2009, Vol.10, No.3

Modern English Education 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.55

pISSN : 1598-0782 / eISSN : 2586-6141
https://journal.kci.go.kr/meeso

This study is designed to linguistically analyze the complaint letters sent by hotel guests with two intended aspects; by studying authentic correspondence to establish baseline(s) from which students can be expected to improve their ability of writing the appropriate letters of reply to their guests, and by applying a model of pragmatic politeness to written texts for tourism students to use in controling their own writing in the context of intercultural communication. The purpose of this study is to analyze how complaint is realized in the sequences of speech acts within one written text and attempts to explain how politeness strategies determine both the overall "strength" of the complaint and the sequential order of the individual speech acts. This study has found out that the analysis of a small corpus of complaint letters reveals that three speech acts – complaints, grounders (justifications), and requests – realize the speech acts of complaint, grounder and request that are also the three main elements in the genre of written complaints. There are two main levels involved in articulating a complaint. Firstly, there will be a global speech act which represents the overall purpose and strength of the complaint. Secondly, there will be a sequence of local speech acts that will serve to give expression to the global complaint and determine its elocutionary force.

Vocabulary learning is an integral area of language teaching and plays an incremental role in language learning. With the increasing awareness of the importance of vocabulary, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of retrieving words in decontextualized vocabulary instruction. For the purpose this study compared the results of three different vocabulary task groups focusing on repetition, retrieval and generation. Immediate and delayed posttests were administered just after performing the assigned vocabulary tasks. In the immediate posttest, there was no statistically significant difference among the three groups even though the retrieval group got the highest score, whereas in the delayed posttest, the retrieval group performed significantly better than any other group. It may be because retrieval strengthens the connection between the cue and the retrieved knowledge. As regards word recognition and production, retrieval was more effective for word production. It is suggested that in a time-limited learning condition, having opportunities to retrieve words many times is more effective than putting more mental efforts into vocabulary learning for middle school students.

The study intended to investigate the beliefs of Korean secondary school English teachers about language teacher competence, and their opinions about the microteaching courses that are an element of the in-service teacher training program. For the purpose of the study, the following research questions were raised: 1) What are the secondary school English teachers' beliefs about language teacher competence? 2) Does the microteaching course meet their needs? 3) Does the microteaching course contribute to their language teacher competence development? 4) What are their demands for the next teacher training program? Twenty-seven teachers that participated in a six-month-long intensive teacher training program participated in the study, and responded to the course evaluation questionnaire. Between general English communication skills, classroom English skills, L2 teaching skills, interaction skills, and lesson planning skills, the teachers perceived L2 teaching skills and interaction skills to be the most important qualifications for language teachers. They evaluated the microteaching course as satisfactory compared to their needs, and as useful for the development of their skills. While they perceive teaching skills and interaction skills to be the most important goals of the program, they want to invest as much time in developing general English skills as in developing teaching skills and interaction skills.