• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.985-994
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• 2009

This research is exploratory in considering the unique socio-cultural context of South Korea, where the present government is responding to the demand for English language training. The study asked the question: What do mothers experience when sending their young children to a private English institute, so called English kindergarten, instead of a regular preschool? A qualitative approach was used to analyze the in-depth interviews with 19 mothers who sent their young child to an English kindergarten. Mothers stated that their young child needs to be a competent English speaker. The mothers expected that an English kindergarten would prepare their child better for the elementary school English curriculum than a regular preschool. The study revealed that English kindergartens symbolized the precedence and the privileges of the elite because of their high tuition fees, native-speaker teachers, and small class sizes. The mothers showed a sense of pride and vicarious satisfaction from sending their child to an English kindergarten. However, the mothers recognized that English kindergartens put more emphasis on cognitive learning instead of the social development of children. It was almost impossible for mothers to communicate with the native-speaker teachers about their child. The mothers seemed to overlook their child's struggle to adapt to an English Kindergarten. The findings of the study raise issues concerning the boom of teaching young children English in Korea.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.4
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• pp.285-305
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• 1998

In order to scrutinize what realism really means, this paper is to analyze and compare the major realistic plays of Yun Jo-byeong of Korea with the earlier realistic ones of Bernard Shaw of England. As all the scholars concerned admit, Shaw offered reality in all of his plays: social, political, economic, religious. He was a didact, a preacher who readily acknowledged that the stage was his pulpit. Though he preached socialism, creative evolution. the abolition of prisons, real equality for women, and railed against the insincerity of motives for war, he did so as a jester in some of the finest comedy ever written. Shaw brought serious themes back to the trivialized English stage, creating a body of drama that left him second to none among twentieth century dramatists. Today, evolution and creationism and Shaw's ideas on creative evolution and the Life Force remain timely issues. As for Yun Jo-byeong who has written many realistic plays lately, he is known as a major realist in Korea. But his realistic plays are more symbolic, poetic, and private than Shaw's. As a result, Korean realism has not been so flourished in Korea as in England. Therefore, we Korean playwrights who want to write really realistic plays should try to study Shaw's realism more closely than ever.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.4
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• pp.269-284
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• 1998

The purpose of this thesis is to understand Henry Jame's theory of the novel and to clarify the importance of him as a theorist. He developed many literary techniques through his dozens of works. But it is more important that he is a theorist who established the unique theory of novel through his critical essays. I arranged Jame's early theories, focusing on "The Art of Fiction" that was one of his major essays written in 1884. His main idea was that the purpose of novel was to represent life. The "experience" that James emphasized was composed of characters, impression and consciousness. "Psychological Realism", which is Jame's unique realism, reflected his interests in the inner mind of man. James believed in the capacity of human imagination as the source of creative inspiration and its ability to perceive reality in a manner that is more intense and comprehensive and transform it into a more balanced and orderly ideality. Henry James always insisted on the importance of writer's imagination. Another important imagination in Henry Jame's novel is the character's imagination. It is closely related with the consciousness, the heart of the Jame's literary world. James devised the new form of novel as well as the possibility of representation of mind. At this point, it is said that James was the pioneer of literary criticism. He evoked the trend of the early 20th century.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.89-112
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• 2005

This study investigated the effects of collocation-based vocabulary instruction for the experimental group (G2). It was compared to the traditional wordlist-based vocabulary instruction for the control group (G1). This results reflect the development of low level high school EFL learners' vocabulary learning strategy use and the positive change in the affective domain. In the analysis of the survey responses, G1 and G2 did not differ significantly on the first questionnaire. They did, however, differ significantly on the second questionnaire. G2 used more strategies to discover and to consolidate the meaning of the words by means of combining words. In terms of the affective domain, G2 participated more actively in the learning activities, which had a significant effect on vocabulary growth, memory, self-confidence, motivation, and cooperative learning. This is attributable to the fact that G2 was more inquisitive, interested, challenged, participatory, cooperative, and attentive than G1 in performing the vocabulary task activities. Moreover, the data collected from the questionnaire showed that G2 performed more interactive and dynamic activities in solving the given tasks.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.25-38
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• 2005

Postmodern American science fiction authors often dramatize the human fear and hope for the newly emerging artificial life forms. For example, Helen as an advanced artificial intelligence Richard Power's Galatea 2.2 shows that the student's memorizing efforts for exams can be useless someday. In Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash machines are liable to be infected with viruses like human bodies. In He, She and It, Piercy's parallel of an artificial human (Yod) and a mythic personification (Golem) allegorically reveals the pandora-like unpredictable effect of advanced technology. More than the mechanical entities (the diffusion and linear models for Latour), these biologically artificial entities reveal the limitations of even the fantastically idealized technology simply because the human being as the creators or impersonators of these machines are not perfect. Compared to illustrative mechanism, biologically artificial entities (Latour's transition or whirlwind models) are inherently rebellious because of their closeness to the creators. The Butler's organic environmental interaction of the Earthseed convincingly demonstrates how the wrong use of science ruins the holy earth and also how human beings survive through the right use of effective science with the aid of anthroposophy.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.133-152
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• 2010

