In this paper, we explore how English language teacher education could be envisioned in different ways if one were to adopt a ‘social’ approach toward English language education. More specifically, drawing on our experience, which we gathered as Korean faculty members of two Canadian universities, with the help of reflexive inquiry, we highlighted the importance of fostering critical intercultural competence among language teachers. Focusing on a small-scale case study of Korean teacher candidates who participated in a short-term community-based service learning in Canada, our analysis examines how to train English teachers to develop their own intercultural understanding through experiential learning activities, so they can better develop intercultural competence among their students. We argue that a critical understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity is an essential component of English language teacher education in increasingly diverse EFL classrooms across South Korea in the era of globalization, transnationalism, and multilingual/ multiculturalism.

The main objective of this research was to probe the DLM-based teaching method for Korean students’ English communication skills. For this study, the corpus was made of Korean reading materials with 307 frequently used sentence patterns extracted. The present research employing a quasi-experimental design and a comparative analysis of Korean and English corpora revealed the followings: first, the difference between the DLM (experimental group) and the CTR (control group) was examined in terms of the pretest score in order to identify the students’ level of English productive skills. After the pretest, meaningful translation focused DLM was employed in the instruction of the experimental group but not in the instruction of the control group. After one semester of teaching, on the posttest, the students in the DLM group outperformed the students in the CTR group. In conclusion, it can be inferred that the DLM teaching method is effective for English productive skills and can be a good solution to our English education environments in which both teachers and students use Korean as a medium of teaching English.

This study compares the phonics instruction with the whole language approach to literacy instruction in elementary English education and investigates the effects of the two approaches on literacy skills and affective factors. The experiment was conducted over eight weeks by sampling 56 fifth-graders at an elementary school in Seoul. The control group was given phonics instruction using English stories, whereas the experimental group was given the whole language approach using the same English stories. The instruments included pre- and post-reading and writing English tests and pre- and post-questionnaires. The analyses showed that the whole language approach had more positive effect than phonics instruction on improving learners’ English reading and writing ability. Furthermore, the whole language approach showed a positive change in the affective domain of interest, self-learning attitude and recognition, whereas two sectors of self-confidence and learning motivation did not show statistically significant difference compared to the control group. These results suggest that the whole language approach is more efficient than phonics instruction in developing learners’ literacy in elementary English education.

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.

색채어는 한 민족문화와 언어에서 없어서는 안될 중요한 부분으로, 독특한 언어기능과 문화상징의미를 지니고 있으며, 민족특유의 색채의미와 문화전통을 반영하고 있다. 본고에서는 색채어로를 가지고 의미지칭의 객관적인 동일성의 기초상에서 중국어-영어 색채어인"홍색"의 문화상징의미 및 차이를 분석했다. 중국어-영어의 비교언어학 연구의 사고와 실례를 통해 대외중국어 어휘교육에서 문화를 초월한 의식양성의 필요성에 대해 설명하였다.

Recently, the use of corpus has been very popular in almost a11 areas of language research, as a means of exploring the actual patterns of language use. The rnain goal of this paper is to show the possibilities of and advocate exploiting corpus for English language education. For this goal, it first provides a basic understanding of corpus by describing the types of corpus, issues in corpus design, and the use of a concordancing prograrn in analyzing corpus. This is fo11owed by the discussion of three different ways in which corpus can contribute to English language education. First, the content of English teaching can be improved by the rnore accurate and detailed description of the target language that is provided by corpus-based research. Secondly, corpus analysis itself can be adopted as a language teaching methodology, in which learners discover various facts about English by thernselves. Fina11y, analysis of learner corpus can help us diagnose and solve the problems that the learners typica11y have.

This short essay is a slightly modified version of a presentation read at the annual Institute seminar held at SNU on the 5th of December to exchange views on the function of reading in foreign language education in Korea. It begins with the discussion of a need on the paπ of policy makers of English teaching to reassess and revise the dominantly pragmatic and instrumentalist philosophy particularly working in the pedagogy of reading in English. According to the revisionist review of the present writer, the guiding spirit of the 4-skill orientation has so far tended to overvalue the linguistic and communicative functions (or ’grammar’ as is termed here to contrast with the 'text’ that follows) at the cost of the human or readerly values carried by signifying textuality of the reading material. Language should and is fated to reflect and realize the lived experience of concrete and individualized people and society. English is a natural and cultural language that embraces a11 these cultural resourcefulness and expressiveness before it is a foreign language. Strategies of reading pedagogy ought to reflect this fundamental as well as human or value-oriented aspect of language despite the limited level of the language on the part of its leamers.

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.