• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.395-411
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the elementary English conversation instructors' perception on their professionalism and the needs of teacher training program. The survey data were attained from 136 elementary English conversation instructors. Descriptive statistics were employed to discuss the result of the survey response. The results of this study revealed that the elementary English conversation instructors perceived the need of in-service training program for their professionalism improvement, especially in teaching techniques for four language skills. The result also revealed that the instructors need to be more equipped with the knowledge of elementary learners' developmental psychology and L2 learning process. The study concludes with several suggestions for elementary English conversation instructors' improvement of teaching professionalism and in-service training program.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.89-104
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• 2004

This paper investigates previous theories on English focus realization and attempts to find out the overall acoustic characteristics of English focus. It has been argued in previous studies that English focus can be defined as a new information that is not recoverable from the context (Halliday 1967), a complementary element of presupposition (Jackendoff 1972), and what is predicated about the topic in a sentence (Sgall 1973, Gundel 1974). The phonetic realization of English focus in an utterance has been said to be either L+H*/H*, or falling accent. Yet it is a more or less simplified pattern not based on real data obtained from native speakers of English, and it does not consider the various pragmatic and contextual situations. In our experiments we found that native speakers uttered English focus sentences in different ways according to the different focus structure. Another notable result is that Korean speakers, when provided with the same experimental material, are neither able to distinguish different focus types nor deaccent the elements that are not focused in an utterance.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2018

Stressed vowels in English are usually produced using longer duration, higher pitch, and greater intensity than unstressed vowels. However, many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners have difficulty producing English lexical stress because their mother tongues do not have such features. In order to investigate if certain non-native English speakers (Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese-Chinese native speakers) are able to produce English lexical stress in a native-like manner, speech samples were extracted from the L2 learners' corpus known as AESOP (the Asian English Speech cOrpus Project). Sixteen disyllabic words were analyzed in terms of the ratio of duration, pitch, and intensity. The results demonstrate that non-native English speakers are able to produce English stress in a similar way to native English speakers, and all speakers (both native and non-native) show a tendency to use duration as the strongest cue in producing stress. The results also show that the duration ratio of native English speakers was significantly higher than that of non-native speakers, indicating that native speakers produce a bigger difference in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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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.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.227-248
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• 2002

This paper reviews current developments in UG-related SLA·FLL research. It discusses the findings of Hahn (2000), Shin (2000) and Yang (2001) with respect to the following issues: the role of UG parameters in SLA·FLL and the developmental aspects of inflectional categories in Korean EFL learners' interlanguage. It contends that Korean EFL learners' inflectional grammars are constrained by L1 as well as by Universal Grammar.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.1
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• pp.159-187
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• 1995

The purpose of this study is to investigate common errors made by Korean learners in English composition and to find out what is an effective and appropriate teaching method of English composition in Korea. For these purposes, 197 students on the third grade in high school were selected as the subjects of this research. The students were tested by way of the immediate translation of 31 simple Korean sentences into English which are supposed to be easy for those students to write without any difficulty. About 2 minutes were given for testing each sentence. The results are as follows : First. the whole sum of errors made by 197 students was 2,972 and these types of errors were classified into 13 categories by Duskova's grammatical method and James'. The errors with comparatively high frequency were prepositional errors(17.2%), verbal errors(15.4%), and the errors with low frequency were article errors(1.9%), to-infinitive errors. Second, when Korean students learn English as a target language, overgeneralization(33.6%) and reduction(17.5) influenced the learners much more greatly than language transfer(22.2) did. But the influence of language transfer including interference & overgeneralization(l5.2%) and interference & reduction(10.7%) was no less than 48.1%. The statistics shows that the learners have a tendency to analyze, systematize and regularize the target language when they start to learn a new language.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.12
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• pp.129-140
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• 2019

This study investigated cyber university students' motivation and demotivation in learning English. Data was collected from a survey of 498 students in a general English course at a cyber university located in Seoul. The survey inquired into participants' English learning motivation and demotivation. To analyze the data, frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, t-test, and ANOVA were used. The findings reveal that among the motivation factors ideal L2 self was the main cause of motivation followed by promotion-based instrumentality. Among the demotivation factors the anxiety factor was found to have the highest mean followed by negative investment value for learning English. The statistical analysis of English learning motivation and demotivation according to the participants' characteristics indicates that, in terms of English learning motivation factors, the male participants' ought-to L2 self was significantly higher than that of the females' and the promotion-based instrumentality of the students who are unemployed was higher than those who are employed. Moreover, the younger the students' age, the higher their competitive motivation and promotion-based instrumentality. In terms of English learning demotivation, the female respondents achieved higher scores in the factors of anxiety, passive learning style, and negative investment value for learning English than their male counterparts. In addition, employed students showed higher demotivation in negative investment value for learning English than those without employment. The findings of this research can be used in developing online English programs for cyber university students who possess diverse learning goals.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.53-61
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• 2016

This study aims to examine English learning beliefs of Korean college students enrolled in e-learning courses and to investigate the relationship between their beliefs and L2 achievement. Horwitz's Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory was used to elicit students' beliefs about English learning and their grades in a final exam were employed for the English achievement measure. The data from one hundred sixteen respondents were analyzed through a factor analysis and the analysis revealed 5 factors: Motivation, learning strategies, English aptitude, foreign language aptitude, and communication strategies. The results showed that the most of the e-learning students had a high level of motivation and expectation in learning English but they believed that they had a low language aptitude. Statistically significant correlation was found between students' beliefs in motivation and their L2 attainment.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.107-131
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• 2010

The goals of the present study are two-fold: 1) to examine NNS teachers' needs for training period in improving their general communicative competence and classroom communicative competence, and 2) to explore the relationships of teachers' needs for the training period, and their current levels of general/classroom communicative competence and other background variables. Data was collected from seventy primary and secondary school English teachers (N=70) who participated in the six-month intensive teacher training program in South Korea. The teacher trainees responded to four questionnaires of 1) the self-diagnosis of their current levels of four language skills (L/S/R/W) in both general/classroom communicative competence, 2) the training period required to improve their general/classroom communicative competence for teaching both English and other subjects through English, 3) the period of their English teaching, and 4) the proportion of their English use in class. The data analysis has shown that there were the strong relationships between trainee needs for the training period and their teaching period, and the proportion of their English use in class. In terms of trainees' communicative competence, the significant relations of both their general/classroom communicative competence and their needs for the training period were found. Implications of the findings are discussed.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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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.