There is disagreement, among researchers, on the benefits of corrective feedback on L2 learners' written output. Some scholars advocate the usefulness of corrective feedback while some claim that error correction is ineffective and even harmful. So far, however, research outcomes cannot settle this debate. Based on this debate, this study examines whether there is a difference among diverse types of feedback on the effects of L2 learners' writing improvement. This study found that teacher's direct feedback was more effective than any other types of feedback on the effect of participants' writing improvement. In particular, teacher's direct feedback helped their improvement on grammar, mechanics, and form. Among the types of peer feedback, self-correction was the most effective. In teacher feedback, form-focused feedback had more effects than content-focused feedback, but no difference with regard to peer feedback. In addition, teacher's content-focused feedback was more effective than peer's content-focused feedback. Overall, in all types of feedback, teacher feedback was more effective than peer feedback. However, direct (form-focused) feedback was the most effective in teacher feedback, and self-correction in peer feedback. The least effective feedback in both teacher and peer feedback was indirect (form-focused) feedback, which is simple underlining of errors.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.153-184
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• 2010

On the bases of the 5 principles and the 4 criteria for designing and developing of the listening and the reading test of National English Ability Test (NEAT), this study presents Item-Types Decision-Making Model as a blueprint for designing and constructing the two tests. It sets up the criteria for validating item types, designs a modular type of test specifications, constructs an item-types bank, and specifies a complementary type of test specifications of the two tests. To gather all these threads up, it constructs Item-Types Decision-Making Model which consists of such components as the item-type pool, the validity criteria and the procedures of testing item types, the item-types bank, the modular and the complementary type test specification. Thus, it shows how the Model works in developing and constructing the two level-differentiated listening and reading tests (the 2nd and the 3rd rank) of NEAT. Finally, it discusses some implications and applications of the Model to the two level-differentiated tests (the A and the B type) of 2014 CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test) systems, National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA), and classroom testing. In conclusion, Item-Types Decision-Making Model functions as a testing template in an item development system and as a matrix in an item-types bank system.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.185-200
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• 2010

Nathaniel Hawthorne seems to realize the reader's role in bringing his creation of fiction to completion. Almost all of Hawthorne's prefaces may be considered in terms of their contribution to the writer's narrative strategy. When he refers to the audience in the prefatory essay, "The Custom-House" and other prefaces to his major works as "the Reader," Hawthorne is establishing a mutual complicity that will continue throughout the following narratives. According to this rhetorical alliance, the writer's obligation is to get the story into the reader's imagination by any means possible, while the reader's share is to believe the story as much as possible while it is being told. The ultimate issue is thus not whether any event actually happened as Hawthorne reports it but whether readers are willing to grant the event credence while they are reading. Hawthorne's relationship with his audience is not congenial. In his prefaces, Hawthorne sometimes reveals a narrator who evades a fixed identity. The introduction of an unreliable narrator helps illuminate the unresolved, elusive ambiguity in Hawthorne's stories. Hawthorne seeks to make his narrative ambiguous frequently utilizing the very same indeterminacy so often cherished by poststructuralists. No critical term may be more firmly associated with the works of Hawthorne than ambiguity. Looking for new readers with more fresh eyes, Hawthorne's narratives always remain open to reinterpretation. After all, Hawthorne's prefaces (sometimes including unreliable narrators) help him become one of the most frustrating and fascinating novelists.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.333-351
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• 2009

R.W.B. Lewis called Greene's three novels - Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter - Greene's 'trilogy'. Greene was paid full attention by many readers and many critics after publishing these Catholic novels. The themes and plots of his Catholic novels are unique and beyond those of traditional Catholicism. Greene is always willing to stand on the edge of reality. He always conflicts with the reality and eagerly searches for a higher, more spiritual dimension. If we view Greene's protagonists from an open-minded viewpoint, Pinkie of Brighton Rock will be saved at the mercy and grace of God in spite of being evil. Whiskey Priest of The Power and the Glory is worthy of being called a saint in spite of his drunkenness and adultery. Scobie of The Heart of the Matter will be within God's grace in spite of his suicide. The reason all protagonists are saint-like is clear and simple because they all have faith and sacrifice themselves to obey God's first commandment, to love others. To summarize the theme of Greene's 'trilogy', we can say that love is the most valuable in the world. God has mercy for all human beings. The protagonists love God and they love others. In fact, Greene's faith is found in his love of human beings and God.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.223-238
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• 2010

This article analyzes and discusses M.M. Bakhtin's dialogics with the perspectives of what it emphasizes and how it makes the Russian Formalism and the Marxist literary theory together in his dialogics. This article considers conversion in the literary texts the central idea of dialogics, and it takes place through satire and parody. As Bakhtin stresses in his works, this article also examines the novel as the dominant genre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such satire and parody shows the ambivalence of the Russian Formalism and the Marxist literary theory. Bakhtin states that novel per se is very conversing. It has turned over the position that has been occupied by epics (poetry) and play for thousands years, and taken it over in the nineteenth century. Thus, novel is a literary genre in which a variety of conversing struggles occur throughout the texts, which makes it different from epics and play. Throughout such analyses and discussions, this paper considers Bakhtin's dialogics a complex of semantic, pragmatic, and semiotic elements.