This study was aimed at finding pedagogical answers to the question of ‘what are the qualities of native English speakers at a Korean middle school’. In this study, research results were derived using phenomenological methods from seven native English teachers at a middle school. The results of the study are as follows; 1) native English teachers should teach English effectively, 2) native English teachers should be able to adapt to their positions in Korea, 3) native teachers are ‘new information providers’ and ‘introducers of new cultures’. Korean society has focused on the external conditions and specifications of native speakers. However, it is now necessary to clearly define the qualities that native teachers should have and use them for recruitment and education of native teachers. Also, native teachers who want to work in Korea need to be trained according to the cultural and educational situation in Korea. Through this study,it is critical to consider measures to improve the legal status of native English teachers.

본 연구는 조기영어교육기관에서 근무하고 있는 원어민 강사를 대상으로 조기영어교육기관의 특성과 근무환경, 직무 만족 및 직무몰입에 대한 인식과 차이를 조사하고, 원어민 강사의 직무만족 및 직무몰입에 영향을 미치는 요인을 알아보는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 이를 통해 원어민 강사의 업무성과를 개선할 수 있는 방향을 모색하고, 원어민 강사가 제공하는 교육서비스의 수준을 향상시킴으로써 조기영어교육의 효과성과 효율성을 높이는 방안을 모색하였다. 연구목적을 달성하기 위해 조기영어교육기관에서 근무하는 원어민 강사 262명을 대상으로 설문조사하고 15명에게 인터뷰를 실시하여 자료를 수집하였다. 본 연구의 주요 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 조기영어교육기관 특성에 대한 원어민 강사의 인식은 아동의 애착과 존경이 가장 높고 협력수업에 대한 인식이 뒤를 이은 반면, 의사결정형태 및 직무연수가 상대적으로 낮은 것으로 나타났다. 또한 원어민 강사의 직무만족과 직무몰입은 보통 수준으로 나타났다. 둘째, 원어민 강사의 근무환경과 개인배경에 따른 직무만족 및 직무몰입은 조기영어교육기관의 근로자 수와 원어민 강사의 한국어 수준에서 차이가 있는 것으로 나타났다. 셋째, 원어민 강사의 직무만족에는 조직공정성, 상사의 직무역량, 상사의 의사결정형태, 동료지원, 아동의 애착과 존경이 영향을 미치고, 직무몰입에는 상사의 의사결정형태, 아동의 애착과 존경, 직무만족이 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 원어민 강사의 직무만족 및 직무몰입 수준을 높이고, 이를 통해 조기영어교육기관의 교육서비스 수준을 제고시키기 위해서는 조기영어교육기관, 기관 내 상사 및 협력강사, 원어민 강사의 노력이 요구된다.

The purpose of this study is to examine how cohesion features can be used to distinguish between essays written by Korean and NS college students. A total of 800 essays from the ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English) corpus were analyzed using the newly-developed automated analysis of cohesion program, TAACO (the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Cohesion). In order to examine whether there are statistically significant differences between NS and Korean students, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted. The multivariate test result showed that the combined cohesion indices were significantly affected by L1, indicating that Korean and NS students differed in terms of various cohesion indices. A stepwise discriminant function analysis was also carried out to characterize the nature of cohesion differences in essays between NS and Korean students. The best two predictors for distinguishing between Korean students’ essays and NS students’ essays are the overlap of function words and the use of demonstratives. Overall, NS students produced a more cohesive writing than Korean students in that they employed overlapping words, demonstratives, and lexical subordinators as a way to connect ideas across sentences. Implications of this study for English writing pedagogy are discussed.

This study investigated the use of the amplifier very in high school English textbooks and native corpora by comparing its frequency distributions and collocation patterns. The native corpora, used as the reference of the study, were COCA and BNC, with their built-in sub-corpora further grouped into spoken and written corpora. The High School English Textbook Corpus (HSETC) was compiled from a total of 53 high school textbooks, with the spoken corpus (HSETC-S) from the texts in listening and conversation and the written corpus (HSETC-W) from the reading passages. Analyses using AntConc3.4.4 revealed no prominent differences between HSETC and reference corpora in the frequency of the amplifier very, while the written corpus (HSETC-W) had more occurrences contrary to the native corpora. The combination patterns and their occurrences of HSETC were slightly different from those of COCA and BNC with the gap increased with the spoken corpus (HSETC-S). Pedagogical implications and suggestions are made on ELT materials development and teaching practices.

The purpose of this study is to investigate university students’ perceptions on their English conversation classes taught by native English speakers. Its focus is on finding out how well the students understand and how actively they participate in class, what causes difficulty in their understanding or participation in class, and whether their class helps them in terms of affective aspects and English skills. A survey was conducted on a total of 465 university students in Korea, and the collected data were analyzed to compute basic descriptive and inferential statistics. Some of the important findings are 1) over 50% of the students understand their classes well; 2) a little over 30% actively participate in class; 3) about 30~50% of the students perceive their class help them affectively; and 4) about 50% of the students perceive their class help them improve their English skills in general. These results are discussed along with other findings related to the causes of the difficulties that the students experienced. Suggestions are provided on the basis of the results and their implications.

