• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.185-191
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• 2001

This study was designed to determine what components of spoken language have been relatively neglected in the teaching of listening comprehension in Korea and to suggest a model of listening process. Two types of tests were undertaken using spoken and written forms of English with secondary school teachers of English and college students. Findings: Hearing power has been generally neglected in the teaching of listening comprehension. Hearing power which can be thought as an active process is defined as an ability to transfer the sequence of discrete phonetic segments without word boundary into the sequence of words in phonemic representations by using both nonlinguistic factors and linguistic factors including perception rules based on phonetics and phonology. Vocabularies, hearing-speaking power, syntactic structures and idiomatic expressions are to be taught for spoken English. A model of listening process was suggested and discussed.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.225-234
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• 2001

The Korean Metaphonological Assessment, adapted from the Metaphonological Abilities Battery (MAB; Hesketh, 2000b) was administered to examine the development of metaphonological skills of 60 normally developing Korean pre-school children aged from 3 to 6. The tasks were specifically designed to evaluate their skills to detect rhymes, onsets, and segments. A gradual improvement of total scores was observed in children from 3 to 5, with evidence for developmental refinements of metaphonological abilities in the ages of 5 and 6. Subjects were found to develop segmenting skills at a relatively early age and gradually progressed toward detecting onsets and then rhymes. The differences in the order of development from the previous studies with English-speaking children were discussed. This preliminary study also aimed to provide foundational information for investigating the link between expressive phonological impairments, metaphonolgocial skills, and literacy in Korean-speaking children.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.113-120
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of group therapy on the language performance of aphasic patients. Four aphasic subjects participated in group therapy. Their aphasic types were TCMA (transcortical motor aphasia), conduction, anomie, and Broca's aphasia. The focus of the therapy was to stimulate cooperative learning skills. For this purpose, categorization tasks, semantic association tasks, convergent thinking, and divergent thinking tasks were employed. The results showed that all of the aphasic subjects demonstrated some improvement in writing ability, categorization ability, and speaking ability in sentences.

• Asian Oncology Nursing
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.175-185
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• 2012

Purpose: This micro-ethnographic study aimed to understand coping experiences of Korean-American (K-A) women after diagnosis with breast cancer due to a hereditary gene mutation. Methods: Participatory observation and in-depth interviews were performed at one breast cancer screening center in Southern California, in 2005 with eleven first generation K-A immigrant women. All transcribed interviews and field notes were analyzed using ethnographic methodology. Results: K-A women's experience varied based on acculturation risk factors including: limited English speaking ability; disrupted family relationships, individualistic family values, or intergenerational communication barriers; lack of Korean speaking nurses; and Korean physicians' who lacked knowledge about hereditary breast cancer risk. These risk factors led to isolation, loneliness, lack of emotional and social support. In comparison to Korean homeland women in a similar medical situation, these K-A immigrants felt disconnected from the healthcare system, family support and social resources which increased their struggling and impeded coping during their survivorship journey. These women were not able to access self-support groups, nor the valuable resources of nurse navigator programs. Conclusion: Professional oncology associations for nurses and physicians have a moral obligation to support and promote knowledge of hereditary cancer risk and self-help groups for non-native speaking immigrants.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.797-802
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• 2023

In an environment where English is a foreign language, English learners can use AI voice chatbots in English-speaking practice activities to enhance their speaking motivation, provide opportunities for communication practice, and improve their English speaking ability. In this study, we propose a teaching-style AI voice chatbot that can be easily utilized by lower elementary school students and enhance their learning. To apply the Teachable Agent system to language learning, which is an activity based on tense, context, and memory, we proposed a new method of TA by applying the Teachable Agent to reflect the learner's English pronunciation and level and generate the agent's answers according to the learner's errors and implemented a Teachable Agent AI chatbot prototype. We conducted usability evaluations with actual elementary English teachers and elementary school students to demonstrate learning effects. The results of this study can be applied to motivate students who are not interested in learning or elementary school students to voluntarily participate in learning through role-switching.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.27
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• pp.7-29
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• 2012

