• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.274-274
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• 1996

This presents the preliminary results from work in progress of a paired study of the acquisition of voiceless stops by Spanish speakers learning English, and American English speakers learning Spanish. For this study the hypothesis was that the American speakers would have no difficulty suppressing the aspiration in Spanish unaspirated stops; the Spanish speakers would have difficulty acquiring the aspiration necessary for English voiceless stops, according to Eckman's Markedness Differential Hypothesis. The null hypothesis was proved. All subjects were given the same set of disyllabic real words of English and Spanish in carrier phrases. The tokens analyzed in this report are limited to word-initial voiceless stops, followed by a low back vowel in stressed syllables. Tokens were randomized and then arranged in a list with the words appearing three separate times. Aspiration was measured from the burst to the onset of voicing(VOT). Both the first language (Ll) tokens and second language (L2) tokens were compared for each speaker and between the two groups of language speakers. Results indicate that the Spanish speakers, as a group, were able to reach the accepted target language VOT of English, but English speakers were not able to reach the accepted range for Spanish, in spite of statistically significant changes of p<.OOl by speakers in both groups of learners. A closer analysis of the speech samples revealed wide variability within the speech of native speakers of English. Not only is variability in English due to the wide range of VOT (120 msecs. for English labials, for example) but individual speakers showed different patterns. These results are revealing for the demands requied in experimental designs and the number of speakers and tokens requied for an adequate description of different languages. In addition, a simple report of means will not distinguish the speakers and the respective language learning situation; measurements must also include the RANGE of acceptability of VOT for phonetic segments. This has immediate consequences for the learning and teaching of foreign languages involving aspirated stops. In addition, the labelling of spoken language in speech technology is shown to be inadequate without a fuller mathematical description.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.89-99
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• 2013

The problem of the sentence-based pronunciation evaluation task is defined in the context of subjective criteria. Three subjective criteria (that is, the minimum subjective word score, the mean subjective word score, and first impression) are proposed and modeled with the combination of word-based assessment. Then, the subjective criteria are approximated with objective sentence pronunciation scores obtained with the combination of word-based metrics. No a priori studies of common mistakes are required, and class-based language models are used to incorporate incorrect and correct pronunciations. Incorrect pronunciations are automatically incorporated by making use of a competitive lexicon and the phonetic rules of students' mother and target languages. This procedure is applicable to any second language learning context, and subjective-objective sentence score correlations greater than or equal to 0.5 can be achieved when the proposed sentence-based pronunciation criteria are approximated with combinations of word-based scores. Finally, the subjective-objective sentence score correlations reported here are very comparable with those published elsewhere resulting from methods that require a priori studies of pronunciation errors.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.62-78
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• 2021

This ethnographic multiple case study, based on Zappa-Hollman and Duff's construct of individual networks of practice (INoPs), explored English as a second language (L2) competence development and socialization process of a group of English-major undergraduates through their social connections and interactions at a public university located in an underdeveloped city in Northwest China. The study lasted for one academic semester and three students were selected as primary participants. Semi-structured interviews, student observations in English-related micro-settings, and associated texts were used to collect data. These data were coded to identify the thematic categories, and then data triangulation and member checking were conducted to select the most representative evidence to provide an in-depth description of students' perspective about mediating their English L2 socialization by their INoPs. Findings showed that factors in the formation of students' INoPs, including intensity, density, and nature, played significant roles in their academic or affective returns from their English learning, both of which had a substantial influence on the students' English L2 socialization. Considering that the macro-setting was a non-English, underdeveloped monolingual society, both educational institutions and individual students need to seek and create more English-mediated interactional opportunities to develop their English proficiency and adapt to local English learning communities.

• 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.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.133-144
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• 2012

Research has shown that mothers' attitudes towards early English language and literacy learning are important for children's English language development. Some researchers have indicated that in Taiwan most parents have a positive attitude towards English instruction and are motivated to teach English at home to their preschoolers. There is, however, little current data available to explain the motivations behind such parents' decisions to teach English to their child in the home before the commencement of formal schooling. We conducted a thematic analysis of the written survey responses of 263 Taiwanese mothers who explained why they taught their preschool children English at home. The findings indicate that English is highly valued for children's school readiness, future career opportunities, and because of its status as a global language. The mothers' motivations for teaching English include the desire to cultivate the child's interest, a belief in 'the earlier the better" for second language learning, and a belief in the need to review and practice English. These findings have the potential to inform educational policies and implementation strategies, as they can reveal whether mothers' motivations align with national priorities for English language education.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.115-132
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• 2012

