The purpose of this study was to investigate how the English speaking ability of Korean EFL college students was affected by their interactions with Talk-to-ChatGPT while taking an ‘English Interview’ class. Thirty pieces of English conversation scripts with thirty chatbot conversations created by five students were collected for analysis. Two online text analysis programs, Quillbot including word counter and grammar checker and T.E.R.A.(Text Ease and Readability Assessor), were used for data analysis. The findings of data analysis revealed that 1) The average length of the sentences and words spoken by the participants has increased through English speaking practice using Talk-to-ChatGPT, and 2) There was no significant change in text ease and readability, and coherence of students’ utterances through English speaking practice using a chatbot while there were differences depending on their English proficiency levels. 3) Students A, B, and D, who had relatively low levels of English proficiency, showed a slight increase in syntactic accuracy and semantic clarity in their English interview practice. Based on the study findings, pedagogical implications for the effective use of AI-based apps or programs in English speaking classes were presented.

The present study aimed to analyze the developmental trajectories of English achievement and exposure time through private education, utilizing univariate and multivariate latent growth curve analysis. This study used a subset of the Gyeonggi Education Panel Study data from 2012 to 2017. The results indicated consistent disparities in the growth of English achievement, depending on the student’s proficiency levels at the starting point. In particular, the early exposure to private tutoring was significantly and closely related to the initial status and the growth trajectory of English achievement. When the sample was classified by urbanicity, the findings suggested that the gap in English achievement was likely to increase over time across the two regions, with a stronger correlation with private tutoring found in urban areas. These results underscore the need for educational intervention for students in less advantageous conditions, and they provide valuable pedagogical implications for teaching English in the Korean EFL context.

This study investigated the effects of multisensory memory strategies of pairing visual and aural learning strategies of aural lexical advance organizers (LAO) and read-alouds on 146 Korean high school students learning the meaning and pronunciation of 18 unfamiliar English words. In this quasi-experimental design, the control group learned the words on a single mode of written LAO and silent reading as opposed to two treatment groups of aural LAO and silent reading, and of aural LAO and read-alouds, respectively. The effects were tested three times via pre-, post-(immediately after learning), and delayed (30 days later) tests. The immediate and long-term effects were examined by detecting the differences across the three groups in post- and delayed-tests by one-way ANOVA, and the retention of effects was examined by paired t-tests in each group across the three tests. The results indicated that pairing aural LAO and read-aloud strategies was most effective in learning and retention of both vocabulary meaning and pronunciation.

This study aimed to explore the role of inference making in the relation between vocabulary knowledge (breadth and depth) and reading comprehension for 487 ninthgrade Chinese EFL students who were categorized as either struggling or adequate. Path analysis was used to examine both direct and mediated effects. The results indicated a statistically significant indirect effect of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension, mediated by inference making, for the entire participant group. However, there were notable differences between the struggling and adequate readers, as evidenced by distinct path diagrams. For struggling readers, the indirect effect of vocabulary breadth on reading comprehension through inference making was significant, while that of vocabulary depth was not significant. For adequate readers, both vocabulary breadth and depth directly explained reading comprehension. These results are discussed in the EFL context, encompassing assessment and instructional implications for EFL readers with varying levels of reading abilities.

This paper presents a case study of developing a blended reading program for Korean EFL middle school students using a process drama methodology to generate intrinsic motivation to read, improve reading comprehension and language fluency, and foster twenty-first-century skills such as creativity, communication, and cooperation. For the development of the reading program, a needs analysis was conducted using student questionnaires and diagnostic tests. From results of the needs analysis, sample lessons were designed based on the process drama methodology following its planning principles and strategies. Based on feedback from teachers and students after piloting the sample lessons, the blended reading program was finalized. The proposed blended reading program is expected to help Korean EFL middle school students build a positive attitude toward reading English books and develop reading comprehension, language fluency, and 21st-century core competencies. It will also encourage English teachers to use innovative teaching methods in English education.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the characteristics of Korean college students’ writings, which have been produced without or with the help of machine translation tool in the classroom. Specifically, this research attempted to investigate the linguistic characteristics of the students’ writings, and types of errors identified in the writings. Twelve pieces of writings from three college students were collected for analysis. Two online word analysis programs, Word Counter (2023) and LIWC-22 (2023), were employed for data analysis. The findings of data analysis found out that 1) The students’ drafts consisted of 22.8 sentences including 303.9 words in 3.6 paragraphs on average. 2) In the students’ drafts, ‘unique’ words (46.8%) were included a lot more than ‘difficult’ words (27%), and students tended to write their essay writings in an unfiltered or impromptu way rather than an analytical way regardless of their English language proficiency levels. 3) The highest frequency of errors was seen in grammatical errors (41.7%) followed by lexical errors (31.6%). Based on the research findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for the effective use of machine translation in English writing classes were presented.

