The purpose of this study was to analyze the grammar practice activities used in 14 recently published pre-intermediate and intermediate English language teaching textbooks. More specifically, this study analyzed the types of grammar practice activities that occurred, the order of such types, and the prevalence and composition of interrelated series of grammar practice activities. Results indicate that mechanical activities were less common than the other controlled alternative, meaningful activities, and also the least common type overall. Also, the results show that pre-communicative grammar practice activities were the most numerous grammar practice activities and comprised approximately 40% of all grammar practice activities. Additionally, it was found that grammar practice activities generally progressed from form-focused grammar practice activities to meaning-focused grammar practice activities. Last, it was found that multiple series of interrelated grammar practice activities were present with 54 distinct series appearing across the 42 lessons examined, and comprised almost half of all 246 grammar practice activities recorded as well.

Digital media play an undeniably influential role in contemporary communication, facilitating new kinds of multimodal forms of representation. However, ELT pedagogy does not always take these multimodal aspects of communication into account in a systematic way. One pedagogical approach that has been developed for this purpose is ‘multimodal composing’ or ‘digital multimodal composing’. This approach caters to the needs of English language learners in the digital age by engaging with multimodal forms of communication in digital media which are ‘embedded’ alongside the reading and writing tasks that make up the core of traditional approaches to ELT. In this article, I provide an overview of scholarly work that has been done in developing this approach. Drawing on a case study of English language learners in Hong Kong, I demonstrate what the approach looks like in practice and suggest how it might be implemented in other contexts, balancing multimodal forms of communication with the traditional demands of the English language curriculum.

Ballena, Mae Karr Ruth & Shim, Young-Sook. 2018. “Representation of Social Struggles in Korean and Philippine ELT Textbooks”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(1). 201~228. The present study investigates the representations of social struggles depicted in middle school English textbooks published in Korea and the Philippines. The data consists of 200 reading selections from 18 volumes of Korean textbooks and 108 reading selections from 3 volumes of Philippine textbooks. A total of 39 instances of social struggles were identified from the data analysis, and the following categories emerged from careful reviews of those instances: (1) social struggles involving social groups, which are further divided into subcategories such as gender, generation, socioeconomic class, social rank, race, and the colonizer/colonized; and (2) social struggles involving resources, which are subdivided into education, basic necessity, and technology. Findings show that social struggles associated with gender, colonization, education, and technology are common among Philippine and Korean ELT textbooks. The data analysis also reveals that Philippine textbooks present a wider array and more in-depth contextualization of social struggles while representational issues on stereotyping, desensitization, and juxtaposition of elements are found in Korean textbooks. Related to the research findings, some educational implications are provided particularly from the perspective of critical pedagogy.

This paper reviews ELT materials-related articles published in English Teaching, the journal ofthe Korea Association of Teachers ofEnglish (KATE), from 1965 to 2015. The paper builds on and expands S-H. Lee (2006) which reviewed ELT materialsrelated articles in English Teaching from 1965 to 2006. A research synthesis on a total of 71 ELT materials-related articles was conducted. The characteristics of the articles and how the Korean educational context affects ELT materials-related research were investigated. The results of the analysis show that there is a steady flow of ELT materials-related articles being published. The topic that was dealt with the most was the organization and structure of the material. The majority of the articles focus on government-sanctioned textbooks. In addition, changes to the National Curriculum of Korea seem to affect the content and timeliness of the articles as the number of articles related to textbooks increases immediately after new textbooks are published. Lastly, implications for English Teaching in terms of publishing and disseminating ELT materials-related articles are discussed.

This paper explores students’ and teacher’s experiences with project-oriented learning, as a form of critical pedagogy for Korean English language teaching. The teacher in this study developed and implemented a model of project-based instruction into a Korean tertiary context. The data set consisted of learner journals, teacher journals, and interviews. Six findings were ascertained: (1) The project approach created resistance from both the students and the teacher; (2) Communication between the teacher and the students eased the students’ frustrations; (3) The goal-oriented nature of project work encouraged students to construct linguistic and topic-related knowledge; (4) Group work promoted independent and collaborative learning; (5) The teacher’s role as a facilitator continued to confuse the teacher; and (6) Plagiarism seemed to limit student learning. Based on the findings, two pedagogical implications were drawn: Studentcentered approaches in large low-level classes would require some degree of teachercenteredness in order to respond to language demands; and learner and teacher journals can serve as an indicator of a need for teacher-centered methods.

This paper aims to examine the online learning service called the Cyber Home Learning System (CHLS), which was introduced in 2004 and has been in operation nationwide since 2005. It appears questionable as yet whether the CHLS has obtained a promising outcome. This study, therefore, aims to investigate how many secondary students are currently utilizing the English contents in the CHLS and how they perceive this service. The results of this study indicated that English contents of the CHLS were utilized by only a small number of students, and the contents were rarely perceived as useful. In particular, students perceived that there was little interaction with teachers in cyber space as well as in a classroom setting. Furthermore, five items were identified as the major reasons that hinder students from using the CHLS: lack of promotion; difficulty of self-directed learning; lack of time; low quality; and inconvenience. The results of this study suggest that teachers are influential in affecting students’ perception toward the CHLS, and that it is of paramount importance to renew the CHLS based on the results of a needs analysis.

This paper investigates key discursive practices constructed in English language teaching (ELT) in Korea and calls for the necessity of ‘criticality’ in theorizing, researching, and pedagogical practices. Utilizing a new qualitative research orientation of ‘bricolage’ (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Kincheloe, 2004) and critical discourse analysis (CDA; Fairclough, 1995), this paper engages in multi-methods of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data. More specifically, some current issues related to ELT in Korea are juxtaposed critically with various historical, political, sociocultural, and economical factors. This is to investigate how these factors influence the formation of discursive practices regarding the NS-NNS dichotomy and ownership of English, teaching English for practicality, relationships between language, culture, and power, and neutralizing and depoliticizing key concepts in ELT. This paper suggests that ELT in Korea is a site in which multiple discourses are contesting to delineate particular ways of teaching and learning. Accordingly, this paper argues that ELT practitioners should be aware of the role of English as symbolic power and understand what is implicated in current discursive practices in ELT in order to possibly engage in more progressive pedagogy in line with Freirian consciousness-raising or problematizing practices for Korean learners of English.