• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.35-48
• /
• 2001

One of the areas of second language acquisition that enjoyed popularity in recent years is interlanguage pragmatics. The main reason for this popularity lies in the critical role of pragmatic competence in appropriate use of a target language. The aim of this paper was to examine L2 learners' pragmatic behavior in their speech act performance and determine main sources causing pragmatic difficulty. Four major sources of pragmatic errors were identified: linguistic proficiency, L1 transfer, waffling and teaching activities. Each source was discussed with empirical evidence in some detail, and teaching suggestions were provided for developing learners' pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.519-526
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Korean high-school physics teachers' difficulties in teaching textbook physics inquiries. For this purpose, 63 high school physics teachers completed a questionnaire. We asked teachers to evaluate the degree of difficulty in teaching textbook physics inquiries. Additionally, we asked physics teachers to select the two most difficult inquiries to teach and to express their reasons for these selections. The main results are as follows: First, the degree of difficulty for all the inquiry is 2.79, indicating a little easy level of difficulty. The two most difficult inquiries are 'Meissner effect experiment' and 'Investigation of diode characteristics using $Cu_2O$ plate and ZnO powder.' Second, the difficulty reasons to teach physics inquiry was presented in the order of 'environment domain,' 'textbook domain,' 'student domain,' and 'teacher domain.' In particular, the biggest reasons for difficulty for teachers are 'preparation of experimental apparatus' and 'safety.' There are many opinions related to 'problem of the experiment itself' in 'textbook domain' and 'lack of ability to manipulate' in 'student domain.' Based on the results of this study, we added a discussion to activate the high school physics textbook inquiries.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.1-28
• /
• 2002

This study explored teachers (n = 219) from northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan concerning their views about children's learning difficulties, mathematical instruction and school mathematics curricular. Results showed that teachers' mathematics knowledge or their instruction methods had no significant influence on their views of children's learning difficulties. Even though teachers indicated that understanding of abstract mathematical concepts was the most prominent difficulty for children, they tended to employ direct instruction rather than constructive and cooperative problem solving in their teaching. However, teachers' views of children's learning difficulties did influence their instructional practice. Results from in-dept interviews revealed that there were some obstacles that prevented teachers from putting constructiveism perspectives of instruction into teaching practice. Further investigation is needed to develop a better understanding of epistemology and teaming psychology as well as to help teachers create constructive learning situations.

• Journal of Korean Medical classics
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.285-294
• /
• 2008

This study investigated the effectiveness of article writing as a mean to teaching the traditional medical classics. We used questionnaire to evaluate the usefulness of the curriculum, reason for difficulty and measures for improvement. The creative and reasonable thinking was the major reason for difficulty, and this article writing program could be a proper methods to tackle this. We also found that the educational system was not satisfactory since other educative programs were not focusing on this issue. This study showed that this article writing program can be a useful teaching tool for achieving the purpose of traditional medical classics curriculum after several improvements such as more personalized guidance and understanding of anatomy of an article, lesser time burden and easier database access.

• 중국학논총
• /
• no.66
• /
• pp.105-126
• /
• 2020

Complement is a special grammatical phenomenon in Chinese. There is no complement in Korean, so complement teaching is a difficulty. There are some similarities between the degree complement with "de" and the modality complement. For a long time, there has been a phenomenon of fuzzy classification in the academic circle, which also affects the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. There are several different views on these two kinds of complements in the current textbooks. This makes students and teachers feel very confused. From the perspective of Chinese teaching, the author analyzes the characteristics, classification and grammatical significance of these two kinds of complements, and investigates the four sets of current teaching materials. It is found that: some teaching materials are confused in terms of terms and classification; some teaching materials are not fully reproduced in terms of knowledge points; the students are prone to have partial errors, and the situation of the clutch words with modal complements is ignored by most teaching materials. Some textbooks overemphasize Verb Copying in the arrangement of modal complements. Most textbooks are lack of context. The author puts forward some teaching suggestions. In class, teachers should concentrate on speaking and practicing, and focus on the types of errors that students are prone to make. The textbooks should be arranged according to the outline, the two kinds of "similar" complements should be clearly classified, the context should be added appropriately, and the textbooks compiled in South Korea can be nationalized. Students should listen carefully, participate in classroom activities and interact with teachers. Ask for advice in case of any problem you don't understand..

