• Title/Summary/Keyword: teaching language

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Lessons Learned from Twelve Korean Teachers of College-level EFL Writing

  • Kim, Mi-Kyung
    • Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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    • v.3 no.2
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    • pp.181-210
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    • 2003
  • The purpose of the study was to investigate how Korean EFL writing instructors give feedback to their students' writing and what influences their feedback. A total of 12 Korean EFL instructors in Korean universities teaching freshman English and intermediate EFL writing courses provided their feedback given on students' writing samples and participated in interviews. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively with a constant comparative approach and some data from writing samples and questionnaires produced descriptive statistics. The first lesson from the results of the study was that grammar was still the most frequent concern in giving feedback on students' writing. Contrary to the participants' report, comments on content and organization were not produced very often. The second lesson came from the interview data. Some aspects of teacher feedback seemed mostly influenced by their beliefs on L2 writing and experience in teaching L2 writing. The final and major lesson was that teachers chose how they would give comments on students' writing depending on whether they found their feedback helpful in students learning to write. EFL writing teachers can produce effective feedback by clearly communicating their beliefs about L2 writing and criteria in their feedback to students in their EFL writing classrooms.

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Wikispaces: A Social Constructivist Approach to Flipped Learning in Higher Education Contexts

  • Ha, Myung-Jeong
    • International Journal of Contents
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    • v.12 no.4
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    • pp.62-68
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    • 2016
  • This paper describes an attempt to integrate flip teaching into a language classroom by adopting wikispaces as an online learning platform. The purpose of this study is to examine student perceptions of the effectiveness of using video lectures and wikispaces to foster active participation and collaborative learning. Flipped learning was implemented in an English writing class over one semester. Participants were 27 low intermediate level Korean university students. Data collection methods included background questionnaires at the beginning of the semester, learning experience questionnaires at the end of the semester, and semi-structured interviews with 6 focal participants. Because of the significance of video lectures in flip teaching, oCam was used for making weekly online lectures as a way of pre-class activities. Every week, online lectures were posted on the school LMS system (moodle). Every week, participants met in a computer room to perform in-class activities. Both in-class activities and post-class activities were managed by wikispaces. The results indicate that the flipped classroom facilitated student learning in the writing class. More than 53% of the respondents felt that it was useful to develop writing skills in a flipped classroom. Particularly, students felt that the video lectures prior to the class helped them improve their grammar skills. However, with respect to their satisfaction with collaborative works, about 44% of the participants responded positively. Similarly, 44% of the participants felt that in-class group work helped them interact with the other group members. Considering these results, this paper concludes with pedagogical suggestions and implications for further research.

Bridging the Gap between Grammar and Conversation in Korean College English Conversation Classes

  • Lee, Eun-Ah
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • no.5
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    • pp.27-48
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    • 1999
  • College students frequently feel their grammar knowledge from primary and middle school is not useful when they are asked to speak in college conversation classes. Because of their frustration at their lack of communicational ability as well as inappropriate teaching methods and class textbooks that have little to do with the student's major course of study, the student often has a low motivation to study. It is not uncommon for students to seek English education outside of their college classrooms by going to language institutes or studying abroad. College teachers need to find a way to use the student's background in grammar from primary and secondary schools. Despite the student's sentiment about his/her grammar education, grammar is an essential key to successful English conversation. Some ways that teachers can close the gap between primary and secondary school grammar education and college conversation classes are: to use a theme-based methodology, cue cards, and modeling. Activities such as Grammar Clinic, Grammar Police, and Show and Tell can be effective ways to bridge this gap. Teachers can use these activities and methods to correct such student errors as: incorrect word order, missing or unnecessary be verbs, confusion between be and do verbs, subject-verb agreement. and incorrect tense.

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What Do Learners Do While Planning? Learners' Use and Perceptions of Planning for an Oral Narrative Task

  • Park, Su-Jung
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.223-248
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    • 2009
  • Previous research on the impact of pretask planning on subsequent second language (L2) production has mainly focused on the linguistic quality of planned production, while learners' thought processes and perceptions about planning have been relatively less explored. In addition, few previous planning studies have examined whether the learners did in fact follow the pretask instructions, thus leaving the role of pretask instructions in the planning process unexplored. Therefore, the present study investigated whether pretask instructions affect attentional allocation as well as what cognitive operations planners engage in and what their perceptions about planning are. Forty-three Korean EFL classroom learners were divided into two groups: before having time to plan for an oral story retelling task, one group received general instructions, while the other group received specific instructions. The findings, based on both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, indicated no large effects of pretask instructions on the planners' attentional focus. Rather, the qualitative analysis identified a number of other factors that influenced learners' decision making as well as their general processes and approaches to planning and their perceptions about planning and thinking aloud while planning. Implications for L2 teaching as well as limitations of the study are discussed.

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A Corpus-based Lexical Analysis of the Speech Texts: A Collocational Approach

  • Kim, Nahk-Bohk
    • 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.

