 해사영어를 포함한 해기 지식이 전달되고 또 평가되는 데에는 많은 제약이 존재한다. 해당 연구는 항시 접속 가능한 해사영어 학습 및 시험 플랫폼의 활용을 기반으로 학생들의 학습 결과를 측정하고 이를 통한 교육 효과를 조사하였다. 실험은 승선실습 과정에 참여한 실습항해사를 두 집단으로 나누어 진행되었다. 한 집단은 해사영어 학습 및 평가 플랫폼을 활용하였고 다른 한 집단은 해사영어 학습 및 평가 플랫폼을 활용하지 않았다. 6주의 실험을 통한 최종 시험 결과 두 집단 간 해사영어 시험성적에 유의한 차이가 발생하였으며 이를 통해 해사영어 학습 및 평가 플랫폼의 활용이 해사영어 시험 점수에 유의미한 점수 차이를 가져오는 것을 확인하였다. 또한 학생들의 개인 학습시간을 조사하여 그 교 육 효과를 정량화하였으며 나아가 추후 연구에 대한 개선방향을 제시하고자 하였다. 해당 연구는 해사 교육 분야에 다양하게 적용하여 활 용할 수 있는 학습 플랫폼 활용 효능을 조사하였으며 향후 해사영어 교육 외에 그 범위를 넓혀 활용될 수 있을 것으로 사료된다.

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, creativity plays a pivotal role in the competitiveness of a country. The importance of creativity education therefore cannot be overemphasized. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of discussion-based English reading and writing activities on Korean high school students' creativity, English writing, and self-assessed creative thinking. The participants were 45 high school students in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: the discussion-based English reading and writing group (n=24) and the traditional English instruction group (n=21). The experiment was administered during two semesters of the 2017 academic year. The major findings are as follows: First, the experimental group showed significant improvement on the creativity test, especially in the areas of fluency, flexibility, and original thinking. Second, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the writing test. Third, the experimental group showed positive changes in their self-assessed flexible thinking, convergent thinking, and intrinsic motivation. All of these indicate the beneficial effects of the discussion-based English reading and writing activities. Based on the results, some pedagogical suggestions were made for the effective integration of creativity education into the teaching of English as a foreign language.

The College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has focused on relative ranks among students since it started from 1993. In December 2014 The Ministry of Education (MOE) announced that it would adopt an absolute grading system (AGS) for English scores in the CSAT, starting from November 2017, and discard the relative grading. The MOE hoped that the AGS of CSAT English would eventually serve to normalize English education by having teachers place more emphasis on improving students’ communication skills rather than on solving CSAT questions. This paper describes the rationale behind the implementation of AGS for CSAT English by the MOE and how the criteria and grades of AGS have been developed and set. Then current problems arising from the AGS for CSAT English are discussed by touching on its theoretical, practical and political issues based on relevant literatures, public hearings and news media reports, and informal interviews with contemporary teachers of English.

This study investigated the structural and functional differences between formulaic sequences in College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and SAT reading assessment texts. The results of the RANGE program showed that SAT used more diverse and difficult words compared to CSAT. The frequency analysis revealed that CSAT used more formulaic sequences than the SAT counterpart. This suggests that CSAT used more repeated expressions, whereas SAT used diverse vocabulary items. The structural analysis showed that noun phrases were the most dominant in CSAT, whereas prepositional phrases were pervasive in SAT. The functional analysis showed that both corpora relied heavily on referential expressions. The results indicate that referential bundles are dominantly used in institutional writing (Biber & Barbieri, 2007). In accordance with the previous studies, the results suggest that high frequency formulaic sequences can be different according to the register. In CSAT, connectives and discourse organizers were prevalent. This may be due to the characteristics of question types in CSAT. The results may indicate that formulaic sequences in texts are partly influenced by the characteristics of a register.

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.