In order to confirm ecological validity of D$\ddot{o}$rnyei's second language motivational self, the present study investigated 495 South Korean secondary school students' L2 learning motivation and motivated behavior by using a questionnaire survey. The participants' ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, integrativeness, and instrumentality were examined and compared to identify which motivational factor had the most effect on their motivated L2 learning behavior. Among Korean secondary school students, the concept of integrativeness was replaced with the ideal L2 self as a more appropriate concept for understanding Korean secondary school students' L2 learning motivation. As for instrumentality, promotional aspects demonstrated a significant correlation with both the ideal and ought-to L2 selves, whereas preventional aspects showed a relatively high correlation with the ought-to L2 self. The ideal L2 self had the most impact on the motivated behavior, and the ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self reflected the students' different motivational characteristics. It is suggested that D$\ddot{o}$rnyei's (2005, 2009) L2 motivational self system can be a better psychological model than Gardner's (1985) socio-educational model for understanding Korean secondary school students' L2 learning motivation.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.34-42
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• 2017

This study aimed to identify the causal relationships among self-regulated learning strategy, problem solving efficacy, task value and learning outcome, and mediation effect of self-regulated learning strategy in engineering capstone design course. The data were collected from 363 university students who enrolled in capstone design courses and analyzed using structural equation modeling method. The results were: first, problem-solving efficacy and task value exerted significant effects on self-regulated learning strategy. Second, self-regulated learning strategy exerted significant effects on learning outcome, but problem-solving efficacy and task value did not. Third, problem-solving efficacy and task value showed significant indirect effects on learning outcome, which confirmed that self-regulated learning strategy fully mediated between two exogenous variables and learning outcome.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.141-150
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• 2021

Based on Artificial Intelligence technology, AI-enabled warfare is expected to become the main issue in the future warfare. Natural language processing technology is a core technology of AI technology, and it can significantly contribute to reducing the information burden of underrstanidng reports, information objects and intelligences written in natural language by commanders and staff. In this paper, we propose a Language model-based Multi-source Information Integration (LAMII) framework to reduce the information overload of commanders and support rapid decision-making. The proposed LAMII framework consists of the key steps of representation learning based on language models in self-supervsied way and document integration using autoencoders. In the first step, representation learning that can identify the similar relationship between two heterogeneous sentences is performed using the self-supervised learning technique. In the second step, using the learned model, documents that implies similar contents or topics from multiple sources are found and integrated. At this time, the autoencoder is used to measure the information redundancy of the sentences in order to remove the duplicate sentences. In order to prove the superiority of this paper, we conducted comparison experiments using the language models and the benchmark sets used to evaluate their performance. As a result of the experiment, it was demonstrated that the proposed LAMII framework can effectively predict the similar relationship between heterogeneous sentence compared to other language models.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.263-291
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• 2003

This paper is to help the students in elementary schools develop and improve their English listening and speaking skills by presenting effective teaching and learning techniques using puppetry. It is absolutely obvious that listening and speaking are very important skills for most EFL students. Using puppets in the classroom is a creative English teaching technique which can involve authentic, communicative language situations. Moreover, puppets appeal to children and can aid in lowering affective filters thereby creating a more comfortable learning environment. The study clearly showed that using puppets is feasible and enjoyable in elementary English classes. However, caution must be exercised in drawing and generalizing conclusions from this experience. The results of the experiment are as follows: First, using puppetry in the English class was found to have positive influence on students' affective domains (interst, attitude). Second, using puppets in the English classes was found to be efficient for improving students' English listening and speaking skills. Third, appropriate materials should be selected and well thought-out plans should be made to be successful English class using puppetry. Perhaps the most interesting line of future research is to use qualitative research to examine the effect of this technique on the teacher variable. Further research is recommended, especially on using puppetry for speaking proficiency and creating affectively comfortable learning atmospheres.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.117-144
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the linguistic elements that can promote academic literacy in terms of content-based instructions for KSL learners. In order to study the characteristics of learning languages for subjects, focus was given to the framework of systematic functional linguistics that has been extensively used in ELL teaching and learning research in the United States and Australia. History, which is taught in all classes and classified as a required course, was the subject of analysis. From the history curriculum, the elementary school level texts "Social Studies 5-2" and "Social Studies 6-1" were chosen for the analysis. Based on the results, we can come to the following conclusions. First, history textbooks are divided into narrative and analytical explanatory sub-genres based on their content, and there are differences in the factors that need to be focused on to find the main information. Second, the vocabulary of history textbooks should focus on the use of verbs which comprehend material processes. Particularly, learners should pay attention to the differences in meaning between low-frequency expressions. We hope that the results of this study will have a positive effect on history subject learning for learners in the "Adaptive Korean Course" and will help establish direction in terms of building curriculum contents for KSL learners.