The purpose of this study is to examine cohesive devices in English writing textbooks and Korean college students’ writings through text and corpus analyses. An analysis of three writing textbooks used in one college English program in Seoul showed that the textbooks did not cover a full range of cohesive devices; instead, they focused on sentence transitions and conjunctions, which L2 writers often overuse or misuse. Other cohesive devices such as demonstratives and lexical cohesive devices such as synonyms, paraphrasing, or collocations, however, were rarely covered. To understand how Korean college students actually use cohesive devices in writing, this study also analyzed the frequencies of sentence transitions and demonstratives in learner and native speaker corpora. The results revealed L2 learners’ tendency to overuse sentence transitions and demonstrative pronouns compared to native speakers. However, the results also showed that as proficiency increases, learners tend to use fewer sentence transitions.

This study explored the effectiveness and second language (L2) writers' perceptions of process-oriented writing, using portfolio-basedinstruction in a secondary English class at general school settings. The participants were 110 high school students enrolled in a private independent school in Gyeonggi. They learned to produce a four-paragraph-English-essay based on the process-oriented writing methodology, keeping a portfolio note for the entire semester. The instructor was a bilingual teacher of English whose native language is Korean. The 17 weeks' records written in the portfolio note were analyzed to portray whether the approaches enhanced overall performance and understandings about essay-writing. Findings revealed that the participants were satisfied with this approach and improved their writing skills using portfolio-based- instruction. For the sake of implementing the new assessment appropriately at public school settings, further studies are suggested to develop how to enhance classroom environment in order to increase the degree of learner-satisfaction in the essay-writing classes.

Based on the data from a two-year-long virtual ethnographic study, this article examines literate and social practices of a female adolescent English language learner (ELL) who is participating in a Korean popular culture (K-Pop) online fan site called Soompi.com. Drawing upon the concepts of ‘affinity space’ (Gee, 2004) and ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006), this article describes (1) how she participates and engages in multiple literacy practices in the site; (2) what resources she draws on for literacy development and content creations; and (3) what kinds of social relationships and identities she constructs in the site. Analysis reveals that she is able to access to distributed knowledge through peer-to-peer learning and teaching, and collaborative support, which help her develop not only language and composition related metacognitive skills, but also, positive social identities as a valued member of the site. Based on the aspects of the youth’s digital literacy practices, this study suggests some ways that language and literacy teachers can use to better meet ELLs' needs and to make their classrooms motivating and interactive learning communities.

The purpose of this study was to analyze writing activities of 1st grade middle school English textbooks based on the achievement standards of the 2009 revised National Curriculum and provide suggestions for improvements of textbooks. In this study, seven textbooks out of twelve were selected and their writing activities were analyzed as to whether they stick to the guidelines of the 2009 revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, specific focuses of the current study were 1) to look into writing activities based on achievement standards stipulated in the 2009 revised National Curriculum, and 2) to investigate the ratio of integrated writing activities to separate writing activities ones. The results of the analysis revealed that most of the writing activities seemed suitable based on learners’ real-life situations for achievements standards; however, the types of writing activities were rather simple, mainly focusing on given words. Next, there were not only separate writing activities but also a variety of integrated activities such as listening-writing, speaking-writing, and reading-writing activities. At the end of the paper, a few suggestions were provided to improve the qualities of writing activities in the textbooks.

The current study aimed to describe overall trends in recent English second language (L2) academic writing research and to identify effective interventions. To support drawing defensible conclusions based on the literature dealing with L2 writing, only recent empirical articles dealing with academic writing for English-L2 college students published in peer reviewed journals were included. Fifty five English L2 writing articles met the criteria for inclusion. For the identification of effective L2 writing interventions, I discriminated if the studies provided L2 writing interventions and the relevance to L2 writing development. As a result of analyses based on themes emerging in the English L2 academic writing literature, I noted effective English L2 academic writing interventions. Those interventions were teacher feedback, self-regulatory learning, peer feedback, and technology use. The use of a variety of measures and incorporation of specificity about prompts into the studies was recommended and the developmental trajectory of L2 writers was suggested to be further studied.

