• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.151-176
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• 2003

Motivation and learning strategies, some of the important factors affecting language learning, have mostly been studied with reference to their relationship in terms of proficiency. This study investigated motivation and learning strategies and their relationship in order to find the inward predisposition of learners. Data was collected from 200 university students in Taejon and Chungnam province, Korea language learning strategies were measured by the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(SILL), and motivation by the Attitude / Motivation Test Battery(AMTB), with adaptations for Koreans. The detailed analysis of the data Indicated that Korean university students were more motivated to learn English for a practical goal than a formal one. They had a strong willingness to learn but showed 'the tendency of the new generation' of choosing the easiest and most convenient ways in studying English in terms of motivational intensity and strategy use. Findings imply that there have to be some changes and improvements in the deep-rooted classroom teaching methods. A systematic device is needed to induce students to be autonomous learners, providing them with a variety of activities suitable for their purposes and levels, as in opportunities of contacting native speakers, multi-media language labs, the Internet etc.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-99
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• 2011

The role of corrective feedback (CF) has long been discussed in the field of second language acquisition. It has been claimed that CF enables learners to notice the problems in their second language (L2) production. However, it should not be assumed that learners always adequately interpret teachers' responses to their problematic utterance as correction. Especially when feedback is provided in an implicit way, the possibility that CF goes unnoticed should not be excluded. In this regard, the study aims to investigate how learners perceive teachers' corrective feedback in English classrooms in Korea. The study focuses particularly on examining the relationship between type of feedback and target linguistic content with learner interpretation of teacher corrective intention. Nine classrooms were observed and videotaped. Forty-five students and nine teachers participated in stimulated recall interviews. Their comments were analyzed to document the learners' perception and the teachers' intention of feedback. It was found that learner perception of teacher corrective intention was at its greatest when feedback was provided explicitly and was focused on morphological errors.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.378-390
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• 2020

English stress plays such a critical role in understanding spoken English words that its misplacement can lead to a breakdown of communication. Korean learners of English, whose native language is known to lack this feature, are expected to have some difficulty acquiring this English prosodic system. This study explored how Korean is different from English in manifesting prominence at the word level and how the interlanguage of Korean learners of English is dissimilar to both languages in that regard. Four polysyllabic English loanwords in Korean and their English source words were used as stimuli. Ten native English speakers read the English source words while ten Korean learners of English read the English loan words first and then the English source words. The analysis of 120 speech samples revealed that Korean words did not have any salient syllable realized by all stress features: duration, amplitude, and F0. On the contrary, English words had syllables with relative prominence, which was consistently manifested by all the features. Interestingly, in realizing English stress, the interlanguage of the Korean English learners bore more resemblance to that of English than that of their native language.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.165-173
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• 2005

This paper investigates the influence of the Korean phonology on the production of English words including a stop plus nasal sequence through production experiments with a beginner and an advanced group of Korean English learners. The results of the production experiments show that both the beginner and the advanced group of Korean English learners were under the influence of the Korean phonological rule realizing a stop as a nasal before a nasal when they pronounced a stop plus nasal sequences in English words. The extent of L1 interference was greater in the beginner group than in the advanced group.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.5
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• pp.219-247
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• 1999

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Korean learners of English reset the "prodrop" parameter of Korean into "non-prodrop" parameter of English in the process of English acquisition. An experiment was conducted to 45 Korean learners of English on the prodrop phenomenon, namely on the null referential or null nonreferential subject, and subject-verb agreement by way of grammatical judgment. The results of the experiment are as follows: First, L2 learners follow the parameter of L1, and then reset the parameter of L2 regardless of the parameter of L1 as their L2 abilities advance. Thus, this study provides further support for the hypothesis that universal grammar is available via L1. Second, the referential subject is, at first, easier to acquire than nonreferential subject, and the triggering fact for the switch from [+prodrop] to [-prodrop] was the use of nonreferential subjects. Third, 3rd person agreement has no connection with the acquisition of the prodrop parameter as a result of subject-verb agreement. Therefore, these results indicate that verb agreement is not a trigger for the recognition of the obligatory subject.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2019