The study investigated if teaching summarizing skills could improve the summary skills of Korean EFL university students. This study involved 38 university freshmen in a required English course and were randomly chosen as the control and experimental groups. The experimental group was taught through summarizing rules, while the control group was engaged in other lessons during the intervention period. The students’ summaries were analyzed as to how effectively the participants paraphrased and integrated the main ideas, the major supporting details, and accurate information from source text into their summaries. The results show that a significant instruction effect was observed in the summary writing performance of the experimental group, in identifying main ideas and major details and paraphrasing and integrating ideas, compared to the control group, which showed a significant change between the first and second summaries only on the accuracy measure. The results are also supported by the questionnaire on students’ perceptions of the instruction.

This study focused on the perceptions of the use of different types of songs on Korean EFL students in language learning. For this study, two other variables, proficiency and gender, were also examined. In the study, 197 undergraduate students took part. All participants were taking an English course at a university in Korea. The three types of songs-pop songs, children’s songs, and movie songs-were used in class for nine weeks in 2019. A perception survey about stress, confidence, and interest in EFL learning was carried out. A one-way ANOVA was utilized to compare the participants’ perceptions and learning through the three different types of songs. Findings revealed significant difference between children’s songs and pop songs regarding stress. There were also significant differences in confidence and interest depending on proficiency levels. Participants’ gender also affected stress levels during the use of songs for English learning. This study shed light on the use of songs in the EFL context with a more comprehensive view of students’ reactions and preferences towards the different types of songs. Limitations of the study were suggested at the end of the paper.

This study investigates the use of cohesive devices in the corpus of Korean college students’ compositions. In particular, it attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the lexico-grammatical contexts in which cohesive referential devices are employed in argumentative essays. For this purpose, a Korean EFL corpus and a native speaker corpus were analyzed based on Gray’s (2010) coding scheme. The coding scheme included variables such as the place and unit of the antecedent, the grammatical role and place of demonstratives, and their preceding or following structures. The results of the analysis showed that Korean EFL learners and native writers were similar in that they tended to use demonstrative pronouns as a subject and demonstrative determiners as objects/complements. Besides this general tendency, non-prototypical uses of the determiners were observed. The learners’ corpus manifested an overuse of an extended antecedent which could reduce the clarity of meaning. The most frequent verb following demonstrative pronouns was the copula (i.e., be) in both corpora. Finally, the learners tended to use a much smaller number of abstract/shell nouns than their native speaker counterparts.

This case study aimed to examine ways Korean university students in an English critical reading class participated in educational action projects. For this purpose, the reading class was designed to enhance students’ critical thinking skills and global citizenship as readers. Eighteen students in the class were taught by the teacher how to read texts in English using a critical perspective. The reading class was managed in a flexible mode with comprehension check-ups, critical dialoguing, and student-initiated action. Students were invited to connect what they discussed to action outcomes as a group project. Students in groups presented their understanding of readings and what they discussed in critical dialogues of the readings. They then reported what they did outside the classroom to foster themselves as truly active citizens in their local circumstances. Their group reports and project products were collected and analyzed into themes using qualitative methods. It was revealed that critical dialogue activities could help students come up with action-provoking questions on the readings, bring about a variety of action outcomes resulting from collaborations in groups, and help students become more active readers and citizens. Educational implications are also discussed.

