• 영어어문교육
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.149-174
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• 2012

This research aims at exploring what Korean teachers of English need for their effective professional development, particularly from the perspectives of peer trainers who are school teachers as well as teacher trainers. The research is based on an assumption that despite the critical roles of peer trainers in the changing process of English education, very little attention has been paid to listening to their voices. Having an awareness of the meaningfulness of their voices in teacher education, the researcher collected and analyzed the data, employing a questionnaire responded by 32 peer trainers and in-depth group interview with 6 peer trainers who responded the questionnaire. The research findings suggest that the majority of peer trainers believe that the priority should be put on teaching practice rather than language competence for Korean English language teacher development. It has been found that they believe that teacher learning within the workplace with some support from outside experts is the most effective way of making classroom change possible and keeping teachers' professional development sustainable. Finally, the research suggests school-based professional development as an alternative strategy to satisfy their needs on effective and sustainable professional development.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제13권1호
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• pp.235-259
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• 2007

The purpose of the present study is to develop a prototype automated scoring system for English writing. The system was developed for scoring writings of Korean middle school students. In order to develop the automated scoring system, following procedures have been applied. First, review and analysis of established automated essay scoring systems in other countries have been accomplished. By doing so, we could get the guidance for development of a new sentence-level automated scoring system for Korean EFL students. Second, knowledge base such as lexicon, grammar and WordNet for natural language processing and error corpus of English writing of Korean middle school students were established. Error corpus was established through the paper and pencil test with 589 third year middle school students. This study provided suggestions for the successful introduction of an automated scoring system in Korea. The automated scoring system developed in this study should be continuously upgraded to improve the accuracy of the scoring system. Also, it is suggested to develop an automated scoring system being able to carry out evaluation of English essay, not only sentence-level evaluation. The system needs to be upgraded for the improved precision, but, it was a successful introduction of an sentence-level automated scoring system for English writing in Korea.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제16권3호
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• pp.291-315
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• 2010

The present study examined the role of dialogue journaling in Korean students' English writing development. Thirteen Korean middle school students participated in a five-week dialogue journal writing program. The participants' English writing skills before and after their dialogue journaling were compared in terms of holistic and analytical scores of their English essays. The study also examined the changes in the participants' language use, as manifested in their dialogue journals. The results indicated the positive influence of dialogue journal writing on the participants' English writing skills in the areas of content and lexical fluency. As for the linguistic evidence that related dialogue journaling to English writing development, the three patterns of change in language use emerged from the participants' dialogue journals: a) raised awareness on grammar conventions, b) raised awareness on discourse conventions, and c) increased depth and richness in idea development. There were also three unhelpful factors associated with little improvement of English writing: a) lack in basic writing skills, b) repetitive use of identical sentence patterns, and c) lack in grammatical and lexical awareness. Overall, the results suggested that dialogue journaling could facilitate Korean students' English writing development when it creates authentic communicative interactions between the teacher and students.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.

• 한국치위생학회지
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• 제21권1호
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• pp.41-51
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• 2021

Objectives: This study analyzes the demands of dental hygiene college students for English courses and proposes ways to improve English courses for college students majoring in dental hygiene that would take advantage of English for specific purposes (ESP) in the future. Methods: Using a structured questionnaire, four universities by region with departments of dental hygiene were selected at random, and out of a total of 260 college students majoring in dental hygiene, data of 258 students, excluding data with missing values, were considered for investigating the needs of English curriculum development using the SPSS program. Results: Total 82.1% of the students expected English programs, and they said that English was important, The proposal for English curriculum development indicated that although the number of English programs was sufficient, diversification of English programs or changes in methods of managing classes were required. As for the need for English programs (66.4%), they required more ESP, such as practical English for dental or dental terminology, which can be used clinically and more than English for general purposes (EGP). Conclusions: Students in dental hygiene showed a higher demand for more professional ESP that can use clinically as dental hygienists in the future. It is necessary to consider the reorganization of the curriculum or changes in the method of managing English classes by reflecting one demands of dental hygiene students.

