Adopting a conversation analytic framework, this paper examined the delay and potential indeterminacy of teacher’s repetition as an other-initiated repair (OIR) strategy, which took place at the third turn of the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequence in one-on-one tutoring sessions. Tutor-tutee interactions for a Korean secondary student were transcribed and analyzed along with notes used in the class. Data showed that when repetition was used as an OIR strategy, it was delayed and inaccurate. The learner was sometimes unsure whether the teacher’s repetition constituted a repair initiation regarding her prior turn. Furthermore, the learner could not successfully recognize which part of the repeated phrase should be repaired. Prior studies have confirmed that repetition can promote learners’ interactions rather than simply highlighting error while also giving learners an opportunity to correct their errors themselves. However, the analysis in this paper suggests a potential risk associated with using repetition as an OIR strategy at feedback turn in instructional discourse.

This study investigates beginning EFL teachers’ emotional labor from the perspective of the Activity Theory. Emotional labor is defined as the process of controlling one's emotions and emotional expressions in accordance with the occupational standards for proper emotional expression. Two beginning EFL teachers at Korean junior high schools were recruited by means of a qualitative research method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed based on Activity Theory. The findings indicate that participants’ emotional labor in relation to their students was represented as conflicts in their activity system. Additionally, the resolution of the conflicts could be possible if a teacher can join a new teacher learning community and use new instruments. The results suggest that beginning EFL teachers should be encouraged to be empowered with new instruments such as classroom management skills and teaching practices for handling mixed-level students. These new instruments are expected to prevent students’ problem behavior and ease the burden of teachers experiencing emotional labor.

Literature has been repeatedly recognized as an effective source of authentic materials in EFL classrooms. Literature exposes learners to coherent and expert writing which can enable them to write better and facilitates students’ creative writing skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the teaching procedures of using short fiction in a Korean high school EFL course in which English writing and reading skills are integrated and to provide pedagogical suggestions for using authentic literature in EFL classrooms. First, this paper introduces a theoretical discussion of the advantages of using short fiction in an English writing instruction, and discusses reasons for selecting the Korean short novel Dongbackkot and the English short story “Araby” as resources for writing. After that pedagogical steps with practical classroom activities are described. We hope that the pedagogical suggestions provided here may inspire English teachers to design their teaching materials using appropriate literary texts to improve their students’ English essay writing and balanced communication skills.

Schiffrin (1987) defines discourse markers (henceforth DMs) as “sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk” (p. 276). DMs have been regarded as a signpost used by a speaker to display a certain attitude or embedded intention in a spoken discourse. However, few studies have investigated how DMs are used in a spoken discourse of English as Foreign Language (henceforth EFL) learning context. The purpose of the present study is to examine how okay is used as a DM by Korean teachers of English in their naturally-occurring discourses of EFL classes. The data for this study was obtained from recorded videos of English classes taught by six Korean teachers of English. The data were transcribed verbatim and analyzed on the basis of the Conversation Analysis framework. The multifunctional use of the DM okay deployed by the teachers can be classified as follows: (ⅰ) getting attention, (ⅱ) signaling approval and acceptance as a feedback device, and (ⅲ) working as a transition activator.

The goal of the present study is to examine EFL English teachers' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and its relation to their English language proficiency (LP). Data was collected from 81 in-service and pre-service Korean English teachers (N=81) who participated in an one-month overseas training program in the U.S.A. The participants were asked to diagnose their own levels of ICC and LP through the questionnaires whose reliability and validity were confirmed by the factor analysis. The major findings from analyses were as follows: 1) in general, participants appeared to consider themselves possessing a high level of ICC, showing an average score of 3.99 out of 5.0 on the ICC questions, 2) participants' willingness and readiness to engage in different cultures/speakers were found to be in a higher level than the other four factors of ICC, such as an ability to interact in intercultural situations, an ability to identify an importance of ICC, a degree of acceptance by other cultures/speakers, and a degree of contribution to mediating intercultural situations, and 3) chi-square, correlational, and regression analyses showed significant associations between ICC and LP of the participants. Pedagogical implications and suggestions are discussed.