This study explored the relationship between accurate vowel production and proficiency levels in L2 English produced by Korean EFL adult learners. To this end, nine English vowels /i, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɔ, ɑ, ʊ, u/ were selected and adjacent vowels paired up (e.g., /i/-/ɪ/, /u/-/ʊ/, /ɛ/-/æ/, /ʌ/-/ɔ/, /ɔ/-/ɑ/). The spectral features of the pairs were measured instrumentally, namely F1 (indicating tongue height) and F2 (indicating tongue backness). Meanwhile, the durations as well as spectral features of the tense and lax counterparts in /i/-/ɪ/ and /u/-/ʊ/ were measured, as both temporal and spectral features are important in distinguishing them. The findings of this study confirm that higher-rated speakers were better able to distinguish the contrasts in the front vowel pairs /i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/æ/ than lower-rated learners, but in the central and back vowel pairs /u/-/ʊ/and /ʌ/-/ɔ/ (though not /ɔ/-/ɑ/), Korean EFL learners generally showed difficulty distinguishing adjacent vowels with spectral cues. On the other hand, the durations of the tense and lax vowels showed that the lower-rated speakers were less able to use the temporal feature to differentiate tense vowels from their lax counterparts, unlike previous studies that found that in general Korean learners depend excessively on the temporal cue to distinguish tense and lax vowels.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.spc
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• pp.1-17
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• 2003

This paper aims to propose that Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a method that can help meet the conditions in language learning and instruction. PBL was first used in medical education, where learners engaged in problem-solving activities that reflect the demands of real-life professional practice, thus promoting critical thinking in the content domain. The paper proposes that by applying PBL in language learning and creating situations in which learners work collaboratively on problems, the learners benefit in two respects: (i) they have the opportunity to practise the kind of thinking skills and problem-solving strategies needed in real life, and (ii) they engage in purposeful language activity with others through discussion and negotiation. The paper first provides a theoretical rationale far the use of PBL in language learning and suggests attendant changes in the role of a language instructor in a PBL context. The paper then presents an outline of the stages and components needed in designing an online PBL Unit far use in an undergraduate language class.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.97-120
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• 2005

Production and perception of second language sounds are typically influenced by second language learners' native language sounds. In this study we investigate how the Korean language influences Korean speakers' production of English alphabets. In the experiment conducted to prepare for this study 16 native speakers of Korean pronounced English alphabets. Then three native speakers of English evaluated the Korean subjects' pronunciation of them. The results show that the Korean subjects' native language (i.e., Korean) influences their production of the English alphabets. When Korean has sounds corresponding to English alphabets, the English subjects rate the Korean subjects' production of them good. For instance, Korean has voiceless stop phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated good by the English subjects. The Korean subjects' production of English alphabets containing the sounds that do not exist in Korean was rated poor by the English subjects. For instance, Korean does not have voiced fricative phonemes, hence their production of English alphabets was rated poor.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.65-70
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• 2009

This paper describes ongoing work on the correction of adverb errors committed by Korean learners studying English as a foreign language (EFL), using an automated English writing assessment system. Adverb errors are commonly found in learners 'writings, but handling those errors rarely draws an attention in natural language processing due to complicated characteristics of adverb. To correctly detect the errors, adverbs are classified according to their grammatical functions, meanings and positions within a sentence. Adverb errors are collected from learners' sentences, and classified into five categories adopting a traditional error analysis. The error classification in conjunction with the adverb categorization is implemented into a set of mal-rules which automatically identifies the errors. When an error is detected, the system corrects the error and suggests error specific feedback. The feedback includes the types of errors, a corrected string of the error and a brief description of the error. This attempt suggests how to improve adverb error correction method as well as to provide richer diagnostic feedback to the learners.

• 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.