This research is the preliminary study for development of narrative contents for improving reading skills and behavior controlling capabilities of children with ADHD. Microsoft's Kinect, a non-contact motion sensing device, and NeuroSky's MindWave, a BCI device, are connected to Unity 3D engine to capture user's motion and brainwaves, respectively. The given narrative contents interactively respond to children with ADHD while they are reading the contents and performing the given tasks presented in the behavior training game system. This study examines whether the contents are suitable for the first and second grader children. For this, The interaction with the contents is first observed by five adults and two children. Then the system is tested by three ordinary first graders. During the experiments, the children easily figure out the given texts and do what the game contents drive for the player to react. All three kids concentrate on the reading contents without leaving their seats for average 37 minutes. This experiment shows that the contents are properly designed for the first and second graders in terms of reading speed, reading completion time, complexity level, and task performance. Based on this experimental study, the interactive narrative contents will be used to conduct full-scale experiments with children with ADHD.

Despite the general understanding of the prominent role of basic reading sub-skills, such as decoding abilities and reading fluency, in the reading comprehension of younger and proficient first and second language readers, little is known about the role of these skills in older and less skilled readers in foreign language contexts. The present study was designed to investigate how decoding skills and reading fluency relate to the reading comprehension of such readers, and to identify the relative strengths between the two. Two hundred twenty two Korean high school students participated, and their performance on decoding, reading fluency, and reading comprehension tasks was analyzed. The results showed that both decoding skills and reading fluency were strongly correlated to reading comprehension. Moreover, between the two fundamental reading sub-skills, decoding skills outperformed reading fluency in explaining reading comprehension, making a unique contribution beyond the effects of reading fluency. These findings suggest that a basic skill like word decoding still deserves instructional attention even at the secondary schools in EFL contexts.

다양한 기능이나 영역을 통합하여 학습하는 의미로 해석되고 교육계에 화두로 등장한 융합교육에 대하여 바르게 이해하고 수업에 적용하려는 생각으로 국어과 수업에서 융합적 활동으로 학습효과를 올리는 방법을 제시하고자 하였다. 국어과에서의 융합은 듣기, 말하기, 읽기, 글쓰기가 단위 시간 안에 다양하게 시도하는 것을 의미한다. 이야기를 노래로 만들어 부르고, 미술과 융합하여 배경과 연극 소도구를 만들어 상황극이나 역할극, 무언극 등을 하는 등 많은 활동을 하는 과정에서 창의적 표현능력을 기를 수 있었다. 창의적인 대사를 만들고 감상문이나 다짐문, 일기, 편지글을 쓰는 과정에서 인성이나 진로지도도할 수 있었다. 이처럼 여러 교과와 융합을 이루며 다양한 활동과 통합을 시도한 것은 학생들의 흥미를 유발하였고, 적극적인 참여를 유도하게 되었으며 창의적인 언어사용능력을 신장시키게 되었다.

A study was conducted to investigate the levels of representation in memory constructed as an outcome of L2 reading comprehension, and the effects of L2 proficiency, prior knowledge, and L1 reading skills on the construction of the representation. A total number of 128 Korean EFL learners participated in the study. Their L2 reading comprehension was tested through verification measure and comprehension questions designed to assess different levels of understanding including the sentence-level, textbase understanding and the situation model, or the deeper level of understanding of what the text is about. Results showed that the representation the L2 readers constructed was characterized as consisting of rather loose textbase understanding and relatively weak, but varying degrees of, situational understanding. Only L2 proficiency, among the three factors, appeared to have a significant effect on the levels of understanding in the representation the L2 readers constructed.

This study investigated the relationship of collocations to reading and writing skills. Eighty-six Korean university students were given a collocation knowledge test, followed by a reading test; both lexical and grammatical collocations in the collocation test were extracted from the passages in the reading test. Subsequently, the students were given a writing test, and its topic was related to the content of the reading passages; both lexical and grammatical collocations appearing in their compositions were counted based on the classification criteria provided in The BBI Combinatory Dictionaty of English. The findings are as follows. There were no significant correlations between the students' co llocation knowledge and reading ski ll s. However, a significant correlation was found between writing quality and col location use. Good and poor readers were simil ar on average in both grammatical and lexical co llocations, which corroborates the nonsignificant relationship between reading and collocation knowledge. In contrast, good and poor writers showed significant differences in the use of both grammatical and lexical collocations, thus substantiating the significant correlation between writing quality and collocation use. The group difference was more pronounced in grammatical collocations. Across good and poor writers, lexical collocations were used much less than grammatical collocations. Taken together, these results support a need for EFL writers to learn both grammatical and lexical coll ocations to improve writing quality. The results also caution not to overgeneral ize the influence of co ll ocation knowledge on reading performance . •

We introduce a learning system for the sight reading of simple drum sequences. Sight reading is a cognitive-motor skill that requires reading of music symbols and actions of multiple limbs for playing the music. The system provides knowledge of results (KR) pertaining to the learner's performance by color-coding music symbols, and guides the learner by indicating the corresponding action for a given music symbol using additional auditory or vibrotactile cues. To evaluate the effects of KR and guidance cues, three learning methods were experimentally compared: KR only, KR with auditory cues, and KR with vibrotactile cues. The task was to play a random 16-note-long drum sequence displayed on a screen. Thirty university students learned the task using one of the learning methods in a between-subjects design. The experimental results did not show statistically significant differences between the methods in terms of task accuracy and completion time.