The issue of text appropriation is rarely explored in EFL classrooms where the teachers are native speakers of English. In this study we highlight how the ideology of NESTs influences students’ feedback practices. Two Korean EFL students seemingly welcomed teacher comments into their texts to make their revision process more manageable. By relinquishing their control, they welcome the appropriative behavior the teacher brings as the native English speaker. They believe that appropriating the behavior of the native English-speaking teacher is not only beneficial, but necessary in shaping their English discourse. Nonetheless, the students struggled in the feedback and revision cycles to negotiate between their hegemonic beliefs and the expectations of their native English-speaking teacher. In this sense, EFL students’ writing is always in foreclosure from the native English-speaking teachers, as EFL students are overshadowed by the ideology of NESTs.

This study examined how Chinese college students react to their writing teachers’ corrective feedback (CF). A total of 1,077 students completed a survey questionnaire consisting of two parts: participants’ general information and their reactions to teachers’ CF. It was found that students had positive feelings towards CF, and that they gave the most attention to the problems at the micro-level. They believed that teacher CF could help them greatly with revision in organization, vocabulary, and grammar, but that it was not so helpful with problems in content. Failure to comprehend or make corrections based on their teacher CF was reported. In such cases, some students tended to employ very limited strategies, or they responded to CF in a passive manner. Accordingly, it is suggested that further qualitative research also be conducted to obtain a fuller and finer picture of students’ reactions to their teacher’s CF on their writings.

In second language writing, while much research has focused on teachers’ act of feedback per se, scant attention has been paid to how they attempt to bring innovation to their feedback practices and how they cope with the contextual challenges arising from the innovation. This study seeks to explore two teachers’ perspectives on their own attempts at innovative feedback approaches in their writing classrooms. Drawing on data gathered from individual teacher interviews and their personal reflections, the results of the study show that their engagement in feedback innovation served as a significant source of their continuing professional development. While they encountered some challenges during the innovation, they also exercised their professional agency to address these challenges and reaped benefits from their innovative attempts. The paper concludes with some implications for feedback innovation in EFL contexts and how teachers can be supported in their continuing efforts to develop effective feedback approaches in writing.

The aim of this paper was to in vestigate the effect of pragmatic in struction on teachers' attitude toward the learning and teaching of L2 pragmatic competence. To this end, a study was undertaken in which sixteen pre- and in-service teachers as subjects took a course in sociolinguistics for a one semester-long period, and data were gathered by means of att itude scale. Attitude scale was designed on the basis of the assumption that pragmatic attitude was composed of four different components such as cognitive, affective, behavioral and teaching, and was administered on both the first day and the last day of semester. Among the findings of the study, most important, there was a stati stically significant difference only in cognitive component of pragmatic attitude, which showed a positive effect of instruction on the change in subjects' thoughts and opinions about the learning and teaching of L2 pragmatic competence. Based on the overall findings of the study, some pedagogical suggestions for fostering pragmatic instruction for EFL classes were offered.

This study examines how students and instructors perceived online instructors’ roles in asynchronous courses designed for language teachers. Five instructor interviews, 46 student questionnaires, and ten course evaluation summaries presenting the opinions of 69 out of 120 students in total were analyzed. Based upon Berge’s (1995) framework, asynchronous online course instructors’ roles were divided into four categories: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical. The results highlight and give suggestions to what is characteristic and likely problematic in online teaching—using the tools and pedagogical techniques to make learning more social than conventional classroom exhibit, orchestrating discussion not only technically but also by instructing and modeling effective postings, assessing the various ways that students participate in the class, and managing time, the students’ as well as the instructor’s. This study provides an opportunity for language educators and researchers to think about the unique characteristics of web-based distance education in general and the changing roles of instructors in that new form of education in more critical way.

