• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.37
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• pp.335-360
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether high-level(level 6) essay-writing questions in Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) have been presented appropriately so as to enable foreign test-takers to display their Korean writing ability properly, and to provide some suggestions on how those questions need to be changed. To accomplish this purpose, all the essay-writing questions were collected from the 33 TOPIK tests, from the 2nd in 1998 to the 35thin 2014, and analyzed from the perspectives of their topics and formats. The results are that high-level TOPIK essay-writing questions showed a strong tendency to take as their topics Korean sociocultural structures and phenomena, or current issues in Korea, and that they frequently employed guided writing formats by providing preset ideas or/and contexts for test-takers to write in a guided way; such tendencies were analyzed to shed a negative influence on test-takers displaying their writing ability and creativity, because those topics and preset ideas or contexts provided do not allow them to express their own opinions or positions freely. It is suggested that TOPIK essay-writing questions should be changed to deal with objective and general topics which enable test-takers to write freely and logically in Korean based on their experience, because TOPIK is not a test to check whether they have enough background knowledge about the Korean society and culture, but a test to assess their Korean proficiency.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.131-154
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of essay writing-centered mathematics instruction on problem solving and mathematical deposition in the elementary school. For the present study, two 6th grade classes with equivalent achievement in terms of problem solving and mathematical disposition based on the pretest. A total of 15 mathematics lessons focused on writing activities were administered to the experiment group for two months, while the textbook-based traditional lessons were given to the comparison group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the data. The results of the present study showed that essay writing-centered mathematics teaching is statistically superior that the textbook-based mathematics teaching with respect to students' problem solving and mathematical disposition. In addition, it was evidenced that essay writing-centered mathematics instruction makes an influence on students' perceptions toward essay-based assessment in a positive way.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.45-53
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• 1996

Essay-writing, first introduced to Korean university entrance exams in 1994, is gaining its weight year by year. Especially from 1997 when Nationwide Education Reform System begins, it will be a key component of student selection criteria at Korean universities. Essay-writing's future, however, will not be that smooth unless it shows necessary validity and reliability. This study is on reliability of Essay-writing scoring, mainly from the experience of University K case. To secure solid reliability in Essay-writing scoring for the 1995 University Entrance Exam, the authors started research from the 1994 Autumn Pre-exam which was administred to potential applicants of University K following year. Total of 1,254 students took Essay-writing exam and, subsequently, their essays were graded by two professors independently. The result was not so good. The correlation between two scores was 0.27[0.54] with Cronbach alpha 0.43[0.70] for Humanity-Social Science [Natural Science-Engineering] field. So, some action for reliability improvement was inevitable. The authors considered and investigated following two alternatives. Alternative 1 [A1] : Essays are to be graded three tiems independently at the 1995 University K Entrance Exam. Scores will be given as the average of three scores. Alternative 2 [A2] : Essays are to be graded twice independently, followed by a possible third grading only if two gradings show "significant" defference. Scores are given as the third score if done or the average of first two scores otherwise.otherwise.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.198-210
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• 2013

The purpose of this study investigates high school students' recognition and realities on the integrated science essay and is to suggest desirable direction of integrated science essay of how eduction. To this end, this paper was a questionnaire developed for use, it consists of the status, the writing skills and recognition of integrated science essay. Firstly, all grade students recognize the interest in integrated science essay class, but the need for third grade boys urgently was feeling. Second, STEAM class as a whole than average preference was. Third, integrated science essay was the most relevant, then was mathematics, languages, philosophy ethics, and social. Fourth, integrated science essay class with boys than girls in grade 1, science essay writing, reading science-related essay books, grammar, knowledge of the science and philosophy of science lessons, classes STEAM, read commentary essay reference all on the item, the higher affinity. Currently being implemented in integrated science essay test compared to the first, team teaching approach in schools project under one class teaches students how many teachers should be made. Second, it would require modifications of course content tailored to the preferences of female preference for science higher grade female students to disappear.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.71-94
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• 2011

How can an automated essay scoring (AES) program, which provides feedback for essays, be a formative tool for improving ESL writing? In spite of the increasing demands for English writing proficiency, English writing instruction has not been effective for teaching and learning because of a lack of timely and accurate feedback. In this context, AES as a possible solution has been gaining the attention of educators and scholars in ESL/EFL writing education because it can provide consistent and prompt feedback for student writers. This experimental study examined the impact of different types of feedback for a college ESL writing program using the Criterion AES system. The results reveal the positive impact of AES in a college-level ESL course and differences between the teacher's feedback and the AES feedback. The findings suggest that AES can be effectively integrated into ESL writing instruction as a formative assessment tool.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.131-139
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• 2012