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Symbolic Violence of the Native Speaker Fallacy: A Qualitative Case Study of an NNES Teacher

  • Choi, Soo-Joung
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.33-57
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    • 2009
  • Taking the issues of inequity and power between NES and NNES teachers as a starting point, this qualitative study explores the way the widespread belief of the native speaker fallacy manifests itself in one NNES teacher's teaching life and is linked to the teacher's understanding of herself as an English teacher. Guided by critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2001) and using Bourdieu's (1991) theorization of symbolic violence, I conducted an instrumental case study (Stake, 1995) in an ESL writing class at a US university. I collected data through classroom observations and interviews over a nine-month period and analyzed the data using the constant comparison method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The findings illustrate the ways the dominant ideology of the native speaker fallacy works to maintain and reproduce the status quo unequal relation between NES and NNES teachers by making all parties involved believe in the artificial sociocultural arrangements that favor NES teachers as legitimate. The findings direct our attention to the importance of critical teacher education that will enable future TESOL professionals to engage in critical reflection on diverse issues and envision transformative change. The findings, in particular, point to the need for language support for NNES teachers in TESOL teacher education.

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An Analysis of Meaning Construction between Texts and Pictures in Children's Picture Diaries (아동의 그림일기에 나타난 글과 그림 간의 의미 구성 방식)

  • Seo, Soo Hyun;Ok, Hyounjin
    • Korean Journal of Child Studies
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    • v.34 no.4
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    • pp.163-177
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    • 2013
  • Digital technology has advanced rapidly and it is anticipated that multimodal ways of meaning-making will become increasingly important. Consequently, teaching multimodal literacies is becoming a major issue in education. This study focuses on the use of picture diaries as a means of teaching multimodal literacies. Picture diaries are one of the basic and unique multimodal texts used in lower elementary level classes in Korea. A further advantage is that it is a promising text model which can be taught in unplugged ways. In order to explore the educational implications of using such picture diaries, this study sought to analyze the ways in which twenty four $1_{st}$ graders in an elementary school constructed meaning with written language and pictures in composing picture diaries. 251 picture diaries composed during several months of their $1_{st}$ grade period were analyzed based on the constant comparative method. The results indicated that the students utilized both written language and pictures in diverse and creative ways to provide their audience with more comprehensive meaning. These results indicate that teachers need to consider their students as active multimodal meaning-makers and provide their students with more opportunities to practice multimodal meaning-making and share their experiences.

EFL Learners' Use of the Modals and Quasi-Modals of Obligation and Necessity

  • Min, Sujung;Lee, Jongbok
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.18 no.3
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    • pp.191-206
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    • 2012
  • This study examines the use of the modals and quasi-modals of obligation and necessity, which involves the layering of must, should, have (got) to, got to, and need to in a corpus of cross-cultural communication between EFL learners. The study compares the EFL learners' corpus with a sub-corpus of ICE-GB in terms of token counts and semantic/functional distributions because International Corpus of Standard varieties of English serves as common reference points for international comparison of varieties of English. The results showed that must, should, and have to were the main players in both the corpus of EFL learners and that of native speakers. However, some discrepancy exists between EFL learners' corpus and the native speakers' corpus in the use of the modals and quasi-modals of obligation and necessity. Compared to the corpus of native speakers, the corpus of EFL learners was distinctively different in the relative unpopularity of have to and in the comparative popularity of must particularly for root meaning. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language use. And pedagogical implications were made for teaching English modality considering the current usage of the modals and quasi-modals in Standard varieties of English and helping the students develop pragmatic competence.

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An analysis of the characteristics of communicative English classes using COLT (COLT 수업관찰 분석법을 통한 학교 현장의 의사소통중심 영어 수업 분석)

  • Jeon, Young-Joo
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.339-363
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    • 2010
  • The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the English classes in secondary schools in Korea are in terms of communicative nature. After literature study, COLT parts A and B were used to analyze three kinds of English classes: a common class type taught by a school teacher who had won 1st prize at TEE contest, a team teaching class taught by NNS and NS, and a model class taught by a pre-service English teacher. Their communicative English classes were videotaped and transcribed for analysis by COLT. The results of the study revealed that students participated in the classes mostly as a unit and, therefore, did not get many meaningful chances to speak English. Second, creative language-use opportunities were barely found during classes. Third, the group work seemed to be prepared before the class, not to be done during the class. Therefore it is likely to be learned from memorization rather than meaningful communication. These results suggest English classes in schools be more communicatively oriented for successful English learning. Further study should be conducted in order to make English classes more communicative to help students communicate their genuine messages in English and to help teachers teach English efficiently.

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Visual Thinking Tools in Enhancing ESL Students' Writing Ability

  • Rafik-Galea, Shameem
    • English Language & Literature Teaching
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    • v.11 no.2
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    • pp.67-89
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    • 2005
  • Writing is a difficult skill for many people, both for children and adult alike and generally most people find it difficult to write down their thoughts effectively. Numerous studies have revealed that teachers find it frustrating to teach writing and many failed to help ESL students develop their writing ability. The theoretical emphasis on process oriented writing instruction has, in general brought about positive changes in the way writing is taught and has become widely accepted in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). Although the interpretation and implementation of the process approach varies considerably from instructor to instructor, nevertheless, the emphasis on process writing has brought about significant and beneficial changes in teachers' orientations to writing. Despite the theoretical recognition of writing as a recursive process, many ESL/EFL classrooms continue to teach writing as a linear sequence of planning, pre-writing, writing, revising and editing and has not enhanced ESL/EFL students writing ability to the desired level. There appears to be a missing link in helping students to crystallize their thoughts before writing. Studies have shown that incorporating visual thinking tools into the process approach of ESL writing can enhance students' ability to write. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study on the effects of using visual thinking tools in enhancing ESL students writing.

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