• Title/Summary/Keyword: 'English Only'

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Pedagogical Functions of Teachers' Conversational Repair Strategies in the ESL Classroom

  • Seong, Gui-Boke
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.77-101
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    • 2006
  • The present study examines various pedagogical functions of conversational repair strategies employed by the teacher in the ESL classroom. As part of interactional resources, conversational repair is defined as the treatment of trouble occurring in interactive language use and is originally designed to deal with communication problems. Research on conversational repair has focused on ordinary conversation and organization of repair practices. Studies on more pedagogical functions of repair sequences initiated by the teacher are very few. The data were from five hours of ESL structure classes in an intensive English institute at a large U.S. university. They were closely transcribed and microanalyzed following the conversation-analytic methodology. The analysis found that ESL teachers' repair techniques not only resolve communication problems but they are also designed to serve several important instructional purposes of teaching the target language. They include creating opportunities of comprehensible input, inducing modified comprehensible output from students, guiding and controlling student output, and initiating corrections by initiating repair.

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The critical period in Korean EFL contexts and UG (한국인 EFL 학습자의 결정적 시기와 보편문법)

  • Hahn, Hye-Ryeong
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • no.6
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    • pp.219-239
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    • 2000
  • There has been a growing enthusiasm in Korea for the early education of English as a foreign language (EFL). The present study examined the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis in terms of the Universal Grammar (UG), in three different types of learning contexts - first language (L1), second language (SL), and foreign language (FL) learning contexts. While previous research findings in L1 and SL learning contexts suggest that UG principles and parameters are accessible to language learners only for the early years of lifetime, this article argues that their results - and even the methods - cannot be applied to EFL settings and that independent studies on the EFL context are, required. It also proposes the recent UG notion of functional categories as the most appropriate subject in the discussion of Korean EFL learners' access to UG. Findings on foreign language contexts, including the author's own, strongly indicate that UG is not sensitive to learners' starting ages in FL settings. If young children in FL contexts cannot develop their interlanguage grammar based on UG, the existing teaching methods for young children should be revised.

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Toward a Conceptual Clarification of Foreign Language Anxiety

  • Kim, Young-Sang
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.11 no.4
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    • pp.1-20
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    • 2005
  • Despite the noteworthy increase in the number of FL anxiety studies, inconsistencies associated with the effects of FL anxiety on language learner performance have been reported in literature. Such conflicting results seem to be attributable in part to unstable conceptualization of the FL anxiety construct and its measure. This paper purported to address the emerging call for a theoretical clarification of the construct at hand as a preface to a clear picture of language anxiety on a conceptual ground. This paper not only covers aspects of general anxiety from psychological perspectives, but examines how FL anxiety and its associated concepts have been conceptualized in the literature. Inconsistent results that pertain to FL learning were also delineated. Given the drawbacks found in the exiting theories of FL anxiety, several points were taken into account for a refinement of the conceptual framework. This attempt will hopefully shed new light on the construct per se and prove conducive to the development of the field of English education.

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A Study on Furniture Terminology (I) -For Traditional Korean Furniture- (가구 용어 연구 I -소목 관련 용어 중심으로-)

  • Moon, Sun-Ok
    • Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.61-70
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    • 2009
  • This study intended to explore English of furniture tenn in relation to the joints and moldings in traditional Korean wood furniture, a base of Korean wood furniture, for the development of Korea furniture in the future. The joints such as butt joint, rabbeted joint, mitered joint, mortise-and-tenon joint, fist joint, and finger joint, and the moldings such as a piece of thread molding, half-circle molding, cove molding, flat molding, and triangle molding were analyzed between English and Korean language. The results were only basic terms which must be researched and unified in the traditional Korean furniture. Therefore, the terms in relation to the types, the details, the hardware, and so on, will have to be studied in terms of the meaning originated from the traditional craftsmen.

