The present study aims to investigate the direct and indirect contributions of Korean EFL college students’ L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to their L2 writing performances by using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with a goal to explore the pathways of vocabulary knowledge to writing. Data from 178 students were collected through tests of receptive and productive vocabulary breadth and depth, a writing test and a reading test. In testing a hypothesized model on the roles of receptive and productive vocabulary in writing, the results of the SEM analysis reveal the direct role of productive vocabulary in writing. The indirect role of receptive vocabulary on writing was observed through the mediating role of productive vocabulary or reading ability due to the direct contribution of receptive vocabulary to both productive vocabulary and reading and that of productive vocabulary and reading to writing. Findings from the study shed light on the relations of L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge with L2 writing abilities, suggesting potential benefits of both receptive and productive vocabulary learning for L2 writing.

Along with the increasing interest in integrated writing in L2 instruction, many studies have investigated language skills and cognitive processes involved in the task. However, relatively less is known regarding the roles of strategic and affective variables in predicting writing performance. The current study, therefore, investigates (a) how strategy, attitudinal, affective, and ability variables are related, and (b) how these variables predict performance in integrated writing. Predictor variables include proficiency, reading comprehension, vocabulary size, L2 strategy use, and attitudes toward reading and writing, and anxiety. Forty-three participants completed an L2 reading-writing integrated task, in which they read reading texts and wrote an essay summarizing the source text and arguing their opinions on the issue. Results showed that proficiency was positively related to reading-to-write strategies, and vocabulary size negatively to reading anxiety; however, ability-related variables generally had no or weak relationships with affective variables. Furthermore, only reading comprehension and reading anxiety were found to be significant predictors of performance in integrated writing.

The purpose of this study is to examine phenomena of teaching writing in Korean as a foreign or a second language, and to propose contents and methods for improving teachers’ ability of teaching writing. I presented 3 reasons that mainly cause the difficulty in teaching writing for nonnative speakers of Korean. Among the reasons, teachers’ lack of confidence and insufficiency of expertise in teaching writing is the most important one which we have to compensate in terms of improving teachers’ ability. First, in chapter Ⅱ, I analyzed the trend of teaching writing in Korean as an L2, and examined the characteristics of teacher training for teachers-to-be in Korean language education. Next, in chapter Ⅲ, I defined the concept of ‘ability of teaching writing’, and summarized the categories of the ability. Finally, in chapter Ⅳ, I suggested the contents and methods for improving teachers’ ability of teaching writing with regard to teachers’ expertise. Specially, I focused not only on the pedagogic content knowledge (PCK), but also on the content knowledge (CK). In this paper, I explored teacher education which is considered as one of the most important area for better teaching Korean as an L2. However, this paper remains only as a pioneer attempt at teacher education research for the area is not fully discussed yet.

Although reading is part and parcel for the development of L2 literacy skills, such as in reading and writing, the skill has been practiced more often for grammar instruction and literal translation in EFL contexts. While realizing there is less focus on the development of L2 skills through extensive reading (ER) in EFL university contexts,the purpose of the present study was to explore the outcome of an in-class ER approach in English university classrooms. With 249 students, the study reports on the implementation of a university level ER class and the outcome for L2 development via the measures of L2 reading speed, L2 speed reading comprehension, and L2 lexical writing ability. Results indicated positive outcomes for the development of students’ L2reading ability, productive retrieval of academic words and lexical variety. The outcome of the ER program validates the effort and time expended on such programs when graded readers are utilized at matching student Lexile levels.

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of genre-based in-class L2 writing instruction on Korean middle school students' writing ability and their perception change toward L2 writi ng. The research was conducted with 595 middle school students in the third grade from two co-ed schools in Gwangju Metropolitan City, Korea. Five sessions of writing instruction using a dialY genre over five weeks were provided to an experimental group, while no explicit writing instruction was provided to a control group. The experimental group was exposed to 13 writing sample texts, analyzed and identified the characteri stics of the target genre, and then constructed a diaty text in collaboration with their peers. Following the treatment, both groups were required to write a diaty ently in 40 minutes atld the students' writings were rated on content, organization, and language use. The results showed that only the experimental group, provided with explicit genre-based L2 writing instl·uction, showed statistically significant improvement in each categOlY in the post-test. In addition, a set of questionnaires and interview data revealed that the participants' attitudes and perceptions toward L2 writing were positively affected.