• Title/Summary/Keyword: L2 English

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Effects of attention on the perception of L2 phonetic contrast

  • Lee, Hyunjung
    • Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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    • v.6 no.4
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    • pp.47-52
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    • 2014
  • This study investigated how the degree of attention modulates English learners' perception of Korean stop contrasts. The contributions of VOT and F0 in perceiving Korean stops were examined while availability of attentional resources was manipulated using a dual-task paradigm. Results demonstrated the attentional modulation in the use of VOT, but not in F0: under less attention, the contribution of VOT to the perception of aspirated stops decreased, whereas that of lenis stops increased, which suggests more native-like performance. This implies that the role of attention in perceiving non-native contrasts might differ depending on how equivalent the acoustic and perceptual cues are between L1 and target L2 contrasts.

A Validity Study on the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test for Korean Elementary Students

  • Shin, Yousun
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.18 no.2
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    • pp.125-147
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    • 2012
  • The primary goal of the study was to provide some preliminary validity evidence for the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test (Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education, 2009), which is designed to measure the receptive vocabulary knowledge of learners in L2. For the purpose of the current study, 327 participants at the elementary school participated in the study and were asked to take two different vocabulary tests. Namely, a Vocabulary Size Test (Nation, 2001) and a Vocabulary Grade Levels Test. The data were analyzed using correlation in order to discover the relationship between these two types of tests. Following this, the Rasch analysis was conducted to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement in question. The data analysis showed that both grade separation reliability and item separation reliability were high, indicating that the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test well discriminates learners with a wide range of proficiency levels. The findings of the study are discussed, along with further improvements in order to ascertain the validity of this particular vocabulary test.

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Korean EFL Writers' Composing Processes: An Exploratory Study of College Students

  • Lim, Jeong-Wan
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.12 no.2
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    • pp.127-152
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    • 2006
  • For the past 20 years the process approach to writing has been popular in second language writing classrooms. However, there have been very few studies conducted in Korea with regard to the composing processes and the effects of proficiency on writers' usage. The present study attempts to begin to fill this gap. Three groups of college students with different writing proficiency participated in the study: the advanced group, the intermediate group, and the beginning group. The verbal protocol of their writing processes revealed that they approached writing tasks differently. While the advanced writers focused on generating texts and ideas and examined their writing at both global and local levels, the other two groups of students tended to focus on evaluating text at the local level and generated fewer ideas and less text. The findings from this study are then compared to those of some major studies of the composing process as conclusions are subsequently drawn about the specific needs of Korean college writers.

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The Applicability of Schema Theory to Scientific Texts

  • Im, Byung-Bin;Lee, Jong-Hee
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.10 no.1
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    • pp.1-22
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    • 2004
  • The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the applicability of content and formal schemata for processing the scientific texts which encompass the human knowledge of the physical world. In general, schema theory is based on the culture-oriented background of a text. From this point of view, the problem as to whether both content and formal schemata are applicable to the comprehension of a scientific text deserves a focal attention in terms of information processing modes. The results of empirical study indicate that whereas the universality of general knowledge content about the natural world attenuates the tenets of schema theory, the rhetorical organization of scientific texts encourages the application of the schema-based approach; the reader's familiarity with the structural patterns of a text facilitates his reading comprehension.

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The Acquisition and Development of the Korean Adverbial Particle -ey by L1 English Learners of Korean (제2 외국어로 한국어를 배우는 영어권 학습자의 한국어 부사격 조사 '-에 의 습득과 발달에 관한 연구)

  • Turker, Ebru
    • Journal of Korean language education
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    • v.28 no.4
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    • pp.337-366
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    • 2017
  • This study examines the acquisition of the multiple semantic functions of the Korean adverbial particle -ey by L1 American English learners of Korean as a second language at U.S. institutions. Participants at beginning, intermediate, and advanced proficiency levels (N = 45) were tested on the ability to interpret and produce five of the meanings of -ey, which they had been taught in formal classroom settings in the first semester of their Korean language learning. The results show different developmental trajectories for the particle's different semantic functions. The findings of a statistical analysis indicate that the beginning and intermediate proficiency learners had largely acquired the time, goal, and stative location meanings, but not the contact and unit meanings; the advanced learners demonstrated acquisition of all except for the unit meaning. The study suggests that in addition to factors such as semantic complexity and cross-linguistic influence, several other factors including L2 frequency, the availability of linguistic input, and instructional method also contribute to the acquisition of -ey.

Exploring the Effects of Reading & Writing English Program on Self-Efficacy of Korean University Students (독해·영작 중심의 교양영어프로그램이 한국 대학생의 영어자기효능감에 미치는 영향)

  • Shin, Young-Hun;Hyun, Il-Sun
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.20 no.9
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    • pp.99-106
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    • 2020
  • Though it has been known that self-efficacy is a predictor to the successful L2 learning, the majority of studies on self-efficacy cases were targeted at secondary school students. This paper aims to explore the effects of the intermediate college students' essay writing experiences on their English self-efficiency. For this purpose, pre and post course surveys were conducted on a hundred or so freshmen who took intermediate college English classes which focused on improving English reading and writing skills. Interviews with teachers were also conducted in order to find out whether the differences of their teaching styles had any meaningful impact on their students' self-efficacy. Paired t-test was run on the responses of the post-questionnaire to identify any differences in the self-efficacies of the students before and after taking the classes, and the one-way ANOVA was conducted to find out whether the different instruction types had any significant impact on the differences. The results of the both analyses confirmed the differences of self-efficacies by the two predictors at a statistically significant level. Based on the findings of this paper, various types of writing assignments and efficient procedures of teachers' feedback need to be developed further in order to design and run an effective college English course which can contribute to enhancing self-efficacy of students.

