In this study, the continuity of reading passages from high school mock College Scholastic Ability Test (CAST) English exams across grade levels was investigated using Coh-Metrix. A corpus consisting of 525 reading passages, evenly distributed with 175 passages from each high school grade level, was compiled from the 2017-2023 mock CSAT English exams administered by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. Coh- Metrix measures included basic counts, word frequencies, word features, lexical diversity, personal pronouns, connectives, standard readability, syntactic complexity, coreference, and semantic cohesion indices. The analysis revealed significant differences among grade levels in the reading passages of the mock CSAT English exams in measures such as word counts, average word and sentence length, nouns, age of acquisition, second person pronouns, standard readability, and subject density indices. These findings highlight the potential for refining the design and construction of reading passages in mock CSAT exams to better prepare students for the linguistic challenges presented in the actual high-stakes CSAT.

이 연구는 동물매개활동과 ‘R.E.A.D.’ (Reading Education Assistance Dogs)를 활용 하여 초등학생의 정서적 안정감에 어떠한 효과를 미치는지 살펴 보는데 목적이 있다. 이 를 위하여 정서적 안정 척도를 사전, 사후검사를 통하여 비교 분석하였다. 연구 결과 치료 도우미견을 통한 책 읽기 프로그램은 아동의 정서적 안정감 느끼기에 긍정적인 효과를 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 학교 현장이나 각 교육기관 등에서 아동의 정서 적 안정감을 위한 프로그램을 개발하고, 운영하는데 유용한 정보로 활용될 수 있을 것이 다.

This study aimed to explore the role of inference making in the relation between vocabulary knowledge (breadth and depth) and reading comprehension for 487 ninthgrade Chinese EFL students who were categorized as either struggling or adequate. Path analysis was used to examine both direct and mediated effects. The results indicated a statistically significant indirect effect of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension, mediated by inference making, for the entire participant group. However, there were notable differences between the struggling and adequate readers, as evidenced by distinct path diagrams. For struggling readers, the indirect effect of vocabulary breadth on reading comprehension through inference making was significant, while that of vocabulary depth was not significant. For adequate readers, both vocabulary breadth and depth directly explained reading comprehension. These results are discussed in the EFL context, encompassing assessment and instructional implications for EFL readers with varying levels of reading abilities.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the continuity of reading passages of Korean high school English textbooks with the 2015 Revised National Curriculum using Coh-Metrix, a software that analyzes English texts in a range of linguistic features. Twenty-one English textbooks were analyzed: 11 High School English, five High School English I, and five High School English II. Only reading passages in textbooks were analyzed. Coh-Metrix indices related to basic counts, lexical features, syntactic features, cohesion, and readability were analyzed. Results revealed significant differences between High School English and High School English I and II, but no such differences exist between High School English I and II. This study implies that continuity of reading difficulty in terms of lexical, syntactic, and readability characteristics among High School English, English I, and English II textbooks should be considered.

본 연구의 목적은 초등학생 시기의 독서선호도와 독서습관이 중학생의 독서 행동에 각각 어떤 영향력을 미치는지 확인함으로써 학년이 올라감에 따른 독서량 감소 문제를 해결할 수 있는 효과적인 독서 활성화 방안을 제시하고자 함에 있다. 이를 위해 중학교 1학년을 대상으로 그들의 초등학교 6학년 시절의 독서습관과 독서선호도를 조사한 후, 평균값을 기준으로 집단을 나누었다. 또한 참가자들은 6주 동안 매주 1회 독서 보고서를 작성하면서 20분 이상 독서한 날 수와 독서 시간을 분 단위로 응답하였다. 연구 결과, 첫째, 참가자의 초등학교 6학년 시절 75% 이상이 일주일에 1권의 책을 보지 않는 결과를 보였다. 둘째, 본 연구에서는 책을 많이 읽는 것과 좋아하는 것은 다른 차원의 요소임을 확인하였다. 예를 들어 참가자들 중 책을 좋아한다고 말하지만, 실제로는 책을 거의 읽지 않는 사람이 약 35%를 차지함을 확인하였다. 셋째, 초등학생 시기에 형성된 독서 선호도보다 독서 습관이 중학생의 독서한 날수와 독서 시간에 영향을 미치는 더 강한 변수임을 확인하였다. 즉, 초등학생 때 독서 습관이 높은 수준으로 형성된 중학생은 중학생이 돼서도책을 자주 읽고 독서에 더 오랜 시간 집중하지만, 독서 습관이 낮은 수준으로 형성된 경우 중학생이 돼서도 책을 읽지 않는다. 본 연구결과를 통해 독서에 대한 주관적 태도와 실제로 책을 읽는 행동은 전혀 다른 문제임을 보여준다

