2010, Vol.11, No.1

Modern English Education 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.55

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

This research aims to examine to what extent the knowledge and processes used by Korean learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) for comprehension of epistemic modal (EM) verbs are related to those of production and why the learners’ability to use EM in comprehension is often delayed or not realized in their production. EM is a linguistic means to present one’s evaluation and degree of confidence in the knowledge described in one's utterance. The production test adopted a timed free writing test type, while the comprehension test used a fill-in-the-blank type with two EM answer choices given. Also, an untimed guided rewriting test was used for measuring production and comprehension. Correlation results in this study suggest the production and comprehension are strongly interrelated in such a way that syntactic competence in EM first induces a connection between form and meaning, facilitating the constructions of sentences using EM. However, without recourse to a firm grasp of semantic knowledge of EM, it is difficult to lead EM to emerge in real communication. Thus, syntactic competence combined with semantic competence of EM is essential in the actual uses of EM.

This study aims to investigate the effects of teaching English through Edutainment on children’s general English competence, interest and confidence levels, and long-term memory of vocabulary. To achieve this goal, twenty students in third to fifth grade were selected for the study based on the results of the pretests. Ten students were in the experiment group studying using various edutainment contents and the other ten were in the control group using normal classroom materials. Both groups learned four different topics for six weeks. After six-week treatment, posttests were taken to all students. To identify teaching and learning using edutainment’s effects on long-term memory of vocabulary, a delayed posttest was conducted four weeks later. The results of this study were as follows: First, the result of posttest didn't show a statistically significant difference in general English competence between two groups. Second,edutainment-based learning resulted in positive effects on interest and confident levels as a result of the post survey. Third, edutainment-based learning had a positive influence on children's long-term memory of vocabulary. To sum up the above results,classes using edutainment contents will draw children's interest and be an effective learning tool which can help improve their confidence, and consequently, it will affect positively on long-term memory of vocabulary.

The field of teacher education has changed dramatically to prepare pre-service or inservice teachers to develop their language skills and instructional skills through teacher training programs. Yet, little attention to writing teacher education has been given. The purpose of the study is to investigate research focus and methodological orientation in the field of writing and writing teacher education by examining published research articles in two prestigious journals in Korea for the past five years. A total of 417research articles were collected and 50 writing-related studies were obtained. The data were categorized into overall methodology orientation and substantive orientation. The results of the study showed that (a) quantitative studies than qualitative ones were dominant, (b) more studies on learners’ language proficiency or performance in tertiary education settings were conducted, and (c) little studies on writing teacher education were found. This study suggests that various issues in the field of writing teacher education need to be discussed and more teacher training programs should be provided for assisting secondary English teachers to become better L2 writing instructors.