Coleridge's "Christabel" as l'écriture féminine (코울리지의 「크리스터벨」 -'여성적 글쓰기')

  • Sun, Heejung
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.56 no.2
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    • pp.329-356
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    • 2010
  • Coleridge's fame as a poet rests on the achievement of the mystery poems, "The Anceint Mariner," "Kubla Khan," and "Christabel." Coleridge's achievement in "Christabel" goes far beyond what previous critics have imagined. Coleridge is one of a handful of great writers who are included as representatives of androgyny. Throughout his life, Coleridge was accustomed to point out feminine qualities within himself. "Christabel" exemplifies the kind of writing contemporary feminist theories call l'écriture féminine. L'écriture féminine is not necessarily the creation of women but may rather be the works of those who refuse to identify with the father and the laws of paternal discourse. "Christabel" becomes Coleridge's most daring symbolic story. "Christabel" appears in its full significance as a vehicle for some profound insights into the dynamics of relationships between men and women, fathers and daughters. Through her deformity, Geraldine is actually the casualty of her father's hatred of women, and is the embodiment of all its anti-virtual aspects. The poem shows no bitterness against women, only compassion and remorse. Coleridge is sympathetically presenting Christabel's suffering as a woman at the hands of an overmastering man. Also, "Christabel" demonstrates woman power as well. In fact, the one person whose tales have any real effect within this narrative is the ambiguous Geraldine. Geraldine excels at story-telling, at making words act for her. Perhaps, despite the appearance of the surface, in which men hold all the cards, it is in fact women, or the feminine, so necessary to procreation and creativity, who hold sway here. This apparent dominion of the feminine derives at least partly from Coleridge's use of the conventions of that feminine genre, the Gothic romance. L'écriture féminine is a concept defined by its divergence from a dominant cultural norm. One may speculate that the fragmentary state of "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan" is in fact congruent with this mode of writing. If these poems imply a theoretical écriture féminine, they are by definition "incomplete," for completeness is a standard of patriarchal language and culture. More perplexing even than the other "mystery poems," "Christabel" is the true fragment of the three.

Speech Corpus for Korean as a Foreign Language and the Aspects of the Foreign Learners' Acquisition of the Phonetic and Phonological Systems in the Korean Language (외국어로서의 한국어 음성 코퍼스 구축과 이를 통한 외국인의 한국어 음성${\cdot}$음운체계 습득 양상 연구)

  • Rhee, Seok-Chae;Kim, Jeong-Ah;Chang, Chae-Woong
    • Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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    • 2005.04a
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    • pp.29-33
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    • 2005
  • This study aims to establish a speech corpus for Korean as a foreign language (L2 Korean Speech Corpus, L2KSC) and to examine the aspects of the foreign learners acquisition of the phonetic and phonological systems in the Korean Language. In the first year of this project, L2KSC will be established through the process of reading list organizing, recording, and slicing, and the second year includes an in-depth study of the aspects of foreign learners Korean acquisition and a contrastive analysis of phonetic and phonological systems. The expectation is that this project will provide significant bases for a variety of fields such as Korean education, academic research, and technological development of phonetic information.

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Writing Listening Logs and Its Effect on Improving L2 Students' Metacognitive Awareness and Listening Proficiency

  • Lee, You-Jin;Cha, Kyung-Whan
    • International Journal of Contents
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    • v.16 no.4
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    • pp.50-67
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    • 2020
  • This study investigated whether writing weekly listening logs could influence college English learners' metacognitive awareness and listening proficiency. In addition, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) was applied to examine the learners' knowledge of their listening process. It is process-oriented research conducted by analyzing the MALQ and students' listening logs as to how their metacognitive awareness and listening proficiency have changed during the semester. Eighty-nine students who took an English listening practice course at a university participated in this study. The research findings are as follows. First, it turned out that there was a significant relationship between EFL university students' listening comprehension and some subscales of metacognitive awareness. Second, the students had an opportunity to reflect on learning through regular listening activities, and weekly listening logs, which included important information about listening process and practice. Third, as the students' listening proficiency increased at the end of the semester, it was found that introducing listening logs along with classroom lessons helped the students improve their listening ability. Finally, the high proficiency group students used multiple strategies simultaneously, regardless of the type of listening strategies, while the low proficiency group students used one or two limited listening strategies. However, the low proficiency group students may have had trouble expressing their ideas in English or recognizing the listening strategies they used, not because they did not use a lot of listening strategies. Therefore, teachers should regularly check if students are following their instructions and help them use appropriate strategies for better understanding.

A Study on the Role of Models and Reformulations in L2 Learners' Noticing and Their English Writing (제2 언어학습자의 주목 및 영어 글쓰기에 대한 모델글과 재구성글의 역할에 관한 연구)

  • Hwang, Hee Jeong
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.22 no.10
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    • pp.426-436
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    • 2022
  • This study aimed to explore the role of models and reformulations as feedback to English writing in L2 learners' noticing and their writing. 92 participants were placed into three groups; a models group (MG), a reformulations group (RG), a control group (CG), involved in a three-stage writing task. In stage 1, they were asked to perform a 1st draft of writing, while taking notes on the problems they experienced. In stage 2, the MG was asked to compare their writing with a model text and the RG with a reformulated version of it. They were instructed to write down whatever they noticed in their comparison. The CG was asked to just read their writing. In stage 3, all the participants attempted subsequent revisions. The results indicated that all the participants noticed problematic linguistic features the most in a lexical category, and models and reformulations led to higher rate of noticing the problematic linguistic features reported in stage 1 and contributed to subsequent revisions. It was also revealed that the MG and RG significantly improved with their writings of MG and RG on the post-writing test. The findings imply that models and reformulations result in better performance in L2 writing and should be promoted in an English writing class.