2015, Vol.16, 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 investigates how three graduate students build and develop their identities as writing teachers through a graduate seminar focused on written feedback. Teacher feedback on writing has been extensively studied from the perspective of student writers, including its effectiveness (Ferris, 2003, 2006; Frantzen, 1995; Lalande, 1982; Lee, 1997) and their personal reactions (Ferris, 1995; Saito, 1994; Radecki & Swales, 1988; Enginarlar, 1993). However, teachers’ reflections of their own feedback have rarely been studied. By analyzing three graduate students’ reflections written monthly and their personal histories of learning and teaching writing, written at the end of the class, as well as their actual feedback they provide as a classroom practice, this study explores how their views on teacher feedback changed, how these views were reflected in their feedback, and how this process affected their identity development. The results indicate that the three different participants show how their identities as writing teachers developed depending on their own experiences both as a student and a teacher. These findings shed light on the importance of giving opportunities for teachers-intraining to build their identities as writing teachers along with training their feedback skills.

This study examines the evaluative reactions of South Koreans studying English as a second language (ESL) in the Philippines toward three speakers of different varieties of English: American English (an Inner Circle model), Philippine English (an Outer Circle model), and Korean-accented English (an Expanding Circle model). Following the verbal guise technique, speech samples representing the aforementioned varieties of English were used as attitude elicitation tools. The findings are presented according to the participants' evaluations of the three speakers' character traits, group memberships, and desirability as English teachers. The study generally reflects common notions about speakers from the Inner and Expanding Circles as perceived by Koreans, which may serve to explain the majority's preference for teachers with an American accent. However, the data also reveal relatively uncertain perceptions about the Outer Circle speaker. The knowledge gained from this study is essential because shared attitudes and perceived information about speakers of English could greatly affect students’ learning of the language (Baker, 1992; Lado, 1988). Pedagogical implications are therefore discussed in terms of promoting learners' awareness of language variation in English, including more open ways of looking at speakers from the Outer and Expanding Circles.

Lexical bundles are considered important building blocks of discourse as they perform a wide range of discourse functions serving as markers of fluency and appropriacy of register-specific language use (Biber, 2009; Hyland, 2012). To investigate the extent to which this is the case with Korean university students’ English essays, the present study identified and analyzed four-word lexical bundles from a corpus of EFL argumentative essays written by Korean university students and compared the bundles identified with those from a corpus of native speaker (NS) students’ argumentative writing. Analysis of the bundles across grammatical structures and discourse functions revealed that compared to NS students, the Korean university students heavily relied on the bundles widely used in speech registers such as bundles containing personal pronouns and contractions and expressing stance. On the other hand, the Korean students’ essays were shown to have fewer incidences of nominalizations, hedging and referential bundles. A concordance analysis of on the other hand, the most frequently used bundle, showed a substantial number of erroneous and ineffective uses of the bundle as well. The paper concludes by discussing pedagogical implications for EFL composition pedagogy and suggestions for future studies.