While metadiscourse use has been well-attended in second language (L2) writing research, relatively less effort has been made in documenting changing patterns of metadiscourse use among L2 writers. The present study addressed this gap by probing a diachronic change of interactive metadiscourse in research articles published in English Teaching across a span of 40 years. Using the corpus of 931 articles written by Korean L2 writers, we examined whether, and to what extent, interactive metadiscourse use in academic writing had changed over time. Our findings revealed an overall increase in the frequency of interactive resources mainly driven by a significant increase of evidentials. The observed pattern of change in interactives suggests that academic discourse within the applied linguistics community in Korea is becoming more persuasive and reader-oriented over time, consistent with Hyland and Jiang (2018) who reported a dramatic rise in interactive metadiscourse in the global discourse community of applied linguistics.

While the use of metadiscourse in L2 writing has received considerable attention in the past, little effort has been made to examine how L2 writers’ use of metadiscourse in academic writing has evolved over time. In addressing this, the present study explored a diachronic evolution of interactional metadiscourse in research articles (RAs) published across a span of 40 years (1980-2021) in English Teaching. Based on 931 articles consisting of 6.4 million words, we examined whether the use of interactional metadiscourse has changed over the past 40 years. Our findings revealed that there was a global decrease in interactional metadiscourse over the past 40 years. While the frequency and diversity of interactional metadiscourse have slightly decreased over time, the proportion of each metadiscourse category remained consistent. The study further suggests that Korean L2 scholars who publish in English Teaching tend to hedge more than they boost or use attitude markers compared to those who publish in global journals.

This study investigates the role of age of first exposure in the acquisition and processing of English articles in an EFL setting. Fifty advanced Korean learners of English participated in a grammatical acceptability judgment task and a self-paced reading task. The participants were divided into two groups depending on the initial age at which they were constantly exposed to English at least 3 hours per week (‘early group’ < 12; ‘late group’ ≥ 12). No significant performance differences were observed between the two groups in the judgment task. However, meaningful differences were found between the reading behaviors of the two groups in the self-paced reading task. These findings show that the learners’ age of first exposure has a significant impact on learners’ performance when the ability to process English articles in real-time is evaluated. In contrast, it has much less impact on learners’ performance on a task which tests explicit knowledge under no time-limit condition.

In this research synthesis, a total of 313 studies on English learning motivation published in South Korea from 2000 to 2017 were reviewed. The data were categorized into four criteria: publication year, research method, participant, and research topic. First, the annual trend clearly demonstrated that the number of motivation research showed a steady growth. The dominant research method was quantitative (207 papers) over qualitative (40 papers) and mixed methods (48 papers). University students (157 papers) were major population in English learning motivation research followed by junior high (36 papers), elementary (30 papers), high school students (30 papers), research synthesis (17 papers), and kindergarten students (3 papers). Most research focused on identifying specific subcomponents of English learning motivation in a particular research context. The study suggests that future research needs to focus more on diverse student group such as home-schoolers. Also, the use of research synthesis needs to be encouraged in order to capture the complex nature of English learning motivation.

This study investigated the effects of two types of corrective feedback (CF), recasts and metalinguistic feedback (implicit vs. explicit CF), on the development of implicit and explicit knowledge of English articles. It also examined the relationship between learners’ language aptitude, in particular language analytic ability, and their knowledge development through different types of CF. Six intact intermediate communication English classes (a total of 104 students and two English-speaking teachers) at a university participated in the present study. In CF groups, learners received recasts or metalinguistic feedback (MF) to the errors of the English articles during communicative activities, while no CF was given to the control group. The study employed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design, and four different tests were used to measure learner implicit and explicit knowledge. The study found both recasts and MF effective in the development of implicit knowledge and selective effects of recasts on the improvement of explicit knowledge. This suggests that both implicit and explicit CF bring about the development of implicit and explicit knowledge. In addition, language analytic ability was found to be closely related to learners’ gains through both CF and development of explicit and implicit knowledge of English articles.