This paper emphasizes writing education for engineering students should be communication driven writing education based on KEC2005. Communication driven writing for engineering students is essentially same as Technical Writing(TW) developed on the basis of ABET. Considering the current writing capability of engineering students and social need for various types of writing, TW education should be divided into two courses: basic and advanced. This paper deals with contents of a basic TW course in Myongji University, as a model case of a basic TW course for engineering students. It underlines various methods of prewriting that should be stressed and practiced in the TW class, because the prewriting step in the writing process determines the overall direction and structure of an essay. In particular, this paper introduces Power Writing(PW) which uses the structure of a paragraph as a means for providing building-blocks for the essay, employing logic, and ordering information arrangement in a paragraph. This paper also deals with important guidelines about sentence structure and word selection and proposes various applications of TW such as resume, interview, proposal, report, and presentation as a latter part of the basic course. Finally this paper highlights the etics of writing, such as plagiarism and the basic principles of quotation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.118-123
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• 2010

This study is aiming to structure progressive instructional strategy for development of constructivist-thinking into the beginning stage, developmental stage, and advanced stage, then organize multiple choice, completion, descriptive, and essay problems to be suitable for each stage of the strategy, and finally, to evaluate what effects this instructional strategy has on the students' academic achievements and enhancement of their scientific essay writing skills. The results of the study are as follows. First, lessons applying the strategy for developing constructivist-thinking were more effective in enhancing student' academic achievement than the text book-oriented lecture type lessons. In changes in academic achievement, the test group, for both high and low levels, displayed a higher average than the control group, however, changes in the high level was not statistically significant and changes in the low level students were found to be statistically significant. Second, scientific essay writing skills were found to be effective in all levels of the test group and the averages in both high and low groups of the test group were higher than those of the control group and were also found to be statistically significant.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1255-1279
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• 2010

Much has already been learned about what goes on in the minds of second language writers as they compose, yet, oddly enough, until recently little in the L2 research literature has addressed writing and mental imagery together. However, images and imaging (visual thinking) play a crucial role in perception (the basis of mental imagery), in turn, affecting language, thinking, and writing. Many theorists of mental imagery also agree that more than just language accounts for how we think and that imagery is at least as crucial as language. All of these demands, to be sure, are compounded for EFL students, which is why I investigate EFL students' writing process, focusing on the use of mental imagery and its relationship to the writing. First I speculate upon some ways that imagery influences EFL students' composing processes and products. Next, I want to explore how and whether the images in a writer's mind can be shaped effectively into a linear piece of written English in one's writing. I studied two university undergraduate EFL students, L and J. They had fairly advanced levels of English proficiency and exhibited high level of writing ability, as measured by TOEFL iBT Test. Each student wrote two comparison and contrast essays: one written under specified time limitations and the other written without the pressure of time. In order to investigate whether the amount of time in itself causes differences within an individual in imagery ability, the students were placed under strict time constraints for Topic 1. But for Topic 2, they were encouraged to take as much time as necessary to complete this essay. Immediately after completing their essays, I conducted face-to-face retrospective interviews with students to prompt them for information about the role of imagery as they write. Both L and J have spent more time on their second (untimed) essays. Without time constraint, they produced longer texts on untimed essay (149 vs. 170; 186 vs 284 words). However, despite a relatively long period of time spent writing an essay, these students neither described their images nor detailed them in their essays. Although their mental imagery generated an explosion of ideas for their writings, most visual thinking must merely be a means toward an end-pictures that writers spent in purchasing the right words or ideas.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.135-138
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• 2007

Essay education has been multifariously accomplished through school curriculums, private institutions and online education systems. However we can easily find misspellings from students' writing, and them still not being able to describe their own experiences logically and skillfully in schools. In this paper, we propose the web-based essay correction system using mash-up service, ECSUM, implemented for improvement of a students' logical writing ability applying a logical writing correction module with six steps. Using the proposed system, students can obtain logical writing skills using a mash-up service and teachers can help their students to improve their logical ability of self-expression.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2012.06b
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• pp.297-299
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• 2012

When writing English essays, non-English-speaking people will often encounter the problems such as lack of vocabulary, difficulties of expressing their ideas. To solve such problems, we designed an aiding system for English essay writing. While users are writing essays using this system, system will automatically offer words and phrases prompts according to what the users have typed in. For users in different research areas, we designed 71 different prompt knowledge bases. The evaluation result shows that the system effectively helps non-English-speaking authors express their ideas more spontaneously.