• Title/Summary/Keyword: English Language Learners

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A Study on Interlanguage Transfer through L3 Acquisition

  • Luo, Derong
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.7 no.2
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    • pp.179-187
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    • 2019
  • As the globalization process progresses more rapidly and widely, there has been a ever-growing demand for multilingual learning. Compared with the study of Second Language Acquisition, studies on the Third Language and even Multilingual Acquisition have attracted a relatively poor attention. At the same time, considering current educational environments for ethnic colleges and universities, the effects of college English teaching for minority students can be said to have been 'generally poor.' In this situation, when we try to find ways to improve college English studies for minority students most of whom already can speak two languages or even more, it would not be the best idea to keep following the experiences of traditional Second Language Acquisition. It is necessary first to find out whether there are positive or negative effects in acquiring multiple languages, and then to conduct a profound research on L3 (third language and even multilingual) Acquisition in order to employ more efficient teaching methods for multilingual learners. After conducting a Japanese-teaching experiment on two groups of learners with mono-lingual and bilingual backgrounds, it has been found that there is a positive transfer between different languages. In this paper, following the recent research findings on Language teaching for multilingual learners, I try to show with further supports that when it comes to language education for learners with multilingual backgrounds, we should focus on the advantages they may earn in order to conduct more effective language acquisition.

Perception and production of English fricatives by Chinese learners of English: Error patterns and perception-production relationship

  • Zhang, Buyi;Zhang, Jiaqi;Lee, Sook-hyang
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.13 no.1
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    • pp.25-36
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    • 2021
  • This study examined the perception and production of eight English fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ by thirty Chinese English majors and thirty Chinese middle school students through a fricative identification test, an intelligibility test, and a goodness rating test and focused on error patterns and the perception-production relationship. The results showed that substitution errors occurred frequently in the perception and production of English fricatives by both the English majors and the middle school students. Further, the error patterns were attributed to various influencing factors such as the negative transfer from Chinese consonant inventory, hypercorrection or overcompensation mistakes, deficiency of L2 teaching, and acoustic similarities. Significant overall correlations were found between the fricative perception and production by the two subject groups but were not manifested in all the eight fricatives, indicating that Chinese learners' perceptual competence of target fricatives was not necessarily tied to their productive excellence of those sounds in all cases. Furthermore, precedences of perception over production were incompletely manifested in the eight fricatives, which suggested that perception might not always be a necessary prerequisite for production. Additionally, subject group and vowel context differences were observed. The English majors performed better than the middle school students, both perceptually and productively, and the subjects' performances in perception and production varied when vowel contexts changed.

Differences in Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategy Use in English Test-typed Text Reading between Gifted English Language Learners and General Middle School Learners (영어 평가 지문 읽기에서 영어 영재 학생과 일반 중학생의 메타인지 읽기전략 사용 차이에 대한 연구)

  • Bang, Jyun
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.20 no.1
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    • pp.345-355
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    • 2020
  • The purpose of this study was to explore the differences of the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies which gifted English language learners (GELLs) and general middle school learners (GMSLs) used while reading English test-typed texts. 74 GELLs in a gifted program of C city and 90 GMSLs in the southern part of C city participated in this study. The MARSI questionnaire was administered to the GELLs and GMSLs at the end of the semester. Frequency and t-test were used to examine the differences in metacognitive awareness of reading strategy use between GELLs and GSMLs when reading the English test-typed texts. Based on the analysis, the study discovered that GELLs were likely to use metacognitive awareness of reading strategies more frequently than GMSLs. Also, GELLs tended to use more global and problem-solving strategies than GMSLs. However, there is no significant difference in support strategy use between the two groups. In conclusion, the study suggests pedagogical implications for GELLs and GMSLs' effective English reading.

The Effects of Collocation-Based Instruction on L1-Korean High School Students' English Vocabulary Acquisition

  • Kim, Youngsu;Ma, Jee Hyun
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.141-159
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    • 2011
  • This study examined the effects of collocation-based instruction on L2 vocabulary acquisition and learners' interests in it. Fifty one students were randomly assigned to the experimental group (collocation-based instruction group) and to the control group. The participants' English vocabulary capacity was checked through pre and post tests, and two surveys were used to probe the learners' vocabulary learning behaviors and their interests in English vocabulary learning respectively. To better understand the participants' opinions and feelings on the collocation-based learning, follow-up interviews were also carried out. The results showed that second language (L2) learners' vocabulary capacity was significantly improved through collocation-based instruction. However, the participants' degree of interest in vocabulary learning did not reach our expectation partly because of external factors such as the Test for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and lack of familiarity of collocations. Such results indicate that the high school students' rooted perception of putting importance on test-based language learning could not be easily changed since it is closely related to their immediate needs. Based on the results, this study suggested how to implement collocations into L2 classrooms effectively.

