2014, Vol.15, No.1

Modern English Education 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.55

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

The present study explores how two pre-service teachers’ metaphors of teacher changed over time as a consequence of student teaching, and what factors influenced the metaphor transformation. Using a narrative inquiry as a methodological framework, this study was grounded on two major assumptions: teachers’ beliefs about teaching have a tremendous effect on their teaching practices; a metaphor is a powerful tool that can reveal its holder’s views about teaching. Data were collected through interviews with two pre-service teachers before and after their student teaching and weekly reflective journals that each pre-service teacher wrote while student teaching. Findings of this study indicate that both pre-service teachers underwent metaphor transformation affected by their lived experiences in local realities, such as teaching anxiety, observation of other teachers' critical teaching episodes, and intimate interaction with students. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail. This study contributes to an understanding of the significance of metaphors in teacher development.

The present study aims at exploring Korean EFL learners’ lexical structure and its development by analyzing their response patterns in a word association test. Studies on word association have shown that native English children go through a series of lexical restructuring, including the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift. In order to see if Korean EFL learners’ mental lexicon also goes through the same restructuring and if their mental lexicon is affected by their L1, the present study conducted a word association test and a word familiarity measurement. Fifty adult Korean learners of English at different proficiency levels and eleven native English speakers participated in the experiment. The results showed that Korean learners produced much less paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses compared with the native speakers. The proportion of L2 learners’ paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses increased, with the increase in proficiency and word familiarity. However, no clear sign of syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift was found. Paradigmatic responses were predominant from noun prompts, whereas syntagmatic responses were predominant from verb prompts. The learners’ lexicon was also found to be affected by their L1. The findings suggest that Korean learners’ mental lexicon is structured differently from that of English native speakers.

This research uses conversation analysis (CA) methodology to analyze teacher-student and student-student interaction that occurred within an EFL class information gap task. The research uses as data fine grained transcription of discourse in which three tertiary level, high intermediate learners collaborate together to complete a spot the difference task, while teacher overlooks and often joins in the interaction. The aim of the research is to offer empirical evidence for how the turn-by-turn organization of talk-in-interaction within the information gap task provides opportunities for learning, and how participants orient to their respective roles of teacher and learner to facilitate and promote learning. Using a CA framework, the research highlights interactional practices with a primary focus on repair and word searches to show how opportunity for learning arises in the task, while also highlighting sequences that arise in and around the repair, such as counter questioning, designedly incomplete utterances, and explicit positive assessment. This paper suggests that CA of language classroom interaction can inform and enhance SLA notions of corrective feedback, and provide teachers with opportunity to reflect on and improve their interactional practices.