Second language writing research has focused on the learning-to-write approach whose analytic and pedagogical goal is to develop L2 learners' writing proficiency. Equally important is the writing-to-Iearn approach that uses writing as a primary tool for content learning. Drawn from writing across the curriculum (WAC) movement in North America, the writing-to-Iearn approach integrates writing into content instructions across various disciplines. Considering that Korean universities have increased English-mediated courses, it is timely to explore how the writing-to-Iearn approach can be used for content learning in English. Writing in this approach is considered to demonstrate whether and how students understand and undertake the course content presented in the assigned readings. The present study examines in-class timed writings produced in a course for English majors at a university in Korea. The student writings were analyzed and classified into four distinctive categories in terms of how they use sources in their writings. The data analysis demonstrates the types of problems these students have in processing complex texts and specifies an array of distinctive ski lls they need to be fully proficient.

Writing instruction has not been actively implemented in secondary schools in Korea, even though the National Curriculum suggests teaching all four communication skills in a balanced way. Taking the aforementioned into account in terms of continuity between secondary and higher education, this study explores college students' perceptions of writing in English through their actual writing experiences. Over fifty local area students who were advised to keep journals provided their ideas and thoughts on why English writing is hard for them. Data revealed that writing practice made the students aware of their lack of L2 knowledge, such as grammatical, syntactic, or lexical aspects. As the students developed their basic L2 knowledge, they recognized their need for L2 writing instruction. Some students revealed their anx iety through their writing. Others looked back on their learning in the past and reflected upon its shortcomings. Several attentive learners who showed interests in Engli sh learn ing provided their opinions on L2 writing. With the advent of the National Engli sh Ability Test (NEAT), the English education environment in Korea wi ll be changing. Thus, more output-oriented communicative activities and more opportunities for output need to be introduced in Korean English education arena for meaningful leallling process.

Thi s study investigated, using think-aloud protocol, what L2 learners focus on, notice and uptake in a series of English writing task and how this cognitive process is affected by their English proficiency. Nine Korean middle school students were engaged in a three-stage writing task, which consisted of the compos ing stage, the stage of comparing their own text with a reformulated version, and the revising stage. During the first two stages, the students were asked to think out loud in Korean. The results show that in the composing stage the high level students tended to focus on grammatical forms while the low level groups more concentrated on lexical items. When reformulations were provided, the students well noticed the diffe rences between their original texts and the reformulated ones but a majority of their noticing remained simple noticing without a proper reason or ended up with wrong inferences. Thi s overall shallow and incorrect process at the comparing stage resulted in re latively little changes in the revising stage. These fi ndings suggest that not only the quantity but also the quality of noticing is important for acquisition and more guidance and he lp should be provided for low level learners to benefit from writing and feedback.

This study aimed to explore the etfect of translated writing on English writing performance of Korean learners of English and their perceptions on translated writing in comparison with direct writing depending on their English proficiency level. A total of 75 male high school students were divided into two groups according to their L2 writing expertise and were asked to perform two ditferent writing tasks: 1) write directly in English (direct writing), and 2) write in Korean first and then translate the draft into English (translated writing). 136 written compositions (68 direct writing samples and 68 translated writing samples each) from 68 students were selected for analytical scoring and T-Unit analysis. The 68 students also filled a survey questionnaire which asked which type of writing was preferred for their English writing. The results showed that the performance of the direct writing was significantly better than that of the translated writing for hjghlevel writers, while there were no great ditferences among low-Ievel writers between the two writing tasks. T-Unit analysis revealed that syntactic complexity between direct and translated writings by two proficiency groups did not yield any statistically significant ditferences, and more students preferred translated writing to di rect writi ng in general. 8ased on the results, pedagogical implications are suggested.

