• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.91-106
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• 2010

This study examines the use of hedges in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of hedges in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of hedges in the students' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The result shows that EFL learners tend to use relatively smaller number of hedges than the native speakers in terms of the frequencies of the total tokens. It further reveals that the learners' overuse of a single versatile high-frequency hedging item, I think, results in relative underuse of other hedging devices. This indicates that due to their small repertoire of hedges, EFL learners' overuse of a limited number of hedging items may cause their speech or writing to become less competent. Based on the result and interviews with the learners, the study also argues that hedging should be understood in its social contexts and should not be understood just as a lack of conviction or a mark of low proficiency. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them develop communicative and pragmatic competence.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2006

This study investigated differences in beliefs about English learning of 286 EFL college students and 52 English teachers in Korea. Data was collected using Horwitz's Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory and compared between students and teachers in beliefs. To address the research questions, the data were analyzed through descriptive statistics including frequencies, factor analysis, MANOVA, ANOVA, t-test, and reliability coefficients. The results showed four factors in student beliefs: Difficulty of learning English, nature of learning English, importance of correctness in learning English, and motivation and perceived importance of learning English. Clear differences were found in students and teachers' beliefs in English learning aptitude and importance of translation, error correction, and grammar rules. A few belief differences were also identified between Koreans and native-speaking English teachers related to the importance of vocabulary learning, pronunciation, and cultural knowledge. The findings of the study indicated that background variables such as gender and major field of study have an effect on student beliefs about L2 learning. The present study also provided pedagogical considerations to reduce mismatch between students and teachers beliefs and to improve the L2 planning and instruction.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.24
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• pp.84-98
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• 2011

This paper aims to analyze the influences of the socio-cultural environment on discourse in translation. To illustrate a deep connection between discourses and societies in which they were produced, communicative patterns of high- and low-context cultures are examined. Though the original version of the translated text comes from a different culture, the translation reflects communicative preferences of the target culture. To uncover some of these preferences, a comparative study of two translations from Russian into English and from English into Russian is conducted. This study, together with further investigation of some more recent translations into Russian, revealed a number of choices affected by translators' cultural background (for example, making the translation more emotionally charged) and current ideological preferences in the society (excessive use of anglicisms).

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.233-249
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• 2014

This essay addresses the missing conversation in Keats studies by showing how an enduring mystery of Romantic writing—the medium of poetic process and the physical conditions of enunciation—remains a central question in the Hyperion fragments. It is my argument that the tropes of material textuality prevalent in the Hyperions represent a bold cultural statement in which Keats reacts to the major premises underlying the Romantic culture's notion of poetry as abstraction: the Romantic notion of literary (re)production as a product of the activity of a mind. Keats's self-conscious, symbolic representation of the mechanics of poetry-making can be read as an investigation of the ways in which the Romantics were aware of and even eager to articulate the instabilities of their position on the relations between words and things. This essay does not focus exclusively on the physical embodiment of Keats's work as such, so much as the second-generation Romantic poet's contribution to the Romantics' self-conscious and critical understanding of the depiction, perception and ideologies of their poetry and its mediation.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.53-61
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• 2013

This study has a research objective to suggest detailed rules and principles to transcribe geographical names in English for English version electronic map service. For this, guidelines which are used in English transcription of local geographical names in Korea and English transcription situations of Korea geographical names in foreign electronic map service were examined. Examining results of current situations showed the English transcription method of home and abroad geographical names caused the chaos because it is not homogenized. In order to identify easy and preferred transcription method for foreigners among English transcription methods about the geographical names which are used together like this, the preference of English transcription methods of the geographical names was examined targeting foreigners. Survey results showed that foreigners prefer to transcribe in Roman character (Romanization) with its semantic word together than just to transcribe the Roman character. Reflecting this preference research results, our country's geographical names were classified as Natural features, Cultural features and man-made structures, and Administrative units and the detailed English transcription rules and principles of each geographical names were suggested.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.157-175
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to compare learners' view on Korean and native teachers of English with regard to competence of teaching skills. A total of 166 high school students attending the same high school in Korea participated in a questionnaire survey. The students were asked a series of questions about their five Korean teachers of English and three natives. The analysis of the results indicates that the learners believed Korean English teachers would be better in teaching vocabulary, grammar and reading than native English teachers. The learners answered native English teachers would be better in teaching speaking, listening, and writing. In the areas of the accuracy of classroom language, the level of teacher-centeredness, and the amount of cultural information given in a classroom, there were no significant differences in the learners' responses between Korea and native teacher of English. By recognizing the differences of the learners' views on two different types of ELT teachers, we suggest that it would be beneficial for learners if we would utilize their views in designing and administrating a team-teaching program.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.3557-3563
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• 2014