This study was aimed to analyze - focusing on the thesis of Younes - the pronunciation error occuring mostly for Arabian speakers to learn French pronunciation for Arabians and to suggest the effective study plan to improve such errors and provide the effective studying method. The first part is on how the Arabic and French pronunciation system are distinguished, especially by comparing and analyzing the system of graphemes and phonemes, with which we focused on the fact that Arabian is a language centralized on consonants, while French is a verb-centered language. In the second part, we mainly discussed the cause and the types of errors occurring when Arabic speakers study French pronunciation. As of the category of mistakes, we separated them into consonants and verbs. We assumed the possible method which can be used in learning, focusing on /b/, /v/, /p/, /b/ - in case of non-verbs and consonants - and /y/, /ø/, - in case of verbs - which don't exist in Arabic pronunciation system. One of the troubles the professors in Arabian culture have in teaching French to native learners is how to solve the problem on a phonetic basis regarding speaking and reading ability, which belong to verbal skill, among the critical factors of foreign language education, which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. In fact, the problems occuring in learning foreign language are had by not only Arabian learners but also general groups of people who learn the foreign language, the pronunciation system of which is distinctly distinguished from their mother tongue. The important fact professors should recognize regarding study of pronunciation is that they should encourage the learners to reach the acceptable level in proper communication rather than push them to have the same ability as the native speakers, Even though it cannot be said that the methods suggested in this study have absolute influence in reducing errors when learning French pronunciation system, I hope it can be at least a small help.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.207-221
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to develop the assessment rubric of mathematical communication ability by each type: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and graphic. This rubric is qualified in the content-validity and reliability by professional educators' evaluation and correlation coefficient. 16 math educators judged that this involves the results of learning mathematical communication, the results of possible instruction, and the content of scoring mathematical communication by teachers. 170 middle school students were tested by the assessment task according to the types of mathematical communication. After two researchers and two teachers scored the tasks, correlation coefficient was calculated between evaluators. The coefficient is evaluated high in that it is more than 0.70.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.113-132
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• 2004

This study aims to suggest desirable directions through analyzing English test items of college entrance examinations(CEE) in Korea, China, and Japan. To achieve this, English test items of Scholastic Ability Test(SAT) in Korea were compared with those of CEE in China and Japan, and test items of TOEFL and IELTS. It was found that there were not many items for testing productive skills relatively to the tests of other countries including TOEFL and IELTS. Especially, there were integrated items for writing test in China. In case of speaking test, all the other country adopted direct ways like interview and oral test, not indirect test as in the SAT in Korea. It is suggested that there need to be included test items comprising long passages in order to measure extensive reading ability. It can be suggested that doze test be adopted for testing integrated proficiency of English.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.151-170
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• 2009

Recently speech texts have been increasingly used for English education because of their various advantages as language teaching and learning materials. The purpose of this paper is to analyze speech texts in a corpus-based lexical approach, and suggest some productive methods which utilize English speaking or writing as the main resource for the course, along with introducing the actual classroom adaptations. First, this study shows that a speech corpus has some unique features such as different selections of pronouns, nouns, and lexical chunks in comparison to a general corpus. Next, from a collocational perspective, the study demonstrates that the speech corpus consists of a wide variety of collocations and lexical chunks which a number of linguists describe (Lewis, 1997; McCarthy, 1990; Willis, 1990). In other words, the speech corpus suggests that speech texts not only have considerable lexical potential that could be exploited to facilitate chunk-learning, but also that learners are not very likely to unlock this potential autonomously. Based on this result, teachers can develop a learners' corpus and use it by chunking the speech text. This new approach of adapting speech samples as important materials for college students' speaking or writing ability should be implemented as shown in samplers. Finally, to foster learner's productive skills more communicatively, a few practical suggestions are made such as chunking and windowing chunks of speech and presentation, and the pedagogical implications are discussed.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.123-137
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• 2013

Individuals rely on Theory of Mind (ToM) to represent themselves, others, and socio-cultural norms. Distinctive Western and Eastern developmental patterns of ToM have been reported in monocultural children. Relatively little is known about bicultural children, especially those children who grow up in two conflicting and unbalanced cultures. We hypothesized that the development of ToM in these bicultural preschoolers would follow the pattern of the dominant culture. To examine this hypothesis, we recruited English-speaking Chinese Singaporean preschoolers. In Study 1, we tested 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 120) with 5 ToM tasks, including diverse desires, diverse beliefs, knowledge access, and false belief, as well as a vocabulary task. In Study 2, we tested 5-year-olds (N = 30) with a picture-choice version of these ToM tasks. Both studies supported our hypothesis by revealing that the development of ToM in these bicultural children followed the pattern of the dominant culture. Additionally, we found that 5-year-old bicultural children are still developing false belief, and their verbal ability correlated with their ToM.