이 논문의 목적은 예이츠의 「초등학생들 사이에서 Among School Children」, 특히 이 시의 마지막 행 “어떻게 우리가 춤과 춤꾼을 구별할 수 있겠는가”를 메를로-퐁티의 현상학적 지각의 개념을 통해 접근함으로써 또 다른 읽기의 가능성을 탐색하는 것이다. 메를로-퐁티가 내세우는 지각은 절대적 내재성이나 외재성으로 작동하기 보다 세계에 대한 ‘신체적 현존’으로 이해된다. 명징하고 통일된 주관과 지각 대상의 구분을 거부하는 신체적 현존을 통한 경험은 세계와 대상을 끊임없이 ‘태동하는 상태’에 있는 것으로 파악한다. 예이츠 시의 핵심을 지속적인 자기갱신과 변화로 정의하면서, 변화에 대한 개방성을 특징으로 하는 예이츠 시가 어떻게 메를로 퐁티의 현상학적 지각 개념을 통해 잘 포착될 수 있는지 살펴본다.

The extension of MFN clauses to dispute settlement under BITs is one of the most controversial areas in investment treaty law. Currently, the area is divided into two streams of case law. The award in Tze Yap Shum v Peru and other recent Chinese investment arbitral awards did not side the Maffezini stream. The question on which stream works the best for China is complicated and essentially a balancing exercise. This article examines the question from a Chinese perspective and adopts the analytical framework of the New Haven School. It identifies the issue of comparability of more preferential treatment as the key criterion in determining the question. It reviews the previous case law and assesses the economic, social and cultural factors shaping the Chinese investment policy. From there, the article seeks to discover if the current law helps fulfil China’s policy goals and proposes recommendations accordingly.

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, creativity plays a pivotal role in the competitiveness of a country. The importance of creativity education therefore cannot be overemphasized. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of discussion-based English reading and writing activities on Korean high school students' creativity, English writing, and self-assessed creative thinking. The participants were 45 high school students in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: the discussion-based English reading and writing group (n=24) and the traditional English instruction group (n=21). The experiment was administered during two semesters of the 2017 academic year. The major findings are as follows: First, the experimental group showed significant improvement on the creativity test, especially in the areas of fluency, flexibility, and original thinking. Second, the experimental group outperformed the control group on the writing test. Third, the experimental group showed positive changes in their self-assessed flexible thinking, convergent thinking, and intrinsic motivation. All of these indicate the beneficial effects of the discussion-based English reading and writing activities. Based on the results, some pedagogical suggestions were made for the effective integration of creativity education into the teaching of English as a foreign language.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the readability of reading passages used in 5th and 6th grade elementary school English textbooks under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. For this purpose, all the reading passages of each textbook were calculated with ATOS (Advantage-TASA Open Standard) formula as a readability index. The results of this study indicate that, firstly, the average readability score of 6th grade English textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones. Secondly, the readability of 6th grade English textbooks is about six months ahead of that of 5th grade ones. Thirdly, the readability scores are similar in all reading passages for 5th grade, while the readability scores of 6th grade differ from textbooks to textbooks. According to the textbook writers, the readability score of 6th grade textbooks is higher than that of 5th grade ones in four out of five textbooks. Lastly, In terms of the units in each textbook, the readability scores fluctuate and do not increase sequentially as expected.

Despite the recognized importance of morphological knowledge to literacy outcomes such as vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, two of its subconstructs— morphological awareness and morphological processing—have received comparatively little attention. In response, the aim of the study reported here was to examine how the relationships between morphological awareness and morphological processing, especially in terms of morphological transparency and morphological frequency, contribute to the vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of 62 native Korean-speaking secondary school students—27 eighth-graders and 35 tenth-graders— learning English as a foreign language. The students’ performance on the Test of Morphological Structure and the Word Reading Test was assessed to gauge their compounding awareness, inflectional awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. The results indicated that the students’ performance was varied depending on morphological transparency and frequency. In addition, it was not morphological processing, but rather morphological awareness that explained variances in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, when compounding awareness and inflectional awareness were controlled for. This paper discusses what such findings imply for teaching English as a foreign language to Korean learners.