The present study aims to compare teacher talk and the course book used as a source of vocabulary input. For the research purpose, part of Yenny Corpus (Kwon, 2013) was used to analyze the vocabulary content of the two input sources. Yenny Corpus consists of a total of 247,398 words collected from EFL classes of four native and five non-native university lecturers. In this study, however, the data of 1,416 words by the native teachers and 1,651 words by the non-native teachers with their course book scripts were used. To analyze the quantity and quality of the vocabulary use (e.g., level, diversity) of the two input sources, some representative word lists such as BNC-COCA 25,000 word family list topped on Range Program (Heatley & Nation, 2002) were applied. The results show that the teachers (including both native and non-native teachers) orally provide 8,090 word types while their course books introduce 4,713. The non-native teachers provide a little more vocabulary input compared with the native teachers’ talk. In addition, the level of the vocabulary provided by the non-native teachers seems more appropriate for their students’ vocabulary ability. Nevertheless, in order to generalize the findings further research is needed in different settings.

This study investigates faculty and students’ perceptions of English conversation courses in the General English Program (GEP) at a university. A total of 437 students completed the survey and interviews were conducted with 8 of them. Three Native English Speaker (NS) instructors participated in the study by submitting reflective journals and being interviewed. Qualitative as well as quantitative data collection methods were employed to offer a better understanding of the current status of English conversation courses taught by NS instructors. Results about the five research questions are as follows. First, students were satisfied with the courses overall, although it varied across classes taught by each NS instructor. Second, students’ satisfaction with the courses also varied depending on their self-assessment of English proficiency. Third, the results of the stepwise regression analysis showed that NS instructors’ qualifications and attitude were the best predictor of students’ satisfaction with the courses. Fourth, NS instructors expressed dissatisfaction with the current textbooks and administrative support from the university. Fifth, the lack of understanding of both students and Korean culture caused critical classroom management issues, which, in turn, led to students’ negative perceptions of the courses. The findings provide practical implications of this GEP curriculum at the university.

The purpose of the study is to compare the nature of teacher talk between the native and non-native speaking professors with its focus on language functions and interaction modifications in English-mediated writing instruction. The study analyzed the classroom languages of two professors who were teaching college-level composition courses using the same textbook and syllabus. The classes taught by the two professors were videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed based on the AS-unit. The results showed both professors used all of the five functions in the order of information, suasion, opinion, future plans, and checking. The NS professor, on the other hand, used the information function more often, while the NNS professor relied more on the suasion function. The data also displayed that the NS professor gave more feedback responses, whereas the NNS professor asked more clarification requests and repeated their own utterances. The findings implied that the types and distribution of the teacher talk may be influenced by the subject-matter and the instructional foci of each professor.

This study examined native-speaking English teachers’ pedagogical knowledge through the analysis of transcriptions of videotaped lessons and interviews with six novice English teachers teaching at middle schools. The goal was to discover what pedagogical knowledge these teachers have and how the knowledge was represented in the form of instructional actions. The dominant categories of the teachers’ instructional actions were repetition of input and instructions. Hence, there were a lot of repetitions of input which seem to come from behavioristic perspectives of language learning and teaching. Also, there were lots of teacher-initiated questions and directives to elicit responses from the students. The primary way of clearing the meaning of the text was translation. The findings indicated that the native-speaking teachers’ pedagogical thought are mostly pertinent to general educational knowledge not about language learning and teaching. In addition, the novice teachers’ pedagogical knowledge deduced from pedagogical thoughts leaned towards heavily to ‘Handling language items’ while experienced teachers in Gatbonton’s (2000) study displayed no dominant category. Implications for teacher training were discussed.

This study aims to investigate the current status regarding the utilization of native English teachers in elementary schools focusing on its benefits and problems and to explore better ways of utilizing them for elementary English education. The participants of this study were 1024 elementary school students, 80 Korean elementary English teachers, and 56 native teachers of English. The data were collected through questionnaires and interviews. Through the analysis of data the followings were revealed: 1) the native teachers of English considered that their working conditions including wages and the amount of teaching time were appropriate, but the pre-training program was not satisfactory; 2) the Korean English teachers felt that their workload related to native teachers of English was too heavy; 3) the students perceived that studying English with native teachers of English had positive effects on their English abilities in terms of cognitive and affective aspects; 4) in most schools team teaching between native teachers of English and Korean teachers were being performed and both teachers were satisfied with it; 5) however, several issues such as the role relationship between the Korean English teachers and the native teachers of English, the quality of pre-training, and reconstruction of teaching materials should be resolved in order to improve English program of utilizing native English-speaking teachers in elementary schools.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and analyze errors of business English letters composed by Korean secretaries. A total of eighteen business English letters of positive style were used for error evaluation conducted by eleven native English speakers in business. In the error analysis, major error types were identified as the following; the noun phrase errors, i.e., articles, misuse of possessives, the verb phrase errors, i.e., prepositions, auxiliary, and the adjective and adverb errors. Another types of critical errors were related to the inappropriate expressions and minor errors of mechanics. The error patterns of business English letters of Korean secretaries were identified by eleven English business specialists. This research also suggests the important guidelines for Korean secretaries to write concise and accurate English business letters for efficient business communication. It is recommended to choose appropriate and precise terms and expressions for business letter writing.