The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of group-based consultations on pre-service primary school teachers' English teaching competence. Twenty nine pre-service teachers in groups of four or five received two rounds of consultations on their micro-teaching demonstrations from two native English instructors. The consultation procedure was three steps: preparation, micro-teaching observation and feedback. The self-evaluation checklists and micro-teaching evaluations were analyzed quantitatively to find how much improvement between the first and second micro-teaching had been made. The results indicated that consultations helped the pre-service teachers to improve their English teaching competence in general. The comments written by the consultants and the pre-service teachers about their micro-teaching observations were examined qualitatively. The results showed that consultations enabled the pre-service teachers to realize the strengths and weaknesses in their teaching behavior. Also, the observation of peer teaching and group discussion helped them to gain useful teaching skills and insights on what a good English lesson should be like.
In the language class combined with "creative drama", one of the approaches in educational theatre, the stories told by a teacher are organically developed into an original drama with several drama techniques. Even though there are some research studies on using creative drama in the ESL context, there are few in the EFL situation. Therefore, this study presents the result of a study investigating how creative drama affects young language learners" English learning in a Korean primary school. An English drama class, at after-school program in Seoul, combined with creative drama had been observed once a week for a semester. Seven first graders in the class were presented with 6 different stories, which contain certain phonemes each and dramatized the stories in a creative way. They were assessed through pre-and post- tests and surveys in terms of their linguistic improvements and affective changes and analyzed quantitatively. In addition, participants were individually analyzed according to their characteristics in linguistic and affective aspects by using field notes from classroom observation and interviews. The results show that participants made progress in linguistic aspects including phonics and vocabulary skills and that their affective factors including language anxiety level had shown a positive development throughout the semester. Moreover, each participant showed particular characteristics respectively in terms of linguistic and affective perspectives.