2021, Vol.22, No.1

Modern English Education 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.55

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

With the growing importance of English communication competence in global communications and English learning, willingness to communicate (WTC) has received attention as a predictor of students’ participation in communicative learning activities. Research on L2 WTC has reported causal relations between L2 WTC and personal and situational factors including motivation, perceived competence, L2 anxiety, and classroom environment. This study examined a hypothesized structural model of causal relations between L1 WTC, L2 communication competence, intrinsic language learning motivation, L2 speaking anxiety, classroom environment‒teacher support, task orientation, and peer support‒ and L2 WTC. A total of 1,277 college and secondary students participated in a survey. The data were analyzed to examine a structural equation model of L2 WTC in EFL class in Korea. Analysis procedures included exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and estimation of structural equation modeling (SEM). The results evidenced the fitness of the hypothesized SEM. The findings confirmed casual relationships between latent variables in the model. Direct effects of motivation, perceived competence, and L1 WTC were significant on L2 WTC. Indirect causation was also found to be significant. L2 anxiety had a negative indirect effect on L2 WTC, mediated by competence. Classroom environment affected L2 WTC through motivation and competence. Motivation significantly influenced L2 WTC both directly and indirectly. Discussions on research results and implications and limitations of the study are presented.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of text difficulty and reading comprehension ability on English summary writing of Korean EFL readers. Forty-four university freshmen participated in this study, in which they were asked to read two expository English texts and write a summary in English for each source text. Their summaries were analyzed in terms of the content idea units, idea units at different importance levels, accuracy, paraphrase and integration, and intrusion. The results showed that higher-level readers were able to identify the important information and overall content ideas of the source text better than lower-level ones. The more proficient readers were also more skillful at integrating the ideas of the original text and reproducing them in their own words than the less proficient readers. Moreover, regardless of the reading comprehension level, there were less inaccurate statements in the easier text summarization in both groups. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of using animated movies on English listening according to university students’ language proficiency. Sixty-four Korean university students participated in this study and were asked to watch animated movies and practiced English listening as assignments every week. The effects of animated movies were examined in terms of the participants’ pre- and post- listening tests and perceptions. The data from the survey was included to supplement the findings of quantitative data. First, the findings of listening performance obtained from the pre- and the post-tests showed that there was a significant difference after the treatment only to the lower-level group. Second, with regard to the students' proficiency levels, there was significant difference between the two levels in Part 1 of the mock TOEIC test while there were no statistically significant differences in Part 2 and Part 3. Third, both groups reported more positive than negative feedbacks to English listening practice through animated films. Pedagogical implications and limitations for further studies are presented.