The purpose of study was to investigate university students’ attitudes towards English language learning apps and examine whether there is any significant difference in their attitudes depending on their personal variables such as their gender, major, grade, nationality, and so on. This study also explored students’ perceptions of English language learning apps that they have used. Participants were college students living in Korea and China. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and an interview. Results showed that both Korean and Chinese students generally held positive attitudes towards English language learning apps, although Chinese students showed more positive attitudes than Koreans. The main reasons that they liked to use English language learning apps were their convenience, ubiquity, and rich resources. On the other hands, it was revealed that the lack of communication and feedback was the main problem of using such apps. Both Korean and Chinese students stated that it was an effective way to use English language learning apps to practice pronunciation, vocabulary, listening, and reading skills. Findings of this research suggest that English language learning apps should be developed to inspire users/students’ learning interest and foster learner autonomy.

Given the important status of students as major stakeholders of the National English Curriculum, this study investigated specific needs of curriculum-takers for an English curriculum and compared the results with analyses of curriculum evaluation from curriculum-completers. We implemented a needs assessment survey targeting 68 elementary school students (current curriculum-takers) and an evaluation survey targeting 27 high school students (curriculum-completers) in Korean EFL context. Results showed similarities between students’ needs and evaluation in terms of the ideal time for starting English education and time allotments. However, we found significant gaps between the two groups in several domains related to their specific goals of learning English. While the current curriculum-takers showed a high motivation to learn English for both instrumental purposes and integrative purposes, the curriculum-completers were strongly biased toward instrumental purposes. Our findings provide useful insight into curriculum development and improvement for seeking educational effectiveness in EFL settings. This study also provides helpful resources for conducting needs and evaluation analyses.

This study investigated EFL college students’ culture-related templates of written texts along the possibility of inter-cultural transfer. We designed a case study to explore how certain cultural assumptions contribute to EFL students’ rhetorical decisions while writing an argumentative writing. The participants were four EFL college students. Multiple data sources include background questionnaires, argumentative essays, and in-depth retrospective interviews. To analyze rhetorical choices in the participants’ writing, we identified choices of argumentation subtypes, and introduction and conclusion components. We also categorized the location of the writer’s main claim and thesis statement. The interview data were qualitatively analyzed to see what rhetorical resources participants draw from the cultural/educational contexts, and which factors had influenced the participants’ rhetorical strategy. Data analyses indicate that each participant manipulated different rhetorical structures to strengthen the rhetorical impact of their writing. Indeed, the complex constellation of individual participants’ cultural resources was at play in their L2 writing. This study contributes to our understanding of the rhetorical templates of L2 texts as constructs that are always in process, and therefore adaptable and negotiable.

Lexical richness makes an important contribution to L2 writing quality. To explore its importance, the study aims to identify and explain how lexical richness manifests in argumentative essays written in the final exam of reading and writing class by thirty-five undergraduates. The lexical richness consists of four interrelated elements: lexical diversity, density, sophistication, and fluency. Detailed text analysis can identify these elements in EFL students' academic writing. The correlation analysis showed that the use of lexical diversity, sophistication, and fluency all affect writing quality and can be seen differently in a text depending on different score ranges, vocabulary knowledge and linguistic performance. Further, the regression analysis revealed that the lexical sophistication was found to be the most significant predictor that contributes to writing quality. In sum, the lexical richness displayed in written text is a result of a person’s underlying vocabulary knowledge. This study ends with a pedagogical implication for teaching lexical richness in EFL academic coursework.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationships among English learners’ motivation, strategies and achievement, with a group of 51 Korean three-year college students. The students responded to the questionnaire of learning motivation and strategies. Also they took a mock TOEIC. Multiple regression analysis allowed for the analysis of learners’ motivation and strategies to predict a single dependent variable, their English achievement. The findings revealed that, first, ‘internal motivation’ was found the highest predictor of their English study, while ‘instrumental motivation-individual’ was the lowest motivation type for students. Second, participants used ‘social strategies’ most frequently in studying English, and they used the others in the order of ‘compensation strategies’, ‘affective strategies’, ‘cognitive strategies’, ‘memory strategies’ and ‘metacognitive strategies’. Last, the impact of learning motivation and strategies on the TOEIC scores was not statistically significant, but the relationship of learning motivation and strategies was found to be positive. Implications for the practical classroom and suggestions for further research are suggested.