This study investigated the structural and functional differences between formulaic sequences in College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and SAT reading assessment texts. The results of the RANGE program showed that SAT used more diverse and difficult words compared to CSAT. The frequency analysis revealed that CSAT used more formulaic sequences than the SAT counterpart. This suggests that CSAT used more repeated expressions, whereas SAT used diverse vocabulary items. The structural analysis showed that noun phrases were the most dominant in CSAT, whereas prepositional phrases were pervasive in SAT. The functional analysis showed that both corpora relied heavily on referential expressions. The results indicate that referential bundles are dominantly used in institutional writing (Biber & Barbieri, 2007). In accordance with the previous studies, the results suggest that high frequency formulaic sequences can be different according to the register. In CSAT, connectives and discourse organizers were prevalent. This may be due to the characteristics of question types in CSAT. The results may indicate that formulaic sequences in texts are partly influenced by the characteristics of a register.

This study investigated predictors of reading comprehension in elementary school English learners. The study specifically examined the role of word recognition and oral language skills in their reading comprehension levels. Participants were 206 students in grades four, five, and six, and they completed measures of letter naming, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension. Data analysis included descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, correlation, and multiple regression. Findings showed that there were significant differences between performances of the 4th graders and the other two grade groups on all measures, indicating a possible ceiling effect in the acquisition of basic reading skills by upper-grade students. Oral language, indexed by oral vocabulary and listening comprehension, emerged as the more powerful predictor of reading comprehension as compared to word recognition skills. In addition, the contribution of word decoding tended to decrease across grade levels; whereas oral vocabulary explained more variance in upper grades.

본 연구는 동물매개활동을 통한 초등학교 고학년 학생들의 독서태도에 미치는 영향이라는 주제로 2018년 9월 8일부터 2018년 11월 10일까지 진행이 되었으며, Y지역아동센터 중 동물매개활동을 희망하는 학생 5명을 선발하여 진행이 되었다. 연구진행은 주 1회 총 8회기를 매 60분씩 실행하였다. 연구도구로 한국형 아동 독서태도 검사 도구를 이용한 사전·사후 검사를 별도 측정하여 프로그램의 효과를 확인하고자 하였다. 연구방법은 사 전·사후검사간의 점수 차이를 분석하였다. 주요 연구 결과로는 독서에 대한 흥미가 높아 졌으며 자발적인 독서태도가 형성되었다. 또한, 발표에 대한 자신감을 향상시켰고 책의 내용에 대해 몰입하여 공감하는 긍정적인 변화를 보였다. 이상의 연구 결과로 살펴볼 때, 동물매개활동이 초등학교 고학년의 독서태도에 긍정적인 영향을 주는 것을 알 수 있었다.

This study examined the reading passages of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA) and middle school English textbooks in terms of their readability and lexical difficulty. The readability was measured by using Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index, while their lexical difficulty was measured in terms of STTR (standardized type-token ratio), frequency of tokens per type, and vocabulary frequency levels by using VocabProfile and Oxford WordSmith Tools 7.0. The results showed that there was a gap between the readability of the English textbooks and that of the NAEA conducted from 2012 to 2014, while the readability between the English textbooks and that of the 2015 NAEA reached a comparable level. However, the textbooks from one publisher showed substantively lower readability than those from the other publishers and the NAEA. Secondly, regarding vocabulary frequency levels, the words in 1K and 2K accounted for more than 90% of the textbooks and the NAEA, while the NAEA had a higher STTR and lower frequency of tokens per type than the textbooks. It suggests that the NAEA employed more various words with less repetition than the textbooks. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