Korean National Level Kindergarten Curriculum does not include English education in regular class time. On the other hand, more than 90% kindergarteners are taught English. This study examined the Native English Teachers' (NETs') cultural aspects of their teaching at regular kindergartens in Korea. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with four NETs who were working at regular kindergartens in Korea, their partner Local English Teachers (LETs) and kindergarten principals. All interview data was transcribed and categorized based on the grounded theory method. The results showed that NETs are not required to be culturally prepared to teach in Korean kindergartens. Consequently, most of them do not consider the students' culture in their teaching activities. Moreover, Korean kindergartens, where research participants work, are not prepared well to invite NETs into their regular curriculum. These results will have significant implications on Korean kindergarten's English education practice.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1041-1061
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• 2012

In the late nineteenth century, British colonial activities became aggressive and annexationist in the tropics, including the Southeast Asian Archipelago, which reflected the historical circumstances of both increasing resistance from the indigenous and severe competition among European powers. Interestingly, the change in English colonial policy toward an annexationist or imperialist vision adopted the motto of a civilizing mission, which was founded on the anthropological assumption that the white English were civilized, while the non-white indigenous were savage. The assumption developed into colonial discourse through systematic gathering of anthropological knowledge about the peripheries of the Empire. The knowledge system was flawed, which stressed the differences of the peripheral populations from the English and served as an inverted discourse on the Imperial Self rather than the description of the Other. Furthermore, the natives were heterogeneous, which rendered indistinct the racial and cultural differences between the English and the natives. Still, the aboriginals called Malays, who were comprised of many ethnic subgroups, needed to be deemed savage or inferior by the English in order to justify the English civilizing work or imperial ambition. Put differently, the representation of the English as civilized necessitated the (mis)representation of the natives as savage. In this context, Clifford's works contribute to systematic misrepresentation of the Malays, on which colonial discourse is founded, though not without self-contradiction. On the other hand, Conrad's novels that are set in the Malay Archipelago resort to a strategic misrepresentation that reveals the relativity of the discourse. Exploring the dilemma of denationalization to various degrees, Conrad's Malay texts problematize the (mis)representation of the indigenous as inferior, which is the basis of English claim to superiority.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.177-201
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to create step by step guidelines for effective team teaching between Korean teachers of English and native English teachers in Korea. Although team teaching has been used from 1995 in the teaching of English in Korea, the effectiveness of team teaching has not been as high as we have hoped. An important reason for this failure is the lack of communication between the Korean teachers of English and the native English teachers. More specifically, the failure has resulted from not only a lack of opportunities for these teachers to communicate but also a lack of guidelines and strategies for improved intercultural communication between teachers from different cultural backgrounds. This study provides step by step guidelines for how to set up communication time, what to share, and how to set up effective team teaching in English education.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.85-102
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• 2002

Learners and users of a second language have to resort to a variety of conversational strategies or structures to enable them to communicate effectively and competently. Factors affecting effective communication among English as a second or English as foreign language (ESL/EFL) learners are diverse in nature because of different socio-cultural backgrounds. Gambits as a conversational strategy are used to a large extent and teachers must be made aware of such conversational strategies used by English as second or foreign language learners. Thus, studies focusing on conversational strategies among ESL/EFL learners in the English language classroom are important in order to identify the types of conversational strategies used and to help teachers to understand the appropriate conversational strategies and structures. Such understanding can be used to guide learners to use correct conversational strategies when communicating in English. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of gambits as a communication strategy in conversation among non-native speakers of English in an English as a second language(ESL) context based on Kellers conversational strategy signals. (175 words)