This study investigates the interactions between Korean EFL teachers’ beliefs about English language education, their teaching practices, and their perceptions of the reform initiated by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MEST). It highlights the variable of teaching level. Ninety-eight elementary school (ET), 96 middle school (MT), and 94 high school teachers (HT) were surveyed. The findings indicate that: (1) the participants’ beliefs were largely based on the communication-oriented approach (COA), although there was a group difference with the ETs believing it most strongly, (2) the HTs’ COA-oriented beliefs did not match their teaching practices, which were largely based on the grammar-focused, reading-based approach, and (3) the majority of the participants suggested that their low English proficiencies and large class sizes were constraints on their attempts to implement the reform. In addition, the HTs listed the College Scholastic Ability Test as a constraint. These findings are believed to be symptomatic of a transition stage through which English language education has been passing in Korea. The study also interprets the findings as a result of EFL teachers’ strategic adjustments in the face of the schism between the demands of the MEST-initiated reform and the realities of English language education.

This case study examined 10 Korean English teachers who were involved in small group work (SGW) for the purpose of improving their own English language proficiency. Their beliefs about and practices of SGW were closely observed as they actually went through a SGW. A total of 10 teachers (three groups) teaching at elementary or middle schools participated in the SGWs for one year. In the SGWs they were supposed to meet once a week in groups, give a presentation in English on a selected topic, and discuss the topics presented. Throughout the research period, they were interviewed and surveyed periodically. The result of the study showed that teachers generally had positive beliefs about SGWs and were very willing to go on with it in the same way they used to or in a little modified way. Especially, the teachers revealed strong conviction that the most powerful aspect of SGW was that it kept them motivated to continue learning, which has rarely been the case when they tried to study individually.

This study attends to the importance of performance standards in teacher education and evaluation system and suggests a primitive guideline for English teaching standards in Korea. For this purpose, first of all, the notion of ""teaching expertise"" and ""performance standards"" are reviewed with the previous studies. Second, this study introduces recent changes in Korean teacher education programs and some efforts to develop Korean teacher standards. Third, teaching standards (for ESL/WL) established by NCATE, NBPTS, and INTASC are reviewed to investigate their domains, standards, and evaluation rubric. Finally, this study addresses some implications and suggestions for establishing English teacher standards in Korea. It is hoped that the findings of this study provide subject-specific information on teacher training and assessment to teacher researchers and education policy makers in Korea.

As English has been rapidly spreading to non-Western communities, we have had numerous varieties of English. In the Outer Circle, English gained an official status, which resulted in nonnative varieties of English. In the Expanding Circle, English achieved the status of the first foreign language. With a range of English varieties, educators and administrators have been faced with controversial questions such as: (1) how to define native speakers of English? and (2) which varieties to teach? This qualitative study investigates four Korean EFL teachers’ perception of speakers of English and the issue of target varieties. Using data from semi-structured interviews and personal conversations collected for one academic semester, the researcher found that the participants considered various features when identifying an individual as a native or nonnative speaker of English. They used to consider ethnicity and nationality important in the past, which have been replaced by language precedence, cultural attachment, native speaker’s intuition, and mutual intelligibility. The findings of this study also demonstrate that American English is regarded as the most preferred variety as an educational target in Korean ELT because of the power that its speakers have.

This study was designed to examine Korean EFL college students’ expectations about their native-speaking English teachers’ roles and to compare them to those of their instructors. It has also sought gender effect on students’ expectations. Data were collected using a modified version of the Survey of Educational Expectations, developed by McCargar (1993), from 346 students and 34 instructors. The questionnaire included 47 items in 11 domains of English teacher roles: instructional strategies, cultural sensitivity, subject knowledge, warmth, classroom management behaviors, questioning strategies, response to students’ errors, educational approach, teacher-student relationship, organization skills, and teaching methods. Results indicated overall similarities between students’ and teachers’ role expectations, while analyses of individual items showed much greater differences. A clear difference was found in teacher response to student errors. Students expected their native-speaking English teachers to correct their errors, while the teachers clearly disagreed with this expectation of students. The results also showed the gender differences in students’ responses. The findings of the study suggested educational implications to reduce classroom tension and dissatisfaction when there appear student-teacher mismatches in L2 teacher roles.