• Philosophy of Education
• /
• no.46
• /
• pp.45-70
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study is researching on educational difficulty in the history of western education. In other words, the goal and significance of this paper lies in knowing the essential meaning of education based on the norms of difficulty. The major method for this study is hermeneutical-anthropological pedagogy. My fundamental claim is the following: the essential nature of teaching is difficulty at any instructional condition and situations. Such a discrete idea was clearly identified and confirmed in the process of pedagogical anthropology. That is, through the consciousness of educational difficulty and critical review for the history of western education, I can cleary define the concept of educational difficulty. Educational difficulty was various ways for understanding by all audiences. Namely, various formulars were developed for understanding it according to the age, cultures, nations, ideology, etc.. But there are continuous characters on the way for understanding on educational difficulty. The results on research are as followings. In the primitive age, fundamental difficulty of education lies in the initiation ceremony. At the classical ancient time, the purpose of education was 'Politai' with politike arete, in this educational conditions, instruction have a complex dimension politically as well as psychologically. At the medieval age, educational difficulty lies in the 'Askese' for instructional methods. In the modern and conventional age, educational difficulty is more and more complex and confused on goals, methods, evaluations, etc.. Most of all, the major or key concept of educational difficulty in this world is the conflict between the two instructional principles, that is, objectivism and constructivism in education. At now, the schoolworks for instruction over all educational situations and conditions have a difficulty of traditional as well conventional dilemma. In conclusion, educational difficulty have formal, natural, original attribute and it is general and universal phenomenon.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.43 no.2
• /
• pp.111-124
• /
• 2023

The aim of this study was to explore science teachers' perceptions of good science teaching. To this end, the Korean Teaching Observation Protocol (KTOP), which was developed for the purpose of observing and improving science teaching, was utilized. In the first survey, teachers were asked whether they thought each item in the KTOP was important for good science teaching, the extent to which they implemented these items, and the level of difficulty in implementing them. The second survey asked teachers what they believed to be the reasons and solutions for the KTOP items that they had responded as difficult to implement. The responses obtained from 63 teachers in the first survey and 35 teachers in the second survey were categorized based on the characteristics of the responses. The categorized contents were then summarized and discussed for their features. As a result, science teachers responded that all items in KTOP, except for one, are important for good science teaching. However, it was also shown that the level of execution was low in cases where implementation was difficult. For the 13 KTOP items that were considered important but difficult to implement and showed relatively low implementation level, many respondents (69%) attributed the reason to both students and teachers. However, the most common response (60%) was that the teacher should solve those difficulties. From this, it was found that understanding and supporting teachers, as well as enhancing their competencies, are more important for good science teaching than external factors. We hope that this research findings will help to better understand the specific difficulties that science teachers face in their classes and contribute to practical efforts that aim to address these challenges.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.133-156
• /
• 2007

Although the understanding of English tense system is a crucial factor for communicative English learning and teaching for EFL students, it has been neglected over the years. As with other areas of the grammar, difficulties may arise from the nature of the system itself or from differences between time, tense and aspect. Consequently, many learners face a considerable difficulty with the English tense system as they are more often unable to grasp the basic conceptual differences of present/present continuous, past/present perfect, will/be going to along with many others. More concerning fact is that lots of instructors or so-called native English teachers seem not to be aware of the importance of teaching English tense system. The purpose of this study is to review and examine various theories and practical usages of tense in order to establish and/or present better methods for teaching tenses. This paper is focused on comparatively exact distinction of time, physical notion from tense, grammatical category as well as sequences of tenses in view of school grammar and communicative function. At the end or middle of each chapter, efficient teaching and learning techniques or strategies on tenses are suggested to help instructors or learners who relentlessly face confusions in understanding tense and its usage for communicative English learning and teaching. This study attempts to influence learners' ability to recognize and write tense in authentic contexts not to mention spoken English.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.89-95
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary teachers' perception on birds and problems on teaching it. For this study, the science textbooks from 3rd grade to 6th grade according to the 7th national curriculum were analyzed. Results revealed that, firstly, there were 34 bird species recorded and these were described 55 times in the surveyed textbooks. Secondly, the survey showed that $20\%$ of the teachers were interested in birds despite the fact that $98\%$ of them had no special knowledge about birds nor had studied them in college. Additionally, it was revealed that $41\%$ of the teachers felt lacking in specialist knowledge about birds and this lead to difficulties in teaching on this subject. Thirdly, academic backgrounds had an affect teachers' perceptions on teaching this area. The teachers' levels of interest in birds and the teachers' ratio of teaching on this topic tended to increase as their academic careers developed, and the proportion of male teachers in this category were higher than female teachers. To overcome difficulty in teaching on this area, it is suggested that a reconstitution of subject materials, as well as a revision of the teachers' guidebooks be undertaken.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.451-456
• /
• 1999

All the teaching items in a textbook are normally arranged in a prescribed teaching order. However, one can easily find that the textbooks of the same kind, even with the same teaching items, show different arrangements. Without learning preceding teaching items, students may have a difficulty in understanding the teaching items. In this sense, it is very important to decide how to arrange teaching items in terms of teaching sequence. As a solution to this problem, lsamu Matsubara presents a method based on the graph theory. The four types defined in his method are the straight type, the group type, the branch type, and the independent type. Among these, the three types except the straight type lack the objectivity. An objective solution to these three types, based on the fuzzy theory. is propopsed in this paper.