최근 교육과정에 있어서 의사소통능력이 강조됨에 따라서 듣기, 말하기가 특히 강조되는 반면, 읽기와 쓰기 즉, 문자언어에 관한 학습능력 역시 같이 향상되고 있는지에 대해서는 논란의 여지가 많았고, 학교단위 수준에서 보면 오히려 부정적인 견해도 많았다. 이것은 알파벳, 단어, 문법, 구문, 독해로 이어지는 기존의 일반적인 상향식 학습의 폐해로 여겨지기 때문에, 문자언어에 미숙한 중학생이라 할지라도 텍스트 전체로부터 접근하는 하향식 읽기 방법을 접목할 필요가 있다. 글의 전체적인 구조와 전개방식에 대해 배경지식을 가진다면 읽기가 훨씬 수월해 질 것이기 때문이다. 쓰기의 경우에도 빈칸 채우기나 문장 단위의 통제되거나 유도된 수준에 그치는 경우가 많고, 실생활에 필요한 자유 작문 형태의 쓰기 학습은 소홀히 다루어지고 있는 것이 현실이다. 이 문제 역시 영어교사들이 자유 작문을 시도해 볼 신뢰성 있는 틀이나 형식이 없기 때문에 그 필요성을 인정하면서도 실제로 수업에서 적용키 어려운 점이 있었다. 이 같은 상황을 학생과 교사 입장에서 개선할 수 있는 효과적인 방법으로서, EFL(English as a Foreign Language) 상황 하에서 읽기와 쓰기를 체계적으로 연계시킨 좀 더 새로운 학습방법이 고안될 필요가 있었다. 본 논문은 비교적 최근의 이론인 과정-장르 중심 접근법에 이론적 근거를 두고, 장르별로 텍스트의 전체적인 구조와 언어적 특징을 구별하고, 이것을 쉽게 도식화한 스켈레톤 다이어그램을 그려 봄으로써, 읽기와 쓰기에 동시에 효과적인 새로운 접근법을 구안하였다.

This study investigated which type of corrective feedback, direct feedback or indirect feedback, would be more effective for reducing the targeted errors−verb, noun, and determiner errors−in L2 writing. The 20 Korean EFL college students were divided into two feedback conditions: direct feedback and indirect coded feedback. The results of the study showed that only the errors in the noun category, not the other two categories, showed a significant decrease over time. There were no significant differences in the effect of the differential feedback. The post surveys and interviews revealed that the students in both groups had difficulty in understanding their errors and feedback on them, and they wanted to receive a more detailed explanation about their errors in order to fully understand them. The overall findings indicate that different types of corrective feedback need to be combined with other methods such as a one-to-one conference or mini-lesson for further helping students understand their errors and reduce other errors in the future. This study provides L2 teachers with valuable information on how to respond more effectively to the needs of L2 learners.

This study aimed to investigate characteristics of English summary skills of Korean college freshmen. To achieve this aim, 120 English summary writings were collected from an English diagnostic test for college freshmen. Two texts with different features were used for the test. Text A is a persuasive essay with a problem/solution structure, and Text B is an expository essay with a collective structure. Fifty-three students summarized Text A and the others Text B. For each of the text groups, students were classified into two groups by their summary level. In the analysis of the writings considering the genre of the original text, organization, and adherence to summarization rules, it was found that the learners summarized the persuasive essay better than the expository essay. The high-ability group used various transition words and followed the structure of the original text when they organized their writings. As for summarization rules such as invention, selection, and paraphrasing, Text A group did not show any difference in their creation skill of topic sentence between the high- and low-ability group. On the other hand, the high-ability group that read Text B was better at creating general sentences than the low group. There was not a significant difference between the high- and low-ability groups in their paraphrasing skills, Text A group in general performing better than Text B group. Further suggestions and pedagogical implications are discussed.