This study examined the reading passages of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA) and middle school English textbooks in terms of their readability and lexical difficulty. The readability was measured by using Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index, while their lexical difficulty was measured in terms of STTR (standardized type-token ratio), frequency of tokens per type, and vocabulary frequency levels by using VocabProfile and Oxford WordSmith Tools 7.0. The results showed that there was a gap between the readability of the English textbooks and that of the NAEA conducted from 2012 to 2014, while the readability between the English textbooks and that of the 2015 NAEA reached a comparable level. However, the textbooks from one publisher showed substantively lower readability than those from the other publishers and the NAEA. Secondly, regarding vocabulary frequency levels, the words in 1K and 2K accounted for more than 90% of the textbooks and the NAEA, while the NAEA had a higher STTR and lower frequency of tokens per type than the textbooks. It suggests that the NAEA employed more various words with less repetition than the textbooks. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

This paper overviews English language assessment-related articles published in English Teaching from 1965 to 2015. One hundred thirty-eight articles are chosen for analysis, and the discernible trends epitomizing a specific era are traced. The results show articles concerning item analysis and improvement oftesting methods constituted a major portion of the periodical in the early days. The number of the assessmentrelated articles began to soar from the late 1980s, and recently a major focus seems to have shifted to test validity. In terms of research topics, a significant body of research has been conducted on item analysis, improvement of testing practices, performance assessment, evaluation methods, and test validity. Even though the overall level of the articles has advanced dramatically over the past 50 years, little research has been intended in the areas of classroom assessment, English language testing policies, washback effects, new assessment tools, and the validity of national tests. This paper concludes with a suggestion that more efforts should be made to fill the gap between research and testing practices in the field.

The research on washback of a test has little been carried out in Korea while it has been flourishing in language testing researchers overseas. This paper investigates whether the advent of NEAT has affected the perception of test takers and the teaching/learning practices in English classrooms of Korea. In addition, we also want to investigate the relationship between variables such as perception of test users, teaching/learning practices, and test scores. We carried out a survey with 601 students who were seated at NEAT administered in April 2013 as well as 3,267 third-year high school students who had no experience on NEAT. The analyses revealed some evidence to support that NEAT has an effect on the perception of the participants. However, the analyses also revealed that NEAT was not effective to appeal for a change in teaching and learning practices in English classrooms in Korea.

The purpose of this study was to investigate inter- and intra- rater reliability in an interview and a computerized oral test. It was also examined whether rater characteristics influenced on their reliability and biases, and finally the scores of both tests were compared with those of the Versant test using an automated computer rating system. For the study, the data from 21 Korean university students and 18 Korean or native speakers of English raters with various characteristics were collected. Some of the main findings from the study were as follows. First, rater severity was significantly different in each test, but each rater consistently graded on both tests suggesting lower inter-rater reliability and higher intra-rater reliability. Secondly, rater severity was impacted by the rater characteristics such as mother tongue, gender, age, and major. Lastly, there existed a positive correlation among the scores of the three tests, indicating that the scores of human beings and computers are strongly related.

This study was designed to develop a scale to measure primary school English teachers’ professionalism based on affective factors. The Swailes' (2003) scale was used to best reflect the local context where teachers in primary schools teach English to young learners. Three surveys were sent to a total of 1,008 primary school English teachers. Three different focus groups were used to refine the survey items in the modification process from the first to the third survey. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor and confirmatory factor analysis. These results showed the validity of fifteen items for investigating primary English teachers’ professionalism: four items related to 'professional commitment', three related to 'professional autonomy', three items related to professional belief in public service, three items to profession as referent, and two items to professional regulation. It is hoped that the scale items developed in this study can be used to identify the standard of professionalism of primary English teachers and provide policy makers or school decision makers with data that can be used to enhance professionalism within the community of primary English teachers.

This study aims to compare the effects of different types of test-items using the same text and test-takers' text familiarity on the scores of English reading comprehension. A total of 312 third-grade Korean high school students took three different English tests, adapting types of test-items from the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). Each test included items using the same texts, presented in exam preparation books published by EBS in Korea, but different question types. To estimate levels of their topic familiarity, two surveys were carried out. Repeated measures ANOVAs reveal that there were significant differences in scores among the items using the same text with different types of test-items. However, there was no statistically significant effect of topic familiarity. The results indicate a greater effect of different types of test-items than topic familiarity on the scores of a reading comprehension test using the same text. Based on the findings, it is suggested that English teachers in Korea need to manage their reading classes by using various types of questions in order to develop students' reading ability and to prepare their students for the CSAT.