• 영어어문교육
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.171-198
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• 2009

The current study explored a pedagogical possibility of utilizing magic as a source of communicative tasks for young learners in developing their English speaking proficiency. Fifteen primary school students participated in the study, which consisted of a 17-week period of task-based English instruction and data collection. The participants were instructed to accomplish various types of magic task through collaborative group interaction. The data collected for the study pertained to the students' linguistic outputs, interactions in group and attitudes to English learning. They were analyzed for how magic tasks affect the students' English proficiency developments and group interactions. The study results suggested the significant improvement in the students' English speaking proficiencies. They revealed that magic tasks contributed to a) enhancing the motivation to speak in English, b) stimulating the creative and problem-solving processes, and c) providing the sufficient opportunity to repeat and internalize the target expressions. The study results also indicated that the students' satisfaction with their group members and tasks seemed to have positive influences on their interactions in group and English proficiency development. Further discussion and pedagogical implications are provided as well as the study limitations.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.309-326
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• 2011

This study examines the relationship between second language use outside of class and oral proficiency development. It first identifies out-of-class activities of international graduate students in the U.S. and the average time spent speaking English in those out-of-class activities. Interviews and student self-measurements of time spent speaking English each day were used to investigate the types and quantities of out-of-class activities. In addition, two sets of student oral proficiency test scores were collected. Correlation analysis is used to find out the relationship of the variables between the most salient out-of-class activities and oral proficiency gains. The findings indicate that second language use outside of class is important for international graduate students to improve their oral proficiency. This is especially true with regularized interaction such as talking at work and the average time spent speaking in English a day outside of class. This study suggests that learners of English in an ESL environment should be encouraged to take part in out-of-class activities in addition to English use in the classroom in order for them to improve their oral proficiency.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations between phonetic differences among Korean learners' production of English front vowels, pronunciation intelligibility and speaking proficiency test score. To do so, thirty Korean university students were asked (1) to read English text book paragraphs and (2) describe a picture. Two English native raters and one Korean rater evaluated Korean subjects' English pronunciation intelligibility and speaking. In addition, subjects' English vowel productions were acoustically analyzed(F0, F1, F2, vowel duration, intensity). The results of the study show that the vowel quality and pitch of the unstressed vowels and lax vowel are related to the pronunciation intelligibility. In addition, the scores of pronunciation intelligibility and speaking are highly related.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.193-211
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• 2003

This study aims to illustrate students' and teachers' perceptions towards certification of English proficiency and proficiency- based curriculum, and to investigate their needs for developing college English program. A total of 597 students and 28 teachers participated in the survey. The findings showed that both groups acknowledged the usefulness of the certification of English proficiency and proficiency-based curriculum. However, both groups showed a negative response to 'waive test' (testing for the replacement of English required class). They also expressed high level of needs in increasing the number of courses and credit hours, reducing the class size, and improving facilities. Both groups perceived speaking and listening as more important skills, while students showed various preferences for effective language practice activities. The findings of this study suggest t hat the introduction of certification of English proficiency should he supplemented with follow-ups both in pedagogical aspect and on administrative level.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제10권3호
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• pp.127-142
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• 2004

This paper examines the relationship between children's English proficiency in grade three and English learning environment and experiences before entering elementary school. In English learning environment and experiences, three influences consisting of children, home environment, and environmental influences of English learning are used to find out which influences contributed to children's English proficiency in grade three of elementary school. The result of this study shows that children with high interest in English have higher proficiency in all language skills reading, writing, listening, and speaking than that of children with low interests. For parents' influences, parents' high interests toward their children's English leaning and high monthly income result in children's high English proficiency. For English environmental influences, children who start at the early age and continue studying English have higher English proficiency.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.1-22
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• 2012

This study explores the effects of phonological awareness instruction with phonetics on listening comprehension and speaking. For the test of measuring the improvement of listening comprehension, two nationwide listening comprehension tests were used for pre-test and post-test. To find out the improvement of speaking ability, students were required to take the Level-3 NEAT speaking tests. There was a notable correlation between phonological awareness instruction with phonetics and listening ability. Also a significant correlation between phonological awareness instruction with phonetics and speaking ability was found. The group with phonological awareness class with phonetics received higher scores in listening and speaking test than the group without phonological awareness class with phonetics in the post-test. This study implies that phonological awareness class with phonetics is helpful for the improvement of listening and speaking ability. With this research, we can also say that students' communicative competence increased.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.47-54
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• 2023

