The present study aimed to analyze the developmental trajectories of English achievement and exposure time through private education, utilizing univariate and multivariate latent growth curve analysis. This study used a subset of the Gyeonggi Education Panel Study data from 2012 to 2017. The results indicated consistent disparities in the growth of English achievement, depending on the student’s proficiency levels at the starting point. In particular, the early exposure to private tutoring was significantly and closely related to the initial status and the growth trajectory of English achievement. When the sample was classified by urbanicity, the findings suggested that the gap in English achievement was likely to increase over time across the two regions, with a stronger correlation with private tutoring found in urban areas. These results underscore the need for educational intervention for students in less advantageous conditions, and they provide valuable pedagogical implications for teaching English in the Korean EFL context.

This study investigated the effects of multisensory memory strategies of pairing visual and aural learning strategies of aural lexical advance organizers (LAO) and read-alouds on 146 Korean high school students learning the meaning and pronunciation of 18 unfamiliar English words. In this quasi-experimental design, the control group learned the words on a single mode of written LAO and silent reading as opposed to two treatment groups of aural LAO and silent reading, and of aural LAO and read-alouds, respectively. The effects were tested three times via pre-, post-(immediately after learning), and delayed (30 days later) tests. The immediate and long-term effects were examined by detecting the differences across the three groups in post- and delayed-tests by one-way ANOVA, and the retention of effects was examined by paired t-tests in each group across the three tests. The results indicated that pairing aural LAO and read-aloud strategies was most effective in learning and retention of both vocabulary meaning and pronunciation.

This paper presents a case study of developing a blended reading program for Korean EFL middle school students using a process drama methodology to generate intrinsic motivation to read, improve reading comprehension and language fluency, and foster twenty-first-century skills such as creativity, communication, and cooperation. For the development of the reading program, a needs analysis was conducted using student questionnaires and diagnostic tests. From results of the needs analysis, sample lessons were designed based on the process drama methodology following its planning principles and strategies. Based on feedback from teachers and students after piloting the sample lessons, the blended reading program was finalized. The proposed blended reading program is expected to help Korean EFL middle school students build a positive attitude toward reading English books and develop reading comprehension, language fluency, and 21st-century core competencies. It will also encourage English teachers to use innovative teaching methods in English education.

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 study investigates the use of cohesive devices in the corpus of Korean college students’ compositions. In particular, it attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the lexico-grammatical contexts in which cohesive referential devices are employed in argumentative essays. For this purpose, a Korean EFL corpus and a native speaker corpus were analyzed based on Gray’s (2010) coding scheme. The coding scheme included variables such as the place and unit of the antecedent, the grammatical role and place of demonstratives, and their preceding or following structures. The results of the analysis showed that Korean EFL learners and native writers were similar in that they tended to use demonstrative pronouns as a subject and demonstrative determiners as objects/complements. Besides this general tendency, non-prototypical uses of the determiners were observed. The learners’ corpus manifested an overuse of an extended antecedent which could reduce the clarity of meaning. The most frequent verb following demonstrative pronouns was the copula (i.e., be) in both corpora. Finally, the learners tended to use a much smaller number of abstract/shell nouns than their native speaker counterparts.

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.

The purpose of study was to investigate university students’ attitudes towards English language learning apps and examine whether there is any significant difference in their attitudes depending on their personal variables such as their gender, major, grade, nationality, and so on. This study also explored students’ perceptions of English language learning apps that they have used. Participants were college students living in Korea and China. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and an interview. Results showed that both Korean and Chinese students generally held positive attitudes towards English language learning apps, although Chinese students showed more positive attitudes than Koreans. The main reasons that they liked to use English language learning apps were their convenience, ubiquity, and rich resources. On the other hands, it was revealed that the lack of communication and feedback was the main problem of using such apps. Both Korean and Chinese students stated that it was an effective way to use English language learning apps to practice pronunciation, vocabulary, listening, and reading skills. Findings of this research suggest that English language learning apps should be developed to inspire users/students’ learning interest and foster learner autonomy.

This research aims to explore whether guided visual artwork discussions called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) using picture book images can benefit and enhance Korean EFL secondary students’ L2 writing. Incorporating content analysis, this research examines how carefully guided artwork discussions can enhance visual understanding, critical thinking skills and interpretive L2 writing skills. The L2 writing samples of the focal students revealed that they were able to think based on visual clues. The discussions were led by the teacher who pointed out significant visual elements and allowed time for the students to explore diverse ideas. The focal students were able to piece together the jigsaw of the images and articulate their thoughts in English, during which time they learned to take risks and to make mistakes in using a foreign language. Their critical comments and improved L2 writing suggest how critical/aesthetic thinking skills can be developed through continued visual practices in a secondary EFL setting.

The study discussed advanced-level Korean high school EFL learners’ demotivation and remotivation strategies in English learning. Demotivation refers to specific external forces that reduce or harm motivation; remotivation is the process of recovering the reduced motivation. Although both are common in L2 learning, only a few studies address this issue. Using the survey data of 130 participants, the study identified eight demotivating factors through factor analysis. The first factor, negative attitude toward English, indicates that even high school students felt demotivated because of the sheer difficulty of studying English. Descriptive statistics revealed that a negative attitude toward the English-speaking community was not a strong demotivator, which indicated that students possessed Machiavellian motivation. Correlation and regression analysis suggested that no demotivator had a significant negative relationship with English scores; rather, the ways students perceived the demotivators were more important. Eight remotivation strategies were identified; among those, “Keep thinking about the social importance of English” was the most often mentioned one. These results suggested the need for further qualitative, systemic research on remotivators and for training programs for practicing remotivation strategies.

