The purpose of this study was to examine English lecturers’ readiness toward internet use in English teaching and learning at selected universities in Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia. A questionnaire was used as a research instrument to sixty-five participants who were recruited through a variety of networking sources, but forty-seven participants completed and returned the questionnaires. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation, and a t-test. The major findings indicated that the English lecturers’ readiness toward Internet use for teaching and learning was at an average level. This study also found that there was a significant positive correlation between the lecturers’ background of internet use and the level of lecturers’ readiness toward Internet use. There was a positive correlation between lecturers’ knowledge readiness and attitude readiness. However, there were significant differences in the level of readiness between English lecturers at public institutions and private institutions. The findings of this study shed light on policy makers and leaders’ understanding of English lecturers’ readiness toward internet use in English teaching and learning in Indonesian higher education. Policy implications and future research are also discussed.

This research was a Research and Development (R&D) project which aimed at developing digital storytelling based local wisdom through Blended Learning as an innovative media for teaching English at eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Petang. The development model used in this research was adapted from the development of Luther’s model (in Sutopo, 2003). The data were collected by using documentation technique, interview, observation, and questionnaire. This research found that, (1) in developing digital storytelling based local wisdom through a Blended Learning method required a number of chronologically steps, namely: observation, need analysis, media prototype design, expert judgment, revision of the product, field testing, analyzing of data and finalizing the final product; (2) the total mean score of the questionnaire filled by the English teacher was 4.09, it indicated that the product was categorized as excellent, and (3) furthermore, the result of the questionnaire filled by the students was 3.76, this meant that the implementation of the product could be categorized as good. The results of this study were as expected and can help both the teachers and the students in the process of teaching and learning English, especially narrative text.

Based on the data from a two-year-long virtual ethnographic study, this article examines literate and social practices of a female adolescent English language learner (ELL) who is participating in a Korean popular culture (K-Pop) online fan site called Soompi.com. Drawing upon the concepts of ‘affinity space’ (Gee, 2004) and ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006), this article describes (1) how she participates and engages in multiple literacy practices in the site; (2) what resources she draws on for literacy development and content creations; and (3) what kinds of social relationships and identities she constructs in the site. Analysis reveals that she is able to access to distributed knowledge through peer-to-peer learning and teaching, and collaborative support, which help her develop not only language and composition related metacognitive skills, but also, positive social identities as a valued member of the site. Based on the aspects of the youth’s digital literacy practices, this study suggests some ways that language and literacy teachers can use to better meet ELLs' needs and to make their classrooms motivating and interactive learning communities.

The purpose of this study is to examine effective ways to introduce creative thinking skills development in the English learning classroom, specifically, focusing on questioning techniques and creative thinking techniques. The study explores selected creative-thinking techniques which are in accordance with English teaching methods and goals in the Korean context. The techniques highlighted were deemed adequate for enhancing creative and analytical thinking skills of English language learners and include the following: Brainwriting, SCAMPER, Lotus Blossom Technique, Forced Relationships/Analogy, Wishful Thinking Technique, Six Thinking Hats, SWOT, PMI technique, Flat Stanley Project. The study attempts to outline examples of and procedures for implementing such techniques in English education. The study is intended to provide insights for both researchers and practitioners alike and shall thus contribute to the ongoing discussion of integrating creativity education with English learning and teaching.

The purpose of the study was to identify Korean high school students’ beliefs about L2 learning and a structural model that best explains the belief factors associated with L2 achievement using structural equation modeling (SEM). It has furthermore explored the effect of gender on the structural model of belief factors affecting L2 achievement. A total of 447 students (253 boys, 194 girls) at two schools completed a questionnaire containing 26 Likert-scale items. The results produced five underlying constructs: selfefficacy of English learning, importance of grammar learning, role of teacher feedback, importance of accuracy, and nature of English learning. The final SEM model showed that both self-efficacy of English learning and importance of grammar learning were positive, direct, and significant predictors of L2 achievement. Role of teacher feedback and nature of English learning, however, were indirectly related to the L2 achievement through the mediating role of self-efficacy of English learning. The study also provided empirical evidence that gender moderated the causal relationships among belief factors affecting L2 attainment. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications to improve L2 instruction were suggested.

Second language writing research has focused on the learning-to-write approach whose analytic and pedagogical goal is to develop L2 learners' writing proficiency. Equally important is the writing-to-Iearn approach that uses writing as a primary tool for content learning. Drawn from writing across the curriculum (WAC) movement in North America, the writing-to-Iearn approach integrates writing into content instructions across various disciplines. Considering that Korean universities have increased English-mediated courses, it is timely to explore how the writing-to-Iearn approach can be used for content learning in English. Writing in this approach is considered to demonstrate whether and how students understand and undertake the course content presented in the assigned readings. The present study examines in-class timed writings produced in a course for English majors at a university in Korea. The student writings were analyzed and classified into four distinctive categories in terms of how they use sources in their writings. The data analysis demonstrates the types of problems these students have in processing complex texts and specifies an array of distinctive ski lls they need to be fully proficient.