This study attempted to test the hypothesis that Korean evaluators can score L2 speech appropriately, even when speech rate features are unavailable. Two perception experiments-preliminary and main-were conducted sequentially. The purpose of the preliminary experiment was to categorize English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) speakers into two groups-advanced learners and lower-level learners-based on the proficiency scores given by five human raters. In the main experiment, a set of stimuli was prepared such that the speech rate of all data tokens was modified to have a uniform speech rate. Ten human evaluators were asked to score the stimulus tokens on a 5-point scale. These scores were statistically analyzed to determine whether there was a significant difference in utterance production between the two groups. The results of the preliminary experiment confirm that higher-proficiency learners speak faster than lower-proficiency learners. The results of the main experiment indicate that under controlled speech-rate conditions, human raters can appropriately assess learner proficiency, probably thanks to the linguistic features that the raters considered during the evaluation process.

• 한국콘텐츠학회논문지
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.329-339
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• 2011

본 연구는 비영어권 OECD 21개 국가들을 대상으로 영어능력과 경제활동(국가별 무역량, R&D투자 등), 그리고 경제 성장률과의 관계 분석을 통하여 영어능력이 국가의 경제성장에 미치는 영향을 실증적으로 규명하고자 하였다. 단순회귀분석(OLS)과 표면상무관회귀분석(Seemingly Unrelated Regression Estimation: SURE)의 기법을 사용하여 추정한 결과 체코, 핀란드, 그리고 폴란드를 제외한 여타 국가들에서는 영어능력이 직접적으로 경제성장에 정(+)의 효과를 미친다는 통계학적 유의성이 발견되지 않았다. 그러나 영어 능력은 무역량 증진의 기여를 통하여 간접적으로 경제성장에 영향을 끼치는 것으로 나타났다. 따라서 영어 능력은 경제성장에 있어서 하나의 필요조건이지 충분조건은 아닌 것으로 결론 지울 수 있다. 더불어 영어 능력은 최소한의 물적 자본과, 기술축적, 정치적 안정, 그리고 훌륭한 통치를 보완하는 충분한 보완재 역할을 담당한다면 경제성장에 긍정적인 영향을 끼칠 것이 예상된다.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.3172-3179
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• 2015

본 연구는 성인 영어 학습자의 말하기 숙련도 향상을 위한 영어교수법을 제안하고 있다. 패턴 위주의 문장암기나 문법 규칙 중심의 대화식 영어회화 교육 방법을 탈피하여 스토리텔링 기법을 적용한 영어 말하기 교수 방법론을 소개하고 있다. 스토리텔링 중심의 영어 말하기 교수법의 이론적 타당도를 세 가지 측면에서 살펴본다. 말하기의 목적 즉, 자신의 생각을 적절히 설득적으로 표현하고 자신의 의견을 나눌 수 있기 위해서는 먼저 풍부한 담화량의 확보가 관건이다. 이를 위하여 이야기 구성요소 중심의 말하기 전략 12가지를 소개하고, 말하기 학습에 적용해 보고 있다. 다음으로, 수사학적 차원에서 설득적인 말하기를 위한 전략을 살펴본다. 아리스토텔레스의 설득적인 말하기를 위한 수사학적 5대 영역을 중심으로 스토리텔링 기법의 말하기와의 관련성을 찾아본다. 끝으로, 교육 현장에서 스토리텔링 중심의 영어 교수법 적용의 가능성을 살펴본다. 외국어 학습자로서의 언어 숙련도가 모국어 수준과 다르다는 이유만으로 위와 같은 스토리텔링 기법의 영어 말하기 교수가 교육 현장에서 실현될 수 있을까에 관한 의문에 학습자 전략 사용 양상을 살펴봄으로써 이에 대한 실현 가능성을 긍정적으로 기대한다.

• 한국영어학회지:영어학
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• 제4권2호
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• pp.229-252
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• 2004

The TOEIC has widely used to evaluate business English proficiency in Korea, but those who achieved high scores still often face difficulties in performing their duties in English at work. This implies that the test may not evaluate business English proficiency effectively enough. With an ultimate goal of proposing an effective way of assessing business English proficiency, therefore, his study analyzed the predictive validity of the TOEIC. A correlation analysis was conducted between TOEIC scores of 64 office workers of multinational companies and their working skills in English evaluated by themselves, and their colleagues and seniors. Its results illustrated a significant correlation between their listening and reading scores and their working skills measured by all the groups, but not between their scores and their working skills in speaking and writing. In addition, the study did a delphi study to identify working skills in English to be assessed in business English tests and a contents analysis of the TOEIC. The results suggest business English tests should be able to assess working skills by work types and more direct testing of working skills in speaking and writing is needed.