The purpose of this study was to explore how motivational factors affect Korean EFL secondary students’ motivated learning behavior using structural equation modeling (SEM). It further examined differences in the internal structure of L2 motivation over time. A total of 489 secondary school students participated in the study. Data were collected at two time points during an academic semester: in the beginning and at the end of the semester. Results of the SEM showed that students’ ideal L2 self was the strongest determinant of their motivated learning behavior at both time points for middle school students, whereas for high school students, ought-to L2 self had the strongest direct and significant impact on their motivated behavior in learning English throughout the semester. It was also found that both middle and high school students’ perceptions about the international posture of English and their parents’ involvement in English learning made indirect effects on their motivated behavior. Pedagogical implications and research suggestions are discussed.

This paper explores Korean EFL students’ test-taking strategy use in gap-filling inference items of the College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT) through retrospective think-aloud protocols. Eight college freshmen participated in this study, and verbally reported the process of answering three gap-filling inference items in their L1. Students with higher proficiency levels tended to use language learner strategies with more variety, while students of lower levels often relied on familiar words and distractors as avoidance strategies. Also, the position of the gap in each item had an effect on the order and portions of reading. Unusual reading patterns were more frequently found from those who checked the gap first, when the gap was located in the middle or at the end of the passage. To foster positive washback effect of the test items on learning, this paper suggests that teachers encourage students to effectively employ language learner strategies in order to comprehend the text rather than rely on test-wiseness.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the causal relationships among factors affecting L2 reading achievement using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. A total of 327 Korean EFL high school students completed a questionnaire on L2 reading motivation and strategies. The students’ L2 listening and reading comprehension abilities were measured by scores on the practice test for Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and self-assessed listening and reading proficiency. The study results showed that the students’ L2 reading efficacy, L2 reading strategy use, and L2 listening skills were significant predictors of their L2 reading achievement, while L2 reading motivation showed no significant relation with reading achievement. The nonsignificant path loading between reading motivation and reading achievement implies that reading motivation alone is not sufficient to promote students’ L2 reading proficiency. The final SEM model indicated a relatively strongest contribution of L2 listening ability over L2 reading efficacy and strategy use to L2 reading achievement. Pedagogical implications based on the findings are discussed.

This study examines opportunities for Korean EFL students at a Korean university to use English as their L2 in their informal social networks. Through interviews as well as analysis of the students’ interactions in an informal environment, the study focuses on the major factors affecting the construction of these opportunities. The findings show that the students expanded their social networks with English speakers during their first year of university. More importantly, the study indicates that the same students sometimes had difficulty constructing interactions in English in these networks. This difficulty can be attributed to various factors, including the learners’ history as an L2 learner/user and some norms in the community where the learners were situated. However, the analysis of L1/L2 selection and its negotiation in their interactions shows that the construction of L2 interactions also appears to be mediated by certain factors, such as accommodated goals of interaction and specific discourse strategies. Research implications are provided at the end of the research paper.

This study examines how native English speaking (NES) and Korean non-native English speaking (KNES) teachers assess L2 writing performance. More specifically, this study aims to investigate whether these two groups of raters evaluate writing samples differently when using different rating scales (holistic vs. analytic) and different task types (narrative vs. argumentative). Four NES and four KNES raters evaluated 78 narrative and 78 argumentative essays written by Korean EFL university students using both holistic and analytic rating rubrics. The comparison between the two rater groups indicated that the scores given by the two groups were statistically significantly different for both holistic and analytic ratings regardless of the two task types investigated. Overall, KNES teachers rated the essays more harshly than their NES counterparts, irrespective of task type and rating scale. Multiple regression analysis of five analytic sub-criteria revealed that the two rater groups demonstrated similar patterns in assessing argumentative essays, while for narrative essays, the relative influence of each analytic sub-criterion on overall writing quality differed for the two rater groups. Implications for L2 writing assessment are included.

The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between EFL learners’ reading motivation, proficiency, and strategy use. Fifty-seven students at a Korean university participated in the study. Two self-report questionnaires and a reading comprehension test were used to measure the learners’ motivation to for reading in English, reading proficiency, and reading strategy use. No significant correlation was found between reading motivation and reading strategy use or between reading motivation and reading proficiency. However, students’ performance on the test was positively related to their reported reading strategy use, showing a moderate correlation. In addition, the study found that although proficient students and less proficient students used almost the same kinds of strategies to support their reading comprehension, more proficient students used strategies more frequently than less proficient students.

The skill of argumentation is problematic for EFL students who are linguistically and rhetorically deficient in expressing academically appropriate forms in English. In fact, many EFL students struggle to write highly elaborate arguments. In this study, we investigated whether EFL students’ skills for argumentation improved after receiving peer feedback. We also investigated which elements of argumentation were related to the quality of argumentative writing. To this end, we used the Toulmin model of argumentation. We collected 34 EFL students’ first drafts and revisions as well as reviewers’ written feedback, and analyzed their drafts and revisions with a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches. We found that peer feedback had a positive effect upon overall writing quality. Peer feedback made meaningful contributions to the development of students’ argumentative strategies they employ. It seems apparent that peer response prompted the students to reflect on whether the logic of their argumentation made sense to the readers.

The present study investigates Korean university EFL students’ use of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in argumentative writing. The data for the study consist of a Korean university students’ writing corpus that is divided into three different subcorpora based on proficiency levels, and a reference corpus of American students’ writings. The results show that the nonnative writers in all three groups greatly overused CAs. Examination of their overuse patterns according to different taxonomic types indicated that sequential and additive types were mostly overused, as much as six times more than those by the native writers. In addition, several characteristics of the nonnative writers’ CA usage are discussed, including their heavy dependence on sentence-initial positioning, and both form-related and usage-related misuses of CAs, especially among the lowest-level learners. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions.