• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.10-19
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• 2013

Recently, Korean universities have increased the number of English Medium Instruction (EMI) lectures in order to allow students to gain both specialized knowledge and enhanced English ability. Previous researches on effective EMI lectures have focused on exploring the effects of learners' cognitive and affective characteristics on learning outcomes. Whereas the input variables of learning have been investigated as predicting variables of effects in EMI lectures, there has been a few research for investigating process variables to yield learning outcomes. The purpose of this study is to analyze the structural relationships among variables affecting on learner satisfaction and effects. The participants are 209 engineering students from various majors. Independent variables are defined as English motivation, English competency, and English confidence, a mediated variable is Cognitive engagement, and dependent variables are Learning satisfaction and Educational effect perception. The results show that the relationships are statistically significant: learners' English competency & English confidence ${\rightarrow}$ Cognitive engagement ${\rightarrow}$ Learning satisfaction ${\rightarrow}$ Educational effect perception. Especially, the structural model confirms that the effect of learners' English confidence on Learning satisfaction and Educational effect perception is mediated by the level of learners' Cognitive engagement. Further, the implication for effective EMI lectures is discussed based on the observed research results.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.267-286
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• 2006

The purpose of the study was to investigate what kinds of learning strategies EFL learners use to learn English grammar and what is benefit from structured grammar input processing. Students of the study consisted of 48 college students who took Practical English Grammar at a university in Kyung-Gi area and were divided into two groups based on grammar scores. The students were asked to take two grammar tasks and grammar tests and complete a survey including questions on grammar strategy and input processing. The results of the study are as follows. First, learners' grammar level has an effect on use of grammar attack strategy including asking teachers, using grammar books and given contexts whereas there was no significant difference between groups in the planning strategies, Among memory strategies, using grammar exercise and linking with already known structure demonstrated a significant difference between groups. Second, with regard to input processing, high level students got higher score on how much they understood the structured grammar input compared with low level students. Third, explicit implicit instruction added to input processing seems more comprehensible and more available than structured input only, Finally, it showed that there is positive relationship between perception and score of input processing tasks and grammar tests. Especially, learners' perception of input processing correlated more with final tests and tasks. Therefore, it suggests that the more input processing task need to develop and utilize in order to facilitate learners' intake.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2020

This study seeks to add to the current understanding of learners' use of modality in argumentative writing. A learner corpus of argumentative essays on four topics was created and compared to native English speaker data from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). The relationship between learners' use of modal devices (MDs) and the devices' appearance in the school's curriculum was also examined. The results showed that learners relied on a very narrow range of MDs compared to those in previous studies. The frequency of use of MDs varied based on the topic and did not seem to be driven by cultural factors as has been previously suggested. Learners used more hedges than boosters on all topics, contradicting most previous studies. Curriculum was determined to have a direct correlation with MD use, and other important factors may include perception of topic and overreliance on certain MDs over others (the One-to-One principal). This research implies that learners' perception of topic should be explored further as a variable affecting MD use. Curricula should be designed based on frequency of MD use by English native speakers, and learners should receive instruction that teaches the norms of MD use in academic writing. The methodology used in the study to determine correlations between MD use and the curriculum has a wide range of potential applications in the field of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2021

This study examined the perception and production of eight English fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ by thirty Chinese English majors and thirty Chinese middle school students through a fricative identification test, an intelligibility test, and a goodness rating test and focused on error patterns and the perception-production relationship. The results showed that substitution errors occurred frequently in the perception and production of English fricatives by both the English majors and the middle school students. Further, the error patterns were attributed to various influencing factors such as the negative transfer from Chinese consonant inventory, hypercorrection or overcompensation mistakes, deficiency of L2 teaching, and acoustic similarities. Significant overall correlations were found between the fricative perception and production by the two subject groups but were not manifested in all the eight fricatives, indicating that Chinese learners' perceptual competence of target fricatives was not necessarily tied to their productive excellence of those sounds in all cases. Furthermore, precedences of perception over production were incompletely manifested in the eight fricatives, which suggested that perception might not always be a necessary prerequisite for production. Additionally, subject group and vowel context differences were observed. The English majors performed better than the middle school students, both perceptually and productively, and the subjects' performances in perception and production varied when vowel contexts changed.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.255-284
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• 2007

This study explored the ESL college learners' perceptions on integrating reading and writing in the context of the reading-to-write composition classroom. Using the panel survey (N=60) that repeatedly measured the same set of individuals at three different times during a semester, this study examined whether students' perceptions on reading-writing integrations were reshaped over the course of classroom practices. The survey instrument was developed to assess the perception scores from less integrative continua to more integrative continua on a 5-point Likert scale. A two-factor ANOVA with repeated measures was performed to evaluate mean differences across the perception groups and over the three treatment times. The results do not demonstrate a significant treatment effect, suggesting that L2 learners' integrative perceptions were stable over the course of the semester. The dynamics in the perception changes differed widely across the perception groups. This result provides insights into understanding students' reading-writing practices and thus into instructional practices applicable to the classrooms. The present study argues for 12 learners' perceptions on integrating reading and writing as a key construct to understand their literacy practices involved in the composing process.

• MALSORI
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• no.57
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• pp.31-42
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to observe how Korean learners perceive an English weak syllable in words containing WS syllable pattern. According to the automated discrimination task using E-Prime, the ratio of correct answer(%) and reaction time of the stimuli with same syllable patterns were respectively higher and faster than those with different syllable patterns. Specifically, in the stimuli with different syllable patterns, the frequency(familiarity) of stressed word succeeding weak syllable and whether the weak syllable had coda in it were two important factors in distinguishing between a word with and without weak syllable. Even though the high English proficiency Koreans had faster reaction time than the low English proficiency Koreans, all Korean learners had a difficulty in perceiving the weak syllable at the beginning of a word.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-99
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• 2011

The role of corrective feedback (CF) has long been discussed in the field of second language acquisition. It has been claimed that CF enables learners to notice the problems in their second language (L2) production. However, it should not be assumed that learners always adequately interpret teachers' responses to their problematic utterance as correction. Especially when feedback is provided in an implicit way, the possibility that CF goes unnoticed should not be excluded. In this regard, the study aims to investigate how learners perceive teachers' corrective feedback in English classrooms in Korea. The study focuses particularly on examining the relationship between type of feedback and target linguistic content with learner interpretation of teacher corrective intention. Nine classrooms were observed and videotaped. Forty-five students and nine teachers participated in stimulated recall interviews. Their comments were analyzed to document the learners' perception and the teachers' intention of feedback. It was found that learner perception of teacher corrective intention was at its greatest when feedback was provided explicitly and was focused on morphological errors.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.81-90
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• 2013

This study explored how Korean L2 learners of English utilize multiple acoustic cues (VOT and F0) in perceiving and producing the English alveolar stop with a voicing contrast. Thirty-four 18-year-old high-school students participated in the study. Their English proficiency level was classified as either 'high' (HEP) or 'low' (LEP) according to high-school English level standardization. Thirty different synthesized syllables were presented in audio stimuli by combining a 6-step VOTs and a 5-step F0s. The listeners judged how close the audio stimulus was to /t/ or /d/ in L2 using a visual analogue scale. The L2 /d/ and /t/ productions collected from the 22 learners (12 HEP, 10 LEP) were acoustically analyzed by measuring VOT and F0 at the vowel onset. Results showed that LEP listeners attended to the F0 in the stimuli more sensitively than HEP listeners, suggesting that HEP listeners could inhibit less important acoustic dimensions better than LEP listeners in their L2 perception. The L2 production patterns also exhibited a group-difference between HEP and LEP in that HEP speakers utilized their VOT dimension (primary cue in L2) more effectively than LEP speakers. Taken together, the study showed that the relative cue-weighting strategies in L2 perception and production are closely related to the learner's L2 proficiency level in that more proficient learners had a better control of inhibiting and enhancing the relevant acoustic parameters.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.81-89
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• 2014

Korean English learners tend to have difficulty perceiving and producing English vowels. The purpose of this study is to examine a link between perceived and produced vowel spaces of Korean learners of English. Sixteen Korean male and female participants perceived two sets of English synthetic vowels on a computer monitor and rated their naturalness. The same participants produced English vowels in a carrier sentence with high and low pitch variation in a clear speaking mode. The author compared the perceived and produced vowel spaces in terms of the pitch and gender variables. Results showed that the perceived vowel spaces were not significantly different in either variables. Korean learners perceived the vowels similarly. They did not differentiate the tense-lax vowel pairs nor the low vowels. Secondly, the produced vowel spaces of the male and female groups showed a 25% difference which may have come from their physiological differences in the vocal tract length. Thirdly, the comparison of the perceived and produced vowel spaces revealed that although the vowel space patterns of the Korean male and female learners appeared similar, which may lead to a relative link between perception and production, statistical differences existed in some vowels because of the acoustical properties of the synthetic vowels, which may lead to an independent link. The author concluded that any comparison between the perceived and produced vowel space of nonnative speakers should be made cautiously. Further studies would be desirable to examine how Koreans would perceive different sets of synthetic vowels.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1193-1220
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• 2009

This study examined the impact of sonority profiles, positional differences and L2 proficiency on Korean EFL learners' perception of English biconsonantal clusters, using nonce words. The overall results showed that major predictions of the sonority-based typological markedness on consonant clusters were supported, as obstruent plus sonorant and sonorant plus obstruent sequences were better perceived than obstruent only or sonorant only sequences. Yet, some consonant clusters did not show a preference for sonority profiles. Positional effects were also confirmed, as word-initial biconsonantal clusters were better perceived than wordfinal ones across all the participant groups. Participants' English proficiency turned out to be also important in the perception of consonant clusters, since university students' mean rate of accuracy was highest, followed by that of high school students, which in turn followed by that of middle school students. Further, the effects of other factors like frequency and stimuli on speech perception were also addressed, along with some implications for future research.