Writing conferences are one-on-one feedback sessions that enable teachers and students to engage in constructive interactions to improve students’ writing. While interacting individually, a teacher can use various feedback strategies to improve the quality of a student’s writing. This study examined how a secondary English teacher elicited students’ self-correction of writing issues during EFL writing conferences conducted in Korean (L1) as part of an after-school English program at a Korean high school. One English teacher and five first-year students participated in writing classes for two weeks during the winter vacation. Their conversations were video-recorded and analyzed using Conversation Analysis. Findings revealed that the teacher elicited the student’s selfcorrection through four key strategies: (1) metalinguistic clues, (2) building on initial corrections, (3) leveraging morphological knowledge, and (4) guiding students through a stepwise construction of sentence elements. This study can enhance our understanding of corrective feedback in secondary EFL writing conferences and offer insights for improving teacher-student feedback interactions.
This study examines the beliefs and practices regarding performance assessment among Korean English teachers in secondary schools. A survey was conducted with 109 teachers using a 52-item online questionnaire to investigate the extent to which teachers’ beliefs align with their instructional practices and to categorize them based on these criteria. Although teachers acknowledge the pedagogical advantages of performance assessment, a significant gap exists between their beliefs and actual implementation, primarily due to the considerable time required for its execution. Teachers with longer tenure and higher qualifications demonstrated a more positive and effective application of performance assessment. The findings highlight the necessity for targeted professional development to enhance teachers’ use of performance assessment strategies, especially for those who are skeptical about their effectiveness. Such initiatives are essential for bridging the gap between beliefs and practices, fostering an environment that promotes the effective use of performance assessment, and ultimately improving teaching quality and student learning outcomes in Korean English education.
This action research explores an effective teaching method for EFL teacher’s questioning types in a Korean online university context. By reviewing the previous studies on teachers’ questioning types which have been categorized mostly by cognitive linguistic tradition, this study sorts out the different questioning types from socio-linguistic perspective using the Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) framework. These new categorized questioning types are applied to instruct the participant students (57) who were majoring in English and were mostly interested in TESOL (Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages) certificate program provided by the online university in Korea. Using a series of lecture content, two assignments, and an online discussion board, these newly added questioning types (offer and request types replacing command) were successfully taught in an online lecture entitled ‘Classroom English and Communication’ in the first semester of 2021. With a mixed analysis method, this study explains the procedures of various classroom tasks and analyzes the assignment data and online discussion board texts. This teacher classroom communication consisting of instruction and questioning needs to be reconsidered due to this study’s findings and its pedagogic implications that are clearly based on socio-linguistic perspectives.
This study examines multiple language-identities embedded within the emerging professional teacher identity of international graduate students teaching Korean as a foreign language (KFL). Situated in the context of Korean classrooms at an American university, this study draws data from two rounds of interviews with three instructors (one nonnative and two native Korean speakers). The qualitative analysis reveals that their professional teacher identity revolves around multiple language identities grounded in their L1 cultural norms and perceived English language proficiencies. Their views and undertakings of local cultural norms indicate the varying ways in which these instructors projected their L1 and L2 identities onto their emergent teacher identity. Given the vexed relationship between notions of teacher authority in her L1 Japanese culture and the local norms of interaction, the nonnative teacher maintained authority by establishing a certain distance from her students. By contrast, the native teachers accommodated the local understandings of teacher authority and (re)shaped their view of a teacher to the locally-defined professionalism, a teacher like ‘a friend’. The negotiated identity of the KFL teachers improved classroom interaction and engendered positive view about teaching. The findings are discussed to highlight foreign language teacher identity in a teacher education program.
This qualitative study, grounded in the sociocultural perspective, attempts to explore a Korean English teacher’s identity construction by employing a self-study, through narrative inquiry. As a self-study, the participant, Sofia, will also be the researcher. Data from her teacher life story narrative and reflective journals were analyzed to see how she reconstructs her identity through reflection of her own experiences. The study revealed four major themes showing the identity formation of the participant: (1) identity formation by resisting identity assumptions or stereotypes; (2) identity formation through influence of context; (3) identity formation through previous learning experiences; and (4) identity formation through conceptualizing teacher as professional. Based on these findings, the present study generates implications for teacher education practice and future research.
This study examined the effects of learner-initiated noticing through comparison and teacher-initiated noticing through grammar instruction on EFL middle school learners' English writing process and uptake. For the study, 18 second-year middle school students with intermediate-high English proficiency were divided into three groups. After the first writing composition, one group (Group C) underwent a comparison stage, in which they compared their original writings and reformulated versions. Another group (Group I) received reactive grammar instruction on the four most frequent types of grammar errors, while the other group (Group IC) underwent both stages. All three groups revised their original writings in the next stage. To examine the learners' cognitive processes, think-aloud protocols were analyzed. The results showed that Group IC performed better in uptake than the other two groups, while no major differences were found between Groups I and C. This suggests that a mixture of learner-initiated noticing and teacher-initiated noticing influenced the learners' uptake.
This paper explores students’ and teacher’s experiences with project-oriented learning, as a form of critical pedagogy for Korean English language teaching. The teacher in this study developed and implemented a model of project-based instruction into a Korean tertiary context. The data set consisted of learner journals, teacher journals, and interviews. Six findings were ascertained: (1) The project approach created resistance from both the students and the teacher; (2) Communication between the teacher and the students eased the students’ frustrations; (3) The goal-oriented nature of project work encouraged students to construct linguistic and topic-related knowledge; (4) Group work promoted independent and collaborative learning; (5) The teacher’s role as a facilitator continued to confuse the teacher; and (6) Plagiarism seemed to limit student learning. Based on the findings, two pedagogical implications were drawn: Studentcentered approaches in large low-level classes would require some degree of teachercenteredness in order to respond to language demands; and learner and teacher journals can serve as an indicator of a need for teacher-centered methods.
The present study explores the relationship between teacher-efficacy and selected teacher variables, such as teachers’ demographic variables, self-efficacy, English proficiency, and teacher training experiences, of Korean English teachers. The study employed four questionnaires including Sherer et al.’s (1982) General Self-Efficacy Scale, Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk-Hoy’s (2001) Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale, Chacon’s (2002) Self-Reported English Proficiency Scale, and background information. The participants of the study were 120 Korean English teachers. The main findings of the study indicate that the participants’ standardized English proficiency scores exerted no significant influence on their teacher-efficacy. Yet, the teachers’ self-assessed English proficiency levels accounted for a significant amount of additional variance of their teacher-efficacy after controlling the variance explained by their self-efficacy, suggesting the significant impact of teachers’ positive assessment of their own English proficiency on their teacher-efficacy, regardless of their actual English proficiency. The study results also suggest that teachers’ professional training experiences generally contribute to their teacher-efficacy. Discussions and suggestions for future research are provided.
This study investigates how two teachers’ identities are negotiated in a situated educational context and how this affects the formation of student identities in an English mediated instruction (EMI) course. Since learning is defined as negotiation of identity there has been increasing research on teacher identity as pedagogy because the teacher’s identity is a major factor in managing the negotiation with students. This study looks at how the teachers’ cultural, socio-political, and educational philosophical identities are negotiated in the locally situated classroom and how these identities influence Korean university students in the formation of their identities. The results of the study comprise two sections. The teachers’ identity is discursively constructed in local socio-cultural discourse practice, and the teacher identity works as pedagogy. The other result shows that the teachers’ various identities serve as role models for students in their negotiations as they take up, resist, and shift between different identities. This study also suggests some implications for the use of the teacher education regarding identity.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the perception of teaching Korean folk-dance in
elementary schools. For this purpose, four teachers conducting physical education in elementary school
were interviewed on three topics; the general perceptions on Ko
This article explores Korean English teacher’s co-teaching practices and perspectives through a narrative inquiry of a high school teacher, Ms. Lee. It examines her lived experiences and perceptions as she goes through her first journey of co-teaching in her eleven-year teaching career. Data for this study consist of 12 reflective journals, two face-to-face interviews, and three follow-up email interviews. Ms. Lee’s stories illuminate a journey in which she developed a deeper understanding of co-teaching and co-teachers’ roles. Throughout her journey, Ms. Lee maintained her initial view of her primary role as an aide, but co-teaching experiences offered her opportunities to consider her position from various perspectives and thus construct her identity taking multiple roles. Thus, within the anchor role of a helper, she performed various roles for the students, such as a class management aide, a careful mediator, and a psychological supporter. She also served a couple of roles for the native English-speaking teacher (NEST), such as an instruction partner, a crisis manager, and a secretary. In her narratives, Ms. Lee also shared her view of the NEST’s roles and suggested ideas for better co-teaching. Based on the analysis of her narratives, this article highlights practical implications for co-teaching.
ln this case study, we have focused on the disempowerrnent of a Korean English teacher (KET) in English-only classrooms. Six English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in a Korean high school were observed and analyzed by using interpretive discourse analysis. Out of the six classes, three representative classrl。이ns were both video- and audio - ta많d. The results show that the English-only classes co띠d weaken the KETs’ power via three mechanisms: (a) ca!ling the KETs’ last name for chor외 greetings at the beginning of the class, (b) students’ group solidarity and 야er pressure between classmates, and (c) the students' excessively collaborative approach to 야er assistance. It is argued that the exclusive Engush-oruy instruction disempowers 비e KETs’ status and dismantles their vocational identity. ln order to remedy the current situation, within a scaffolding suppαted by the eclectic use of first language where necessary for effective class management, KETs are empowered and overcome constraints imposed by the limited L2 oral competence of some non-native English teachers.
There is little research on the users of dictionaries in Korea. The user research, however, is essential to developing better dictionaries. Hence, this study aims to explore the actual conditions regarding Korean English teachers’ general use of English dictionaries. English teachers were chosen as the subjects because they instruct the use of dictionaries to other users, especially students, as well as use dictionary themselves. Thirty teachers from elementary, middle and high schools respectively (total 90) participated in this research. The research was conducted using questionnaires that consisted of two main parts: The first part was designed to analyze the teachers’ use of dictionaries and the second part aimed to investigate the teachers’ instruction on the use of dictionaries. The data were coded and factors were examined by means of quantitative analysis. It was found that English teachers in Korea used Korean-English and English-English dictionaries which are well structured and easy to use with full contents in order to prepare teaching materials and develop handouts other than text books. In addition, most of teachers said that students must be taught how to use dictionaries in the first grade of junior high school.
This is a descriptive study to identify patterns of teacher questioning discourse. Transcripts from Korean secondary science classrooms were examined while extensive review of literature on classroom discourse was carried out. When it is assumed that teacher questioning discourse can be categorized into different patterns by considering together the apparent exchange structures and pedagogical functions, various patterns of teacher questioning discourse were revealed. Although most patterns found illustrate the centrality of the teacher, a few of them are considered alternatives to the typical IRE discourse. A framework for classifying teacher questioning discourse is suggested and its implications for science teacher education and future research discussed.