• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.335-357
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• 2007

This study aims to investigate the pragmatic features of Korean EFL learners' interlanguage in the communicative act of complaining. Since a complaint, by its nature, is likely to cause offence, thereby threatening the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer, making a complaint in a polite manner is of crucial importance in maintaining harmonious social relationships. However, very little research has been carried out on the complaint speech act performances of Korean EFL learners. In particular, studies which attempt to examine the effect of social status on the choice of complaint speech act strategies are rare. The present study compared the complaint speech act performances of Korean EFL learners and those of native speakers of English with respect to social status. 24 Korean EFL learners and 28 native speakers of English participated and the data were collected via a Discourse Completion Test. The findings revealed that Korean EFL learners differed from native English speakers in the use of complaint strategies. These results indicate that Korean EFL learners lack certain important skills necessary to make complaints appropriately, suggesting the need for the foreign language learners to develop a more extensive pragmatic knowledge of complaint strategies.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.64-78
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• 2007

For Korean researchers, English is essential. In fact, this is the case for any researcher who is a non-native English speaker, as recognition and success is predicated on being published, while publications that reach the broadest audiences are in English. Unfortunately, university science and engineering programs in Korea often do not provide formal coursework to help students attain greater competence in English composition. Aggravating this situation is the general lack of literature covering this specific pedagogical issue. While there is plenty of information to help native speakers with technical writing and much covering general English composition for EFL learners, there is very little information available to help EFL learners become better technical writers. Thus, the purpose of this report is twofold. First, as most Korean educators in science and engineering are not well acquainted with pedagogical issues of EFL writing, this report provides a general introduction to some relevant issues. It reviews the importance of contrastive rhetoric as well as some considerations for choosing the appropriate teaching approach, class arrangement, and use of computer assisted learning tools. Secondly, a course proposal is discussed. Based on a review of student writing samples as well as student responses to a self-assessment questionnaire, the proposed course is intended to balance the needs of Korean EFL learners to develop grammar, process, and genre skills involved in technical writing. Although, the scope of this report is very modest, by sharing the considerations made towards the development of an EFL technical writing course it seeks to provide a small example to a field that is perhaps lacking examples.

• Korean Journal of Comparative Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.1-18
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• 2013

Self-theories regarding general intelligence and English ability were measured from two countries (Korea and Pakistan) and their relationships with self-reported overall academic achievement and English language achievement were examined. No significant mean differences between the two countries were found regarding college students' self-theories. There were significant mean differences in overall academic achievement and English achievement between the two countries. Both the overall academic achievement and English achievement were significantly correlated with various self-theories while taking both samples together. Achievement measures were predicted by self-theories of general intelligence and English language ability. The current study highlighted the relationship between self-theories about general intelligence and English language ability and their relationship with self-reported achievement in two cultural contexts. This research also introduced new instruments to measure self-theories that can be used in studying self-theories in different domains.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.435-443
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• 2018

This study explores the effects of different Focus-on-Form Instruction (FFI) on improving learners' grammatical knowledge development and observes how the learners apply the knowledge to their output. A total of 112 college students were placed into three groups: 35 input-enhanced group students, who received visually enhanced input reading materials, 41 output-enhanced group students, performing dictogloss tasks, and 46 control group students given traditional grammar instruction. All the participant students took pre/post grammatical tests and completed pre/post writing tasks, which aimed to look into how the target grammatical structures were used in writing. The research findings indicated that both input-enhanced and output-enhanced FFI were effective on learners' language form learning and made contribution to their writing. Based on the findings, this study suggests that the elaborate design of combination of both FFI can maximize learners' language form learning.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1019-1029
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• 2014