• 대한음성학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한음성학회 2007년도 한국음성과학회 공동학술대회 발표논문집
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• pp.183-186
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• 2007

This study analyzes Korean high school students' pronunciation errors in word-initial onglides in English. For this study, 24 Korean high school students read 34 English words including glide-vowel sequences in word-initial positions and vowel-initial words in a frame sentence. The results showed 2 different error types: glide deletion and vowel distortion. After the analysis of the first recording, the subjects were taught how to pronounce glide-vowel sequences properly in a 60-minute class. Comparison of the analyses of the first and second recordings showed that the subjects improved on the pronunciation of glide-vowel sequences. After the training, the pronunciation errors of diphthongs unique to English, [$j_I$], decreased substantially. However, most subjects still had difficulties in pronouncing [$w{\mho}$], [wu], and [wo]. There was no significant correlation between English course grade and error reduction.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.181-197
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to measure how English immersion classes affect students. This study seeks to answer two questions. First, will the young learners gain an international sense? Second, will the students learn English naturally without having to be sent abroad to an English speaking country? Several kinds of immersion programs have been designed and implemented in Korea. However, many students have felt great stress and mental pressure in the immersion programs. Students find the programs stressful because English must be used at all times. In this paper, two groups of elementary school students are compared: one being the control group and the other being the experimental group, an immersion class. The results show that the mental health problems, sensitivities, and rates of depression in the immersion group are greater than those of the students in the control group. Therefore, the immersion students' overall mental health is substandard. The negative effects of lethargy and depression are made worse when they are placed in English only environments. The results indicate more attention should be focused on respecting and understanding the students' overall mental health when teaching them English.

• 한국생활과학회지
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• 제17권6호
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• pp.1125-1133
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to explore the perception toward qualification of early childhood English teachers and their teachers' sense of efficacy. The samples consisted of 201 early childhood English teachers in Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Gyeonggi area. A sample of early childhood English teachers completed a series of questionnaires. The collected data were analyzed with t-test, F-test, correlation. The results showed that most teachers were women between 30 to 40 years old, university graduate with job experience less than 3 years. In addition, half of teachers in this study majored on English studies or early childhood education and child studies. This study found that early childhood English teachers thought themselves to be qualified as a English teacher and early childhood teacher. And they rated teachers' sense of efficacy to relatively high. There were differences on the scores of qualification of early childhood English teacher and teachers' sense of efficacy according to education level and major. And years of job experience were positively related with the perception of qualification of early childhood teacher and teachers' sense of efficacy.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제17권11호
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• pp.242-251
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• 2017

본 연구는 북한의 수재양성 기관인 제1중학교의 영어교과서를 코퍼스로 구축한 후, 이를 분석하여 언어적 특징을 파악한 연구이다. 그동안 북한의 일반중학교의 영어교과서의 특징들을 파악한 연구는 많았지만, 북한의 수재교육기관인 제1중학교 영어교과서에 대한 연구는 부족했다. 이를 위하여 북한자료센터에서 입수한 제1중학교 1학년, 2학년, 4학년, 6학년 영어 교과서 구성 체계를 살펴보고, 코퍼스를 구축한 후, 워드스미스 툴스 7.0을 활용하여 제1중학교 영어 교과서의 언어적인 특징과 고빈도 내용어를 분석하였다. 기본적인 통계 정보를 살펴본 결과, 학년의 위계에 따라 어휘 수가 증가하지는 않았으나 어휘다양성은 고학년으로 갈수록 순차적으로 높아지는 경향성이 발견되었다. 한편 학년별 고빈도 내용어의 분포를 살펴본 결과, 각 학년별 교과서에 수록된 지문의 주제에 따라 학년별로 큰 차이를 보였다.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제3호
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• pp.141-183
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• 1997

This paper aims to find out the current state of early English education in the world(including Korea) and to suggest its more desirable direction, with special reference to TEFL in elementary schools of Korea. In fact English teaching in elementary schools of Korea has been put into practice as an extracurricular activity since 1982. But in 1995 the Ministry of Education proclaimed a policy to establish a TEFL program as the regular course in elementary schools of Korea since 1997. In this connection, the writer surveyed several kinds of theories about early English education to verify the necessity and validity of Korea's elementary school English education. The logical result from these theories is that younger children are better equipped to learn foreign languages with efficiency than older children or adults. However, as most studies are based on logical inferences rather than on direct observation or experimental evidence, we are not sure that those theories are right. In this view, the writer put stress on the preparation of educational environments to establish a more desirable direction of early English education in Korea, since Korea's elementary school English education will be practiced under EFL environment, not ESL environment. The writer also pointed out some problems of educational finances, the curriculum development process and its content, teaching materials(textbooks and tapes), English teachers, teaching methods, evaluation, educational facilities. This paper concludes that we have to try to solve these problems to succeed in a TEFL program in elementary schools of Korea and suggests several things for a more desirable direction of Korea's elementary school English education.