This paper systematically analyzed research trends of North Korean defectors’ English education in South Korea using the scoping literature review method. From 2001 to 2022, research on this topic was categorized into three phases: 1) Phase 1 (2000-2011), 2) Phase 2 (2012-2019), and 3) Phase 3 (2020-Present). Each phase was analyzed using school levels, themes, and research methods. Approximately a quarter of previous research investigated alternative schools for North Korean defectors, with students having difficulties with their limited English learning experiences. Research themes mainly concentrated on learner factors (48 papers), followed by educational contexts and teaching methods (21 papers). Most studies on appropriate teaching methods for North Korean defectors adopted qualitative methods focusing on a small number of participants. Regarding research methods, studies adopting qualitative methods accounted for 48.0%, whereas studies using quantitative ones accounted for 10.4%, reflecting the limited research opportunities to collect a large set of data from various North Korean participants in South Korea.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of action research in the field of English education in Korea from 2001 to 2015 across 36 masters/doctoral theses and 21 articles from journals. The researcher specifically focuses on the following criteria: purpose, theme, methodology, differences between such characteristics across action research published in journals to that published in dissertations. According to the results, the number of action research dissertations has increased in recent years and the study suggests the number of action research continue its upward trend; action research in Korea has been more prevalent at the primary school level rather than at the secondary and university levels; and the proportion of mixed method in English education was much higher than that of the mixed research in education with a 43% mixed method proportion accompanied by 55% of qualitative research. The study concludes that action research in English education in Korea will become a more meaningful and feasible tool for practitioners’ inquiries, as it provides graduate students with applied experience in their current demanding school environment and writing assignments such as their thesis and research papers. The author suggests that the aforementioned factors enlarge the existential meaning of current graduate schools in Korea.

Articles in one domestic journal, English Teaching (ET), and one international journal, TESOL Quarterly (TQ) from 2011 to 2013 were surveyed in order to analyze current research trends and to suggest better orientation toward future research focusing on participants, research methods, target language skills, and research topics. The results show that university students have participated most in both of the journal articles, indicating that they are practically available to the researchers in higher educational settings. The proportion of quantitative and qualitative research methods was well balanced in TQ, while, in ET, more than 50 percent of the articles relied on quantitative research methodology along with a relatively larger proportion of mixed method research in ET. In terms of target language skills, writing has been studied most in ET and speaking in TQ, showing growing interest in productive language skills nowadays. As for research topics, articles based on socio-cultural factors have been published most in TQ and articles based on classrooms pedagogy in ET, which reflects that English learning is performed mostly in classroom settings in Korea. Pedagogical implications and suggestions are made based on the findings

This study aims at exploring the theoretical perspectives and research related to second language teacher identities. In particular, this paper focuses on the studies on the identities of English teachers in the Korean educational system. Major findings are as follows: First, based on the previous literature on teacher identities, teacher identities are defined as dynamic, multidimensional, and changing, as they continuously interact with individual, social, and cultural contexts. Second, it was found that studies have focused on (1) the meta-analyses of English teacher identities, (2) native-speaking English teacher identities, (3) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers co-teaching with native-English-speaking teachers, (4) the identities of non-native-speaking English teachers including pre- and in-service teachers, and (5) teacher identity development through teacher education activities. Lastly, this paper brings up issues and suggestions on the formation and development of English teacher identities. It also offers directions for the future research on professional identities of second language teachers.

The present study investigated the characteristics and trends of academic research by Korean scholars of English education. The main focus was on the extent to which active scholars focus on their primary major areas. The study surveyed 11 journals of major academic societies in Korea, and analyzed a total of 5,072 research papers written by 1,639 scholars. The results showed that the most popular topic was acquisition/learning (19.30%), followed by English (applied) linguistics (17.90%), English materials (14.59%), teaching methodology (12.03%), and learning psychology (10.11%), the top five collectively comprising 73.93% of the total papers. The 99 most productive scholars published 1.01 papers per year on average. Younger scholars published more papers per year on average than older scholars. As for the concentrated efforts in their primary areas of research, the top 99 scholars wrote 46.84% of their papers on their primary areas, and 20.03% on their secondary areas of study. Younger scholars concentrated more efforts on their primary areas than older scholars. The results were interpreted, and suggestions were made for the future research.

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.

English language teaching in elementarγ school was proposed and is now in practice on the basis of the Critical Period Hypothesis which is also theoretically supported by innatists who argue that UG begins attrition around puberty and that language acquisition becomes increasingly difficult beyond this period. This was proved true of first language acquisition and naturalistic SLA, but no evidence has been known about instructed second language leaming in formal education. Elementary school ELT is supported by some parents who wish their children to leam this world language effectively, but the educational environment is far from utilizing the leamers' UG: few teachers are capable of providing authentic input, so the leamers depend on their general intelligence and leaming strategy rather than UG. It is suggested that high school age is optimum for utilizing leamers' motivation, intelligence, and leaming strategy.