We explored whether task complexity, operationalized by the two types of writing prompts, affects EFL high school students’ narrative writing in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, fluency, cohesion, and text quality. 32 intermediate EFL students who were randomly assigned to two prompt groups completed a written narrative task based on a series of sixteen pictures. Task complexity was operationalized as a bare versus frame prompt. The results indicate that the task complexity had an impact on lexical sophistication measures. The students in the framed prompt group were able to include more sophisticated vocabulary in their narratives than those in the bare prompt group. The findings are discussed in terms of the Limited Attentional Capacity Model in that the students in the bare prompt group might have prioritized meaning rather than form in order to ease attentional overload. The findings of our study could assist teachers in selecting writing prompts that have the potential to elicit the targeted features of writing performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate error patterns in EFL college students’ English writing as well as their change over time, based on the teacher’s feedback. In order to accomplish this purpose, two research questions were constructed; first, what are the characteristics of Korean EFL students’ writing based on the maturity of English sentence by the T-unit analysis? Second, what types of error patterns are produced in Korean EFL students’ writing? Also, how do the error patterns change based on the teacher’s feedback over time? The participants were four Korean EFL college students, and they were asked to pre-write, draft, revise and edit until they completed their final draft. The results of pre- and post-writing test were also analyzed. The major findings are as follows: 1) The mean number of T-unit among participants was 42.25 units, and the mean number of words per T-unit was 10.95 words. 2) The most frequently committed errors were found out as lexical and morphological errors. Moreover, the rate of lexical and sentence structure errors has been dropped, whereas the rate of punctuation errors has increased as the teacher’s feedback progressed over time. Pedagogical and practical suggestions are also made on the effective teaching of English writing in Korean classroom settings.

This research aims to explore whether guided visual artwork discussions called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) using picture book images can benefit and enhance Korean EFL secondary students’ L2 writing. Incorporating content analysis, this research examines how carefully guided artwork discussions can enhance visual understanding, critical thinking skills and interpretive L2 writing skills. The L2 writing samples of the focal students revealed that they were able to think based on visual clues. The discussions were led by the teacher who pointed out significant visual elements and allowed time for the students to explore diverse ideas. The focal students were able to piece together the jigsaw of the images and articulate their thoughts in English, during which time they learned to take risks and to make mistakes in using a foreign language. Their critical comments and improved L2 writing suggest how critical/aesthetic thinking skills can be developed through continued visual practices in a secondary EFL setting.

By examining two low-proficiency EFL students’ experiences of reading literature, and of writing about what they have read during a semester-long reading/writing course, we investigate literature’s place in EFL writing classes. We also observe whether using literature in EFL writing classes lead to successful synergies among LW (learning-to-write), WLL (writing-to-learn language), and WLC (writing-tolearn content). We adopt a case study methodology. The participants, Mia and Sun, are first-year students who attend a private university in Seoul. Both students favor the inclusion of literature in the reading-writing classroom. Mia experiences the literature-reading-writing connection mainly as language knowledge, with the strong appreciation for WLL perspective. By comparison, Sun concerns for LW dimensions of writing, together with the WLL perspective. This study provides evidence that literature-reading-writing connection serves as a vehicle not only for a rich reading experience but also for the synergistic learning of writing, content, and language.

The study discussed advanced-level Korean high school EFL learners’ demotivation and remotivation strategies in English learning. Demotivation refers to specific external forces that reduce or harm motivation; remotivation is the process of recovering the reduced motivation. Although both are common in L2 learning, only a few studies address this issue. Using the survey data of 130 participants, the study identified eight demotivating factors through factor analysis. The first factor, negative attitude toward English, indicates that even high school students felt demotivated because of the sheer difficulty of studying English. Descriptive statistics revealed that a negative attitude toward the English-speaking community was not a strong demotivator, which indicated that students possessed Machiavellian motivation. Correlation and regression analysis suggested that no demotivator had a significant negative relationship with English scores; rather, the ways students perceived the demotivators were more important. Eight remotivation strategies were identified; among those, “Keep thinking about the social importance of English” was the most often mentioned one. These results suggested the need for further qualitative, systemic research on remotivators and for training programs for practicing remotivation strategies.