The study investigated if teaching summarizing skills could improve the summary skills of Korean EFL university students. This study involved 38 university freshmen in a required English course and were randomly chosen as the control and experimental groups. The experimental group was taught through summarizing rules, while the control group was engaged in other lessons during the intervention period. The students’ summaries were analyzed as to how effectively the participants paraphrased and integrated the main ideas, the major supporting details, and accurate information from source text into their summaries. The results show that a significant instruction effect was observed in the summary writing performance of the experimental group, in identifying main ideas and major details and paraphrasing and integrating ideas, compared to the control group, which showed a significant change between the first and second summaries only on the accuracy measure. The results are also supported by the questionnaire on students’ perceptions of the instruction.

This case study aimed to examine ways Korean university students in an English critical reading class participated in educational action projects. For this purpose, the reading class was designed to enhance students’ critical thinking skills and global citizenship as readers. Eighteen students in the class were taught by the teacher how to read texts in English using a critical perspective. The reading class was managed in a flexible mode with comprehension check-ups, critical dialoguing, and student-initiated action. Students were invited to connect what they discussed to action outcomes as a group project. Students in groups presented their understanding of readings and what they discussed in critical dialogues of the readings. They then reported what they did outside the classroom to foster themselves as truly active citizens in their local circumstances. Their group reports and project products were collected and analyzed into themes using qualitative methods. It was revealed that critical dialogue activities could help students come up with action-provoking questions on the readings, bring about a variety of action outcomes resulting from collaborations in groups, and help students become more active readers and citizens. Educational implications are also discussed.

L1 and L2 summaries written by Korean university students in an EFL writing class were studied to determine the causes of instances of “plagiarism.” Summaries in both L1 and L2 were evaluated holistically along with seven essays in L2. It was found that more proficient writers in L1 and L2 tend to demonstrate less Reliance on the Source Text1); and a good amount of Reliance was also present in L1 as well as L2, suggesting that L2 interference is not the only cause of Reliance. These findings indicate a relation between Reliance on the Source text and writing ability both in L1 and L2. Moreover, a closer look at instances of Reliance often revealed efforts by the writers to integrate source text material into their own texts, though these attempts often seemed like “plagiarism” to writing teachers. However, Reliance in these cases may not be plagiarism per se from students’ point of view. The results are expected to help teachers understand the causes and nature of students’Reliance on the Source text in the writing instruction.

The present study aimed at investigating the effects of collaborative work between Korean EFL university students and international foreign students on Intercultural Communicative Competence. Twenty four students (14 Korean students and 10 international students) participated in this research. Chen and Starosta’s (2000) intercultural sensitivity scale was implemented with Paradigm Software to measure the participants’ resolution latency time while they were responding to the survey. The results demonstrated that two groups showed significant differences in the areas of respect for cultural difference and interaction confidence. Also, apart from the response value, the analysis of resolution latency time showed other aspects of participants’ cognitive level of intercultural sensitivity. Thus, this study indicates that a multi-round analysis can give a more in-depth insight beyond the mean value of the survey’s response.