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A Way of Teaching Listening Comprehension through Tasks and Activities

  • Im, Byung-Bin;Kim, Ji-Sun
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.163-185
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    • 2001
  • Listening comprehension is an integrative and creative process of interaction through which listeners receive speakers' production of linguistic or non-linguistic knowledge. Improving listening comprehension requires continual attentiveness and interest. .Listening skill can be extended systematically only when students are frequently exposed to a wide range of listening materials with an affective, cultural, social, and psycholinguistic approach. Therefore, teachers should help students learn how to comprehend intactly the overall meaning of intended messages. Practical classroom teaching necessitates a systematic procedure in which students should take part in meaningful tasks and activities. This study purposes to investigate the effects of task-based listening comprehension instruction on improvement of EFL learners' listening comprehension and their attitude and interest. 74 freshmen who enrolled in College English conversation classes in Kongju National University participated in this study. The participants were administered listening comprehension tests and questionnaires. The results show that the listening comprehension instruction through tasks and activities has a positive impact on EFL learners' improvement of listening comprehension and their attitude and interest toward the target language as well.

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The Effect of Process/Result Distinction on the Grammaticalization of Verbs

  • Kim, Rhanghyeyun
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.2 no.3
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    • pp.329-372
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    • 2002
  • Tobin (1993) argues that verbs can be classified according to the process/result distinction. He further claims that the grammatical development of the lexical verbs into auxiliary/aspectual verbs is motivated by the distinction. In this paper, first, I reconsider Tobin's (1993) claim in the viewpoint of the principle of persistence (Hopper 1991) or the source determination hypothesis (Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca 1994), which states that the meaning of the source construction determines the path of grammaticalization. I then classified tense/aspect/ modality markers according to Tobin's (1993) process/result distinction. Finally, I argue that Tobin's (1993) process/result distinction constrains the distribution of grammaticalized verbs among tense/aspect/modality markers not only in English and but also in Korean.

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Null Subjects and Objects in Child English

  • Han, Ho;Choe, Soon-Gwon;Park, Yeon-Sook
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.25-42
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    • 2004
  • This paper explores some possible interpretations of subject/object in child language, pointing out some potential problems in recent works within the minimalist framework and suggesting different views on it. Particularly, we will focus on how to identify and/or license objects, since most of the studies relevant to this issue have accounted for subjects only. Discussing the results of the studies on child language data, we will show that previous syntactic explanations on subjects, which have seemed quite attractive and refined, may not hold when accounting for objects and various aspects and properties of arguments in those child languages. In doing so, we will suggest and support a performance-based account, a discourse-based account, and a markedness account.

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Learning a Second Culture through Interactive Practices: A Study-Abroad Language Learners' Experiences

  • Lee, Eun-Sil
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.137-156
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    • 2009
  • This case study examines language learners' oral interactive practices and what they learn along with these practices. Language learners who study abroad take on the challenge of living in a foreign place and undergo difficulties in communicating and interacting with people in their new country. These difficulties, caused by cultural differences, are experienced most particularly in their daily interactions. Language learners' trials and efforts to learn English while dealing with a different culture and the difficulties are mainly observed for this paper. The process of learning a second culture is closely related to the process of learning a second language. Oral interactive practices can give the study abroad language learners opportunities to learn their target culture. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how participating in interactive practices assists the learners in understanding their target culture while they deal with their difficulties inherent in studying abroad. This study adds weight to the notion that culture is an essential and major factor in learning a language, and that only active participation in interactions can be effective in learning both a language and its culture.

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Investigating Learners' Perception on Their Engagement in Rating Procedures

  • Lee, Ho
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.91-108
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    • 2007
  • This study investigates learners' perception on their engagement in rating activities in the EFL essay-writing context. The current study aims to address the answers to the following research questions: 1) What attitude do students show about their participation in the rating tasks? and 2) which of three aspects (e.g. the degree of rating experience, the exposure to English composition instruction and learning, and proficiency level) significantly influences learners' rating activities? 104 EFL learners participated in the rater training session. After participants finished rater training session, they rated three sample essays and peer essays using the given scoring guide. Based on the analysis of survey responses that students made, students showed positive attitude toward their engagement in rating tasks. For research question 2, only L2 writing proficiency seriously affected students' perception on the rating tasks. Advanced level of subjects did not feel stressed by a grade of peers as low level of subjects did. They were also critical about the benefits of self- and peer-assessment, suggesting that a peer's feedback on their own essay was not so useful and that a self-rating does not fully help learners identify their writing proficiency.

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