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the creation and pedagogical use of English learner corpora. Many studies have shown that learner corpora can not only make a significant contribution to second language acquisition research but also contribute to the construction and evaluation of language tests by advancing our understanding of English learners. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the Korean EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' corpus. The Yonsei English Learner Corpus (YELC 2011) is a specialized, monolingual, and synchronic Korean EFL learner corpus that was developed by Yonsei University from 2011 to 2012. Over 3,000 Korean high school graduates (or equivalents) who were accepted by Yonsei University for their further studies participated in this project. It consists of 6,572 written texts (1,085,828 words) at nine different English proficiency levels. In this paper, we describe its compilation, and more specifically, how we have corpusized from a text archive to a corpus. After introducing the process of corpusization, we report arresting insights into the specific linguistic features that different proficiency levels of Korean learners of English have. This study also discusses the potential use of the YELC 2011 which is now freely available for research purposes.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.71-76
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of action learning methods and practices, which have a research focus on learner-centered teaching after training students to use collaborative learning practices from the viewpoint that the learners acquire English skills through peer correction activities based on sociocultural learning theory[1]. From March 1, 2018 to June 15, 2018, one control class and one experimental group were selected from the general freshman English courses. The experimental group attended classes centered on collaborative writing activities using action learning and cooperation techniques, and the control group attended classes lecture style and rote learning methods to teach writing. The result of study has shown that, for the experimental group, there have been statistically significant results in the production of writing, such as the number of words, the number of sentences, and sentence length. Learners could share the knowledge or ideas of others in their learning relationships with more regular basis.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.59-79
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• 2001

This paper examines syntactic categorial properties of “be” in Korean EFL beginners' utterances. Mainly based upon the acquisition data in Han (2000) and Shin (2000), it proposes that the so-called “S-be-X” construction is a projection of “underdeveloped” functional category F. The projection FP is different from other standard functional categories in that its head is not fully fledged.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.201-209
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of narrative and expository texts on incidental vocabulary learning of Korean university EFL learners while reading. The experimental groups were divided into 3 groups. The first experimental group were exposed to narrative texts and second group received expository texts. And the third group were administered narrative and expository texts alternately. The vocabulary tests were conducted after the last session to assess the incidental vocabulary gains of the learners. The results indicated the superiority of the expository texts over narratives in terms of enhancing learners' incidental acquisition of unknown words. Moreover, the results showed that the blended reading group of expository and narrative texts did better on the vocabulary gains than those of narrative reading group and expository reading group. However, in the essay writing assessment, the expository group committed the most vocabulary errors in writing.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.1-8
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• 2023

This study investigates why Korean English speakers misunderstand the English article system, which article Korean EFL learners use more accurately in their English writings, and implications for English writing instruction from Korean EFL learners' utterances. There have been numerous studies on the acquisition of English article system by non-native English speakers. Those studies agree that acquiring English articles is difficult for learners of English as a second language. As a result, in this study, many English learners use the definite and indefinite articles a/an. Many wrote articles from their writings, and occasionally, errors of excessive use of definite articles occurred. Through this, this paper investigates how a Korean English learner whose native language has no articles chooses the English article system in speech. It is based on the elicited production of the Korean English learner and suggests some implications for teaching English writing in the classroom. When English instructors teach Korean English learners to write English, it is more important than anything else to practice the correct usage of definite articles or indefinite articles.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.237-264
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• 2009

The present study explores patterns of teachers' corrective feedback and learners' uptake in Korean EFL undergraduate classroom setting. It also examines consistencies and discrepancies in the perception of corrective feedback by teachers and learners. Teachers' and learners' preferences and perception of corrective feedback are further analyzed to determine whether or not those differ from actual practices in English language learning classrooms. The results of the study are as follows. First of all, teachers' corrective feedback type varied according to the learners' error type and English proficiency level. There was a lack of consistency between the teachers' feedback practices and the learners' error types. Second, for the phonological errors, learners' data witnessed the most frequent uptake on recast. For the other error types, however, the learners' uptake rates were high for the explicit corrective feedback. Third, the teachers' explicit knowledge of corrective feedback was rather low and the preferences differed from teacher to teacher. The teachers' feedback perception and preferences did not consistently reflect their actual practices. Finally, patterns of the learners' expectations of corrective feedback varied according to learners' proficiency level. Teachers' and learners' expectations of corrective feedback were also compared and some mismatches were detected.