• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.79-98
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• 2006

As one way of changing a teacher-fronted, grammar-based reading class into a meaningful, fun-creating one, this paper compared teacher- fronted reading with student-centered reading framed upon cooperative learning. In a study in which each type of reading method was conducted for college students in an EFL reading course for a period of one semester, data were gathered via questionnaires. The results showed that though each type of reading instruction came with its own strengths and weaknesses, student-centered reading instruction was preferred for various reasons. Most important, through an active participation in cooperative work, subjects were motivated and interested in L2 reading much, were exposed to various reading strategies and skills, and practiced them in a friendly, low-anxiety learning climate.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.161-175
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• 2011

This paper examines Korean EFL high school students' reader responses on an expository text and a narrative text with the same topic. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether they have different reading models depending on the two genres and whether there are any differences depending on the learners' proficiency levels. The analysis focuses on textual, critical, and aesthetic reading models in the reader responses written in English by science-gifted high school students (N=30). The results show that the participants have different reading models in reading an expository text and a narrative text. They tend to read the expository text in a more critical way while reading the narrative text in a more personal and emotional way. Moreover, regardless of the proficiency levels, they wrote longer responses on the narrative text than the expository text. However, the proficiency level of English does not support any significant differences in the types of reading models. The findings provide Korean EFL high school students' characteristics in L2 reading and suggest the pedagogical implication to pursue linguistic development as well as reading for pleasure.

• 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.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.3
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• pp.95-122
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• 1997

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of content and formal schema on reading comprehension. Five hundred fiftynine subjects from high school were assigned to one of the following levels and treatment conditions : (1) Higher level & Schema Activation, (2) Higher level & Non-schema Activation, (3) Lower level & Schema Activation, and (4) Lower level & Non-schema Activation. To evaluate the effects of schema activation. two experiments were conducted : one was related to the content schema and the other to the formal schema. To evaluate the effects of content schema, three different types of tests were conducted : (1) cloze test, (2) guessing the meanings of nonsense words, and (3) immediate recall test. To evaluate the effects of formal schema instruction, four kinds of tests were conducted : (1) sorting the sentences according to the importance, (2) identifying the signal words, (3) immediate recall test, and (4) identifying the specific information. For content schema condition, results indicated that the subjects given the titles or pictures before reading in "Content Schema Activation" treatment had better grades than those of the other treatment in all types of tests. regardless of their levels. Schema activation helped the subjects to increase the cognitive predictability of missing words and to participate in the tasks more actively with risk-taking. And it was also shown that good readers tend to process the words meaningfully, while poor readers tend to process the words phonetically or morphologically. Formal schema activation through teaching the text organization also had a significant influence on three types of tests: sorting the sentences according to the importance, identifying the signal words, and immediate recall test, but not on identifying the specific information. The implications from this study can be briefly noted as follows : (l) In teaching reading, the student's background knowledge should be activated as a pre-reading activity. (2) In reading, it is more important to emphasize the student's schema than the features of the text. (3) Various educational interventions should be introduced, especially for the lower level students. (4) Teaching text structures can be a powerful method for the top-down processing strategy.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2002

One of the benefits of the internet-assisted instruction is that it can improve L2 Learners' motivation to express themselves in English. The purpose of this paper is to investigate an effective approach to British-American fiction learning in Korean universities, which can emphasize communicative strategies drawing on video-conferencing system, a chat system(CUSeeMe), and an e-mail system. Students are passive participants who cannot assert their creativity in the traditional teaching method of British-American fiction, which mainly relies upon reading and translation far from literature lessons. In CCDL(Cross-cultural distance learning) class, students can play active roles in asserting their own ideas and assuming considerable responsibility for making a presentation in English. A professor can play a role as a coordinator in supporting the students' activities and in winding up the class. The main significance of this article lies in providing a paradigm for CCDL class beyond the limitation of the traditional teaching method of British-American fiction in Korea and futhermore in exploring the eclectic integration of the traditional one and CCDL.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.27-56
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• 2011

The analysis on the use of lexical discovery and consolidation strategies that have been researched within the area of vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) have not sufficiently drawn the interest of EFL practitioners with regard to vocational high school learners. The results, however, are expected to have implications for the design of vocabulary tasks and instructional materials for EFL learners. The present study investigates EFL vocational high school learners' use of lexical discovery and consolidation strategies with questionnaires, where the use of the learners' lexical discovery strategies were further validated with the think-aloud methodology by asking samples of proficient and less proficient learners to report on their reading process while reading L2 texts that had not been exposed to the learners. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the two groups of learners in the employment of 11 of the strategies which were in the categories of determination, social, memory, and metacognitive strategies, but not for cognitive strategies. The pattern of strategies indicated that different lexical discovery and consolidation strategies were employed relatively more by one proficiency group than another. The study suggests some implications for how strategy-based instruction can be implemented in EFL classrooms.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.spc
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• pp.99-112
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• 2003

This study investigated how different types of formal instruction affect the second language looming of English grammatical structure among Korean high-school students. The linguistic focus of the study was English present perfect, which often creates learning problems for Korean learners of English. Subjects were divided into a control group and an experimental group (Enhanced group). The input the subjects in the experimental group received was manipulated by visually enhancing (with highlighting of the target structures in a reading text). Learners' awareness of the rules throughout the treatment period, as well as accuracy of target structures was measured. Results indicated that subjects in the Enhanced group showed higher performance than the control group. Further, awareness of rules that learners developed over the treatment period did not provide any advantage in learning.

• 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.