홍콩은 중국으로의 귀환 이후 시행된 兩文三語정책 아래 소수 민족의 중국어 교육은 점점 더 중요시되고 있다. 비중국어권 학생들에게 어떻게 하면 더욱 효과적인 중국어 학습의 기초 단계를 학습하게 할 것인가는 매우 중요한 연구 과제가 되었다. 홍콩대학은 홍콩교육국의 연구 과제를 수주한 이후, 학교에서의 방과 후 중국어 학습을 지원하게 되었다. 중학교에서의 교육에 중점을 두고, 최근 일년 동안은 소학교까지 확대하였다. 본 연구는 「閱讀促進學習」(R2L)이라는 교수법 이 비중국어권 소학교 학습자들에게 어떤 효과를 보이는지를 집중적으로 논의하였다. 먼저 연구 초기에는 연구대상들의 작문 문제가 어디에 근거하였는지를 측정하였고, 「閱讀促進 學習」(R2L)이론에 근거하여 교육 설계를 시행하였다. 연구는 20개의 소학교 학생들을 대상으로 진행하였으며, 반 년간에 걸친 교육에서의 예측과 한자, 어휘, 구절과 전체 문장을 점층적으로 확대 하는 방법으로 학생들의 읽기 능력을 신장시킨 후, 마지막으로 실험 결과를 통해 이 학습법 시행 이전과 이후를 검토하여, ｢閱讀促進學習(R2L)이 어떻게 학생들의 읽기 능력을 향상시킬 수 있는 지를 조사하여 보았다. 이 연구 이후, 홍콩에 거주하는 비중국어 학습자들의 중국어 능력을 향상시키고, 이로 인해 그들 이 홍콩 사회에 더욱 융화되어, 구직을 하는데 조금 더 훌륭한 기초를 마련하는데 도움이 되었으면 한다.

This study examines the difficulty of reading text in elementary school English textbooks. Four elementary school English textbook series published by three publishers were evaluated by Word Critical Factor (WCF). WCF considers cognitive demands for word recognition; it assesses the match of linguistic content in the text with the phonetically regular and high-frequency words that are associated with particular stages of reading development. For the analysis, all of the words that appeared in the reading and writing sections from four elementary school English textbooks were analyzed by two criteria, that is, the ratio of high frequency words and phonetically regular words among 100 running words, and the number of unique words in each textbook. The results showed that all four textbooks’ difficulty levels were very high considering the learner’s reading ability. This was due to the textbooks having a low repetition of words and also the complicated vowel patterns that were above the reading abilities of students. All of these factors combined are what have caused the difficulties presented in English textbooks. In conclusion, although the reading text introduces a variety of genres and activities for the development of reading skills, most reading text could not assist the reader’s cognitive processing.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the causal relationships among factors affecting L2 reading achievement using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. A total of 327 Korean EFL high school students completed a questionnaire on L2 reading motivation and strategies. The students’ L2 listening and reading comprehension abilities were measured by scores on the practice test for Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and self-assessed listening and reading proficiency. The study results showed that the students’ L2 reading efficacy, L2 reading strategy use, and L2 listening skills were significant predictors of their L2 reading achievement, while L2 reading motivation showed no significant relation with reading achievement. The nonsignificant path loading between reading motivation and reading achievement implies that reading motivation alone is not sufficient to promote students’ L2 reading proficiency. The final SEM model indicated a relatively strongest contribution of L2 listening ability over L2 reading efficacy and strategy use to L2 reading achievement. Pedagogical implications based on the findings are discussed.

William Butler Yeats’s poem “Among School Children” is a meditation on love, essence, and change. This paper attempts to relate the Buddhist theories of essence and change to the core philosophical premises of the poem itself. Furthermore, through two specific Buddhist texts, Milindapanho by Nàgasena and Mūlamādhyamikakārikā by Nagarjuna, the paper illustrates similarities in terms of imagery and philosophical ideas in the specific stanzas of the poem, highlighting a philosophical foundation in musings on love and essence as they emerge in the poem.

The purpose of the study was two-fold: to investigate the effects of a group-based book reading plus self-efficacy and outcome expectancy intervention on reading amount, perceived reading ability, reading behavior, and social cognitions and to examine influencing factors of book reading behaviors. Sixty-three sixth graders completed a ten-week book reading intervention in two experimental conditions: one with book-reading activities only and the other with a book-reading plus social cognition intervention. The control group (n=32) studied English in their regular English classes. Questionnaires were administered three times to assess the participants' social cognition, reading behavior, and perceptions of reading English books: right before and right after the intervention, and at eight weeks post intervention. The results showed positive effects of the intervention on reading amount, perceived reading ability, and reading behavior. Of the two experimental groups, the group that had received the book-reading plus social cognition intervention showed more positive results. At eight weeks post intervention, intervention effects on goal efficacy, reading behavior, and attitude toward reading were maintained. Social cognition was found to affect reading amount and behavior for the experimental groups. Research and practical implications are suggested.