The study investigates the relative effects of two types of indirect written corrective feedback (CF) on the acquisition of English articles. Thirty-five high intermediate Korean EFL college students who were enrolled in three composition classes participated in this study. After the instruction on the English article usage, three classes (Class A, Class B, and Class C) received different types of feedback on their blog writings over the course of a semester. Both Class A and Class B received indirect feedback in the form of underlining errors. In the following class, Class A received correct forms with metalinguistic information for the errors revised incorrectly, but Class B did not have such opportunities. The Class C received no feedback. The results showed that only Class A, which received indirect feedback plus correct forms with metalinguistic information, made a statistically significant gain from the 3 sessions of feedback treatment. Pedagogical implications were provided on the basis of the findings.

The role of oral corrective feedback (CF) in second language (L2) learning has been extensively investigated. However, little attention has been given to the relationship between different types of CF and explicit/implicit L2 knowledge. For this reason, the present study explored the effects of recasts and metalinguistic feedback on the development of explicit and implicit knowledge of the English articles. Sixty-three university students enrolled in intermediate Communication English classes participated, and they were assigned into a metalinguistic group, a recast group, and a control group. While the students engaged in meaning-based activities (i.e., retelling stories), the feedback groups received respective CF on the errors of English articles and the control group did not receive any feedback. Untimed grammatical judgement tests were employed to measure the students’ improvement of explicit knowledge and elicitation oral imitation tests were used to examine their gains of implicit knowledge. The study found that both recasts and metalinguistic feedback equally facilitated the development of explicit knowledge over time. However, they were not as effective as in the improvement of implicit knowledge, showing a short-term effect on the development.

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 research aims to review and analyse articles on listening comprehension published in English Teaching over the past 50 years. A total of 71 such research articles were published from 1965 to 2015 in the journal, and they were analysed from the following five perspectives: I) historical trends in listening research, 2) main topic areas of the papers, 3) research subjects' levels, and 4) research methodology. The results of this review study are as follows. First, the volume of listening research gradually increased over the first 40 years ofthe journal's history, but it has dropped drastically over the past decade. Second, 'listening strategies' and 'evaluation' were researchers' favoured topics, while listening research on pronunciation has been actively conducted in recent years. Third, research with university students outnumbered research done with elementary and secondary students. Finally, research using quantitative methods dominated the research methodology. A sharp decline in the number of articles on listening research in recent years and unbalanced research in terms of its topic, subjects' levels, and research methodology are noteworthy.

This study investigates 95 articles on English teacher education published in English Teaching for the past 50 years. Remarkable changes have been made in research methodology and research focus. In particular, six themes emerged from the selected articles and were discussed: (1) teacher qualifications and roles, (2) teacher training and professional development, (3) teacher cognition and perceptions, (4) teacher professional identities, (5) teacher talk, (6) teacher evaluation. Finally, pedagogical implications and directions for the future research are suggested.

This paper overviews English language assessment-related articles published in English Teaching from 1965 to 2015. One hundred thirty-eight articles are chosen for analysis, and the discernible trends epitomizing a specific era are traced. The results show articles concerning item analysis and improvement oftesting methods constituted a major portion of the periodical in the early days. The number of the assessmentrelated articles began to soar from the late 1980s, and recently a major focus seems to have shifted to test validity. In terms of research topics, a significant body of research has been conducted on item analysis, improvement of testing practices, performance assessment, evaluation methods, and test validity. Even though the overall level of the articles has advanced dramatically over the past 50 years, little research has been intended in the areas of classroom assessment, English language testing policies, washback effects, new assessment tools, and the validity of national tests. This paper concludes with a suggestion that more efforts should be made to fill the gap between research and testing practices in the field.

The purpose of the current study is to examine 123 English reading-related articles published in English Teaching from 1965 to 2014 in order to consider what has been studied in English reading and how, and to gain insight into what has to be studied and how from now on. To fulfill this purpose, the articles were analyzed in terms of basic data, research methods, and research themes across four time periods. In accordance with the findings, it has to be admitted that English reading-related research has made notable, impressive advances in quantity and quality. In particular, it is notable that research methods and themes have been diversified and expanded across the periods. For further development, it is required for researchers' ceaseless endeavor to explore ongoing issues and troublesome gaps in English reading research and to establish a theoretical and practical framework for reading research in Korean EFL context.