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Acoustic analysis of Korean trisyllabic words produced by English and Korean speakers

  • Lee, Jeong-Hwa;Rhee, Seok-Chae
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.1-6
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    • 2018
  • The current study aimed to investigate the transfer of English word stress rules to the production of Korean trisyllabic words by L1 English learners of Korean. It compared English and Korean speakers' productions of seven Korean words from the corpus L2KSC (Rhee et al., 2005). To this end, it analyzed the syllable duration, intensity, and pitch. The results showed that English and Korean speakers' pronunciations differed markedly in duration and intensity. English learners produced word-initial syllables of greater intensity than Korean speakers, while Korean speakers produced word-final syllables of longer duration than English learners. However, these differences between the two speaker groups were not related to the expected L1 transfer. The tonal patterns produced by English and Korean speakers were similar, reflecting L1 English speakers' learning of the L2 Korean prosodic system.

On Exploiting New Methods of Language Acquisition Offered by the Internet (인터넷이 제공하는 언어 습득의 새로운 방법 활용)

  • Choi, Mi-Hee Michelle
    • Journal of Digital Contents Society
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.111-116
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    • 2013
  • Instructive lessons in the language classrooms are extremely constrictive to language learners in improving their English skills, thus, the use of technology in education plays an important role in a language classroom. Results of language proficiency improvement of the learners vary depending on the extent of supplementary materials offered by the internet delivered to the learners. The purpose of the present study is to explore and propose a new approach of language acquisition offered by the internet. This study presents effective methods of using the internet in carrying out the written work. In this paper, we show that the relationship between participation of the learners in the class activities and improvement of English writing skills are mutually proportional.

EFL College Students' Learning Experiences during Film-based Reading Class: Focused on the Analysis of Students' Reflective Journals

  • Baek, Jiyeon
    • International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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    • v.7 no.4
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    • pp.49-55
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    • 2019
  • In the age of information, newly produced knowledge is mostly written in English. Therefore, there has been a strong demand for English language learning in the EFL context. However, most EFL learners possess a lack of interest and motivation in the text-based reading class. In this educational context, film is one of the most widely used materials in English reading classes considering that modern learners are predominantly familiar with various audiovisual materials. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Korean EFL learners experienced in the film-based reading class. Specifically, this study aims to analyze the EFL students' perceptions about the class and learning strategies that they used during the class. In order to comprehensively interpret the EFL learners' experiences in the classroom, a coding system consisting of five categories was developed: report, emotion, reflection, evaluation, future plans. The results of data analysis showed that the use of movies in English reading classes had positive effects on reading comprehension and inference of word meaning. The most frequently used learning strategies were affective strategies which helped them control their emotion, attitude, motivations and values, whereas memorization strategies were rarely used. In this respect, this study suggests that the use of movies in the EFL reading classroom encourage students' attention and help them obtain and activate schema which is useful in gaining a better understanding of text-based reading materials.

Korean Learners' Development of English Passive Constructions

  • Park, Hye-Sook
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.199-216
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    • 2009
  • This study investigates how Korean speakers develop their interlanguage of English passive constructions with a reference to the learners' grammar proficiency levels. Sixty two college students of different levels of English participated in this study. They were asked to complete a sentence-completion task. Their production was classified into accurate passives, malformed passives, pseudo-passives, unaccusatives, and actives according to the use of transitive, ergative and unergative verbs. They then were further analyzed depending on the subjects' levels of grammar by three main factors: L1 transfer, the English voice system, and universal cognitive factors. The results showed that the subjects of the lower group produced more pseudo-passives, malformed passives, and overpassivization than those of the higher group, and even subjects of higher group still made passives for ergative verbs. It was also shown that L1 and universal factors had more influence on the lower group than on the higher group. Based on the analyses of the subjects' responses, the development of the English passive system by Korean learners is shown and some implications are suggested for effective teaching of English.

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Compilation of the Yonsei English Learner Corpus (YELC) 2011 and Its Use for Understanding Current Usage of English by Korean Pre-university Students (한국 예비 대학생의 영어 사용 특성 파악을 위한 대규모 공개 영어 학습자 코퍼스 구축 및 분석)

  • Rhee, Seok-Chae;Jung, Chae Kwan
    • 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.

Locative PPs in L2 English Argument Structure Acquisition

  • Kweon, Soo-Ok
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.2 no.1
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    • pp.1-21
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    • 2002
  • In this paper, a persistent L1 influence on L2 argument structure acquisition is observed in terms of complement and adjunct PPs. Since the distinction between these two PPs in L1 seems not as sharp as in L2, overgeneralization is anticipated in the L2 acquisition due to L1 transfer. Result of an experimental study shows that Korean learners of English do not successfully acquire L2 verb meanings as to which locative PP is obligatory and which is not. Generally, learners transfer the L1 properties when asked to judge grammaticality. Some possible source of constraints in L2 acquisition, such as input frequency and noticing ability is proposed as possible explanations of data. Finally, pedagogical implications in language classroom for vocabulary acquisition are discussed.

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