The study investigates whether different English learning contexts result in different grammar development in learners’ shared mother tongue, Korean. The research instrument included a sentence completion task of collocational expressions in Korean dialogues, a multiple-choice test of grammar in Korean sentences and dialogues, and a sentence composition task using double nominative structures. The participants were 26 students at the age of 8 to 9 year old in the EFL context, 21 in a type of immersion program, and 19 in the ESL context. The results showed little difference among the three groups in the collocation sentence completion task and the multiple-choice test, but a clearly significant difference between the EFL students and the ESL students in the double nominative sentence composition task. The students who had been learning English in English culture showed more limited knowledge in the writing sentences with such peculiar but common structures in Korean language, compared with those who had been learning English in a Korean cultural context. In the complementary correlation analysis of the scores in the sentence composition task with a double nominative structure, the length of residence in Korea proved the strongest correlation, implying that the longer students live in Korea, the better they perform. The study provides the pedagogical implication that the curriculum of a mother tongue for bilingual learners could need to intervene with more emphasis on enhancing learners’ grammatical development, including language-specific structures.

The advancement in technology and availability of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) technology and the Internet made meaningful interaction possible in both on and offline environments, which is referred to as blended learning. Blended learning has recently begun to gain popularity in ELT, and appropriate models of blended learning need to be developed for EFL classrooms. However, there have not been many attempts to investigate its application and development of appropriate teaching and learning models of blended learning in the field of ELT, especially in relation to English language skills and subskills. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to investigate the students’ perspectives and effectiveness of blended learning in English pronunciation skills, and to explore gender differences in blended learning. The subjects of this study consist of 173 Korean university students, and quantitative data including questionnaire and pre-experiment were collected. The major findings of the study are as follows. First, students’ perspectives in blended learning, its components, and tools were very positive. Second, blended learning was found to be effective in the development of segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation skills. Third, there were few significant gender differences found regarding social aspects of online interaction. Implications and suggestions based on the findings and discussion are provided.

This study examines the effects of the sequence of increasing task complexity in different modalities on the learning of the English past tense of Korean secondary learners. Robinson’s (2007) Cognition Hypothesis argued that learners pay more attention to grammatical forms in complex tasks than in less complex tasks. He suggested that tasks should be sequenced in such a way that resource-dispersing dimensions are first increased in complexity followed by an increase in the complexity of resource-directing dimensions. However, little empirical research has been done on how tasks are sequenced according to their cognitive complexity and how task modality affects second language development in the sequence. Fifty-four learners were divided into an integrated (writing with oral interaction) task group (EG 1), an oral-only task group (EG 2) and a comparison group (CG). After the sequence of six tasks was completed, one-way ANOVA revealed the EGs outperformed the CG significantly on the posttest. The mean score of EG 1 was the highest, while the improvement rate of EG 2 was the highest among the three groups. It is hoped that this result will contribute to building a solid basis on which practitioners can make decisions about sequencing tasks and implementing task modality.

The present study investigated native speaker teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching English in the Korean university setting. Despite the great influx of native speaker teachers into the Korean English education system, relatively little research has been carried out on teachers’ perspectives on learning and teaching. Considering the significant impact of teachers’ beliefs in the classroom, this study investigated the sources of teachers’ beliefs, their beliefs about learning and teaching, and their beliefs about teacher roles in the second language classroom. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with eight native English speakers who were teaching at the same university. The findings showed that the teachers believed students’ active participation was the key to successful second language learning. It was shown that the teachers’ beliefs were closely associated with their prior learning experiences and that differences in the learning experiences between the teacher and students may cause difficulty in the second language classroom. These findings suggest the importance of teachers’ awareness of students’ learning experiences and the need to negotiate within the given teaching context without completely giving up teachers’ own beliefs about learning and teaching a second language.

This study aims to validate the English learning anxiety scale for Korean primary school students. At the initial stage, 16 items of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) were drawn from the literature reviews for the preliminary test. Then, 177 primary school students were sampled for the preliminary test. After the exploratory factor analysis was undertaken, the English Learning Anxiety Scale (ELAS) was reduced to 14 items, which consisted of two dimensions (oral English classroom anxiety, and low self-confidence in English). The main test was given to 573 primary school students from fourth grades to sixth grades in eight different schools in order to confirm validity and reliability of the ELAS. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling demonstrated that the ELAS is a valid (TLI, AGFI, CFI>.94, RMSEA=.049) and reliable (Cronbach’s α = 0.891) instrument.