비고츠스키(Vygosky)의 사회문화 이론은 특히 제2외국어 학습에 있어서 중요한 의미를 갖는다. 학생들은 협동적인 학습 활동을 하면서 영어를 더 잘 배우고 성장하며 발전한다. 게다가 쓰기단계는 사회적 상호작용을 통해 복잡한 인식과정을 거쳐 향상되고 발전한다. 본 논문은 쓰기 수업을 하는 학생들로부터 피드백을 도출하기 위해 구글 독스(Google Docs)를 이용하여 사회문화이론이 쓰기수업에 어떻게 적용되었는지를 설명하고자 한다. 본 연구는 한국 모 대학의 영어수업에서 진행되었고, 참가자는 영어교육과 학생 11명이다. 연구자는 반성적 실천(Reflective Practice), 비계설정(Scaffolding), 동료 피드백 촉진(Peer Feedback Facilitation) 등의 과정을 통해 강사가 학생들이 한 문장에서 시작하여 단락까지 씀으로써 결국은 영어로 에세이를 쓸 수 있게 효과적으로 준비할 수 있었다. 이 연구에서 다섯 단락 정도의 에세이를 쓸 수 있을 만큼 학생들의 작문실 력은 향상되었고, 격려를 통해 서로 성장하고 발전할 수 있었다. 또한 이 과정에서 학생들의 사회적 기술과 공감능력이 향상되었고 수업 분위기도 개선되었다. 이러한 기술적인 동료 피드백은 동기부여를 위한 효율적인 방식이며, 학생들에게는 영어쓰기학습에서 자신감을 주는 것으로 나타난다. 사회문화이론의 적용을 통해 학생들은 제2외국어에 대한 지식을 습득 하고 더 발전시킬 수 있으며, 낮은 단계의 이해에서 더 높은 수준의 지식 으로 나아가게 하는 상호작용의 시너지를 만들어 낸다.

This study is to describe the nature of planning as a cognitive writing process in L2 writing. It aims to examine how Korean EFL learners generate ideas and organize them. It also investigates the relationship between planning and the final product. Given a worksheet for planning, 39 university students were asked to write an argumentative essay during class. Based on their planning notes, five brainstorming types were identified: using the prompt/writing the position, mini-outlining, listing, mind mapping and free writing (in the order of frequency). In addition, the dominant use of L1 was found both in the brainstorming and the outlining. It was found that there was no statistically significant correlation between the amount of brainstorming and the quantity and quality of L2 writing. Only the amount of brainstorming in L2 had a statically significant correlation with the quantity of L2 writing (but not with the quality of L2 writing). In the case of outlining, a statistically significant correlation was found between its amount and the quantity of L2 writing. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between the amount of outlining and the L2 writing quality.

This study explored the effectiveness and second language (L2) writers' perceptions of process-oriented writing, using portfolio-basedinstruction in a secondary English class at general school settings. The participants were 110 high school students enrolled in a private independent school in Gyeonggi. They learned to produce a four-paragraph-English-essay based on the process-oriented writing methodology, keeping a portfolio note for the entire semester. The instructor was a bilingual teacher of English whose native language is Korean. The 17 weeks' records written in the portfolio note were analyzed to portray whether the approaches enhanced overall performance and understandings about essay-writing. Findings revealed that the participants were satisfied with this approach and improved their writing skills using portfolio-based- instruction. For the sake of implementing the new assessment appropriately at public school settings, further studies are suggested to develop how to enhance classroom environment in order to increase the degree of learner-satisfaction in the essay-writing classes.

This study aims to analyze the process of how Chinese students practice collaborative writing and to figure out whether collaborative writing is useful to Korean language learners for academic purposes. In total, 15 Chinese students of Korean language for academic purposes participated in the research and they were divided into Groups A and B, respectively. Five participants of Group A were individually assigned with writing tasks while ten participants of Group B conducted collaborative writing tasks in pairs. Groups A and B conducted both tasks of a data commentary and an argumentative essay. The result was that fluency and complexity were not significantly different between Groups A and B. However, accuracy was higher in Group B. Accordingly, for students of Korean language in an advanced level, collaborative writing activities did not result in longer texts or more complex linguistic practices but led to more accurate texts. Whether this accuracy will strengthen grammatical knowledge of language students in an advanced level in the long-term is unknown, so follow-up studies are needed.

In this study, Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE), an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) developed by Curtain University of Technology in Australia, was customized for essay writing classes in Korean. The subjects were 18 elementary school students who participated in an essay writing program over 6 weeks. Using a case study approach, the study reports some important lessons learned from the use of MOODLE to design blended, collaborative learning environments for elementary essay writing. Some important contextual factors and content-specific constraints that affected the student learning process are discussed.

A field-specific essay test was developed as an attempt to improve the ESL placement procedure for international graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Graduate departments were classified into four areas, business, humanities/social sciences, technology and life sciences, and a set of four input prompts, and writing questions was developed. A total of 124 volunteers participated in taking both the regularly-required general-topic test and the field-specific test. A total-group FACETS analysis of the students’ performance on the two tests showed that they performed better on the field-specific test. However, subgroup analyses showed the field-specific topic effect only in the business and life sciences subgroups, while no prompt effect was found for the humanities/social sciences and technology subgroups. Considering that early in the test development procedure, these results were predicted by in a prompt evaluation session, the results suggest that more effort should be exerted to carefully select the topic and content of prompts in order to secure equivalency of the topic effect across all disciplinary groups. This paper further addresses limitations and promising research directions.