This study investigates variation in article use by Korean secondary school students of English. The study shows how two different tasks affect variation with respect to article types (a, the, and zero), proficiency level and the semantic feature, specificity. One task, a wide domain task, focused on grammar in general and the narrow domain task focused on articles. The statistical results showed that the subjects performed significantly better on the narrow domain task than on the wide domain task. The subjects showed significant differences among the three articles in the wide domain task, while they did not in the narrow domain task. The subjects performed significantly better with non-specific DPs (Determiner Phrases) than with specific DPs in the wide domain task, but reversed results were revealed in the narrow domain task. The present study presents some finding that grammatical domain plays a role as a variable for variability and shows that different tasks on the same research topic may produce different findings.

This is an interdisciplinary study based on Library and Information Science and English Education through the examination of scholarly communication on English education objectively. For this study, three scholarly journals English Teaching, Journal of The Applied Linguistics Association of Korea, and Foreign Languages Education were selected through surveys. A total of 1,091 research articles were analyzed in terms of the pattern of article production and writers, research topics, research methodologies, and research participants. Content analysis was performed to clarify the distinction between these three journals. The results showed that topics on language skills were the most examined out of the 16 categories in ET and FLE. On the other hand, topics on SLA ranked first in AL. In terms of methodology, quantitative research was conducted more frequently than qualitative and mixed methods research from the three journals. And in terms of participants, college students, including graduate students ranked first from the three journals. The findings suggest that scholarly communication needs to be extended to a broader context including students, classroom teachers and more researchers from the public and private sectors.

The present study aimed to investigate some differences in journal article abstracts written in English by Korean researchers and international scholars and to provide Korean researchers with guidelines for writing accurate, self-contained, informative and coherent abstracts. To this end, intra- and inter-lingual analyses of English abstracts were carried out in terms of rhetorical structures, linguistic features, and disciplinary areas. The results reveal that (1) international and Korean researchers show some differences of rhetorical and discourse features in their English abstracts and (2) some types of errors in terms of grammatical-syntactic and lexico-semantic aspects are frequently committed by Korean researchers. The results of this investigation suggest that Korean researchers should be aware of common rhetorical structures and linguistic features of English abstracts and graduate students should be provided with EAP courses to practice writing English abstracts relevant to their major areas.

The present study investigates the semantics involved in the L2 English article use by Korean EFL learners. The examined usage data were extracted from the researcher compiled learner corpus, the Kyungpook National University Student English Learner Corpus-Writing (KSELC-W). The importance of current research is in the fact that the investigated data was not collected through formal elicitation tasks or grammar focused activities. Therefore, the learner corpus data represent Korean EFL learners' unconscious knowledge of the English article system and their performance on timed writing sessions which did not focus on grammar. The findings reveal that Korean EFL learners do not make random misuse or overuse errors in production of English articles the and a(n) and that the patterns are in accordance with the Fluctuation Hypothesis. Additionally, results show that the semantic feature specificity effects the Korean EFL learners in the current study and provide supporting data for direct UG access underlying article choice. These results support previously reported findings by Ionin et. al. (2004, 2009) and Ko et al. (2009).

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the semantic structure of the three types of English articles—indefinite, definite, zero articles―with respect to the supposedly flexible boundaries of English nouns under the framework of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 2000). To facilitate this, a new notion has been proposed: Boundedness Filter (BF), which is thought to play a decisive role in determining the activation or inactivation of noun boundaries in relation with the selection of corresponding articles. BF is supposed to operate in a variety of cognitive domains such as physical space for the indefinite article and psychological space for the definite article. This paper further claims that the count or mass-like property of a given noun is not fixed originally as prescribed in dictionaries or grammar books; rather, its boundary has a flexible feature depending upon the context in which it is used. This is why a common noun with its indefinite article as a boundary marker can sometimes be changed into a mass noun without any article. The BF and flexible characteristics of English noun boundaries can also be used to explain the reason that some apparently visible boundaries are not realized in physical space as indefinite articles.