Kyung Ja Ahn

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 9-42, 2009

This case study examines how a Korean university-level EFL teacher`s use of innovative technologies such as the Internet and multimedia materials influenced his instructional practices, specifically under the CLT-based curricular reform context. In order to understand the teacher`s instruction and the context, Engestr?m`s activity system model (1987, 1993, 1999) was employed as a theoretical and analytical framework. Five two-hour lessons and interviews with the teacher and his four students were audio/video-taped and analyzed using grounded content analysis (Bogdan & Biklin, 1998). While the teacher continued to use new technologies throughout the term, his actual instructional practices focused on repetition drills and pronunciation correction. He justified his instructional practices based on a combination of student resistance to the communicative approach and his own belief that accurate pronunciation is essential before communication can be taught. Thus, he failed to use these technologies to their potential to develop students` L2 use as proposed by the curricular reforms. These findings indicate that using technologies does not necessarily bring about innovations in a teacher`s instructional practices. Rather, teaching practices are influenced by teacher beliefs, students` normative ways of participating in schooling, and the educational, social, and cultural contexts in which a specific classroom is situated. This study has important implications for policy makers, teacher educators, and teachers themselves concerning teaching L2 in technology-based classrooms within the context of curricular reform.

CALL, curricular reform, communicative Language teaching, activity theory, activity system model, inner contradiction, teacher beliefs, teacher education program

Mee Wha Baek

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 43-71, 2009

This study investigated the effectiveness of technology on the instruction of business letter writing in a Korean university by comparing technologyenhanced lessons with traditional instruction. Writing performance for both the traditional and technology-enhanced approaches was analyzed for four types of business letters such as hotel reservations, complaints, cover letters, and sales promotion letters and were evaluated based on overall impression, ideas and argument, accuracy, fluency, and appropriacy. There were 29 students for the conventional writing instruction and 40 students for web-based instruction. The students who received web-based instruction showed more improvement than those who received traditional training for making hotel reservation and writing complaint letters. In addition, the results showed significant improvement in ``overall impression`` and ``ideas and argument`` for hotel reservations and in ``overall impression`` and ``fluency`` for complaints as well as in ``appropriacy`` for cover letters. Low level learners benefited the most from technology-enhanced lessons. These findings suggest that integrating technology into EFL business letter writing lessons enhances writing performance, particularly in several areas of analytic evaluation.

technology-enhanced writing instruction, ESP, business Letters

Kwang Hee Hong

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 73-103, 2009

Primary issues concerned with CALL teacher education are in two folds: integration of CALL technology with teacher education program; and integration of CALL technology into the L2 classrooms. While increased attention has been paid to the former, there is a relatively small body of research on the latter. Although collective findings suggest the efficacy of CALL teacher education in the teacher education programs, L2 researchers and teacher educators are still challenged by L2 teachers` integration of technology into the classrooms in relation to their prior education on technology. The present study seeks to address this gap in the literature. It investigates the relationship between L2 teachers` prior experience on technology education, and their use of computer technology in the classroom. The data were collected from 200 (out of 454) secondary school L2 teachers across an entire county in a midwestern state in the U.S. The results show that L2 teachers with more technology education experience tended to use computer technology more frequently in their classrooms.

CALL teacher education, CALL technology integration

Sook Kyung Jung

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 105-133, 2009

This paper presents the results of the study on how students evaluate video conferencing as a language learning tool. Keeping up with the current trend of learning English through Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), the researcher investigated how students evaluated the effect of a video conferencing tool on promoting speaking fluency. A total of 138 cyber students participated in the study which employed student surveys, telephone interviews, and document analysis. The research results showed that an overwhelming number of students thought that video conferencing could be an alternative to face-to-face interaction with native English speakers, by referencing "no restrictions on time and space," "utilizing text-chat function," and "involving less psychological anxiety" as major advantages of video conferencing. Students also favored video conferencing over audio conferencing since it allows students to utilize paralanguage such as gestures or facial expressions. The research results indicate that online video conferencing will be an effective tool to promote English learners` speaking fluency in Korea, especially by compensating for the lack of native English teachers` input in the Korean educational system.

video conferencing, video conference, online speaking program, distant English education, teaching speaking

Jae Kyung Kim

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 135-161, 2009

This study aims to examine the effects of elementary students` collaborative writing in weblogs. The students` writing was evaluated using weblogs in one of two modes, collaboration or non-collaboration. The answers to the following two questions provide the pedagogical implications and insights for researchers and teachers: 1) Whether language proficiencies in two modes, collaboration or non-collaboration, result in significant differences in writing improvement?; 2) How do students respond to using weblogs as a writing tool? Each student wrote six essays. The participants pre-treatment writing and post-treatment writing were analyzed to examine their writing improvement through collaboration by linguistic features, fluency, accuracy, and grammatical complexity. As for writing improvement, the collaboration group especially demonstrated enhanced fluency. Also, the findings of the present study provide strong evidence that collaboration between peers acted as a important factor for enhancing writing quality according to the questionnaire results. It can be concluded that collaboration mode is generally more effective between the two modes. As shown in this research, collaboration mode provides a cooperative atmosphere which provides writers more opportunity to freely exchange their opinions. The present study suggests that collaboration weblog writing can be effective for students to enhance their writing ability.

collaborative writing, weblog, novel technology

Jeong Ryeol Kim

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 163-185, 2009

English and Content Learning (ECI) has long been the study of elementary English education. It has recently emerged due to the introduction of English immersion. In the past ECI learning experiences, teachers in practice demanded for the provision of an ECI dictionary to support ECI teaching and learning in elementary school settings. This study is an important step towards responding to the need for developing a supporting dictionary for ECI classes. The ECI dictionary development was based on elementary school textbooks with focuses on social studies, math and science. The total number of 1,719 cognitive academic word entries was selected based on a frequency list and expert knowledge. The micro-structure of these entries was piloted and revised reflecting feedback received from teachers with two different approaches to teaching vocabulary. Final structure of cognitive academic entries includes form, structure, content and learning box. The outcome was an extracted list of head words and the dictionary information according to the micro-structure of form, structure, content and learning box. The ECI dictionary will provide teachers who are using any form of ECI with a referential support for target word information, usage and use, learning materials.

vocabulary Learning, CBI, dictionary

Seo Young Yoon , Chung Hyun Lee

DOI: Vol.12(No.2) 187-216, 2009

The purposes of this study are: to investigate the university students` perspectives on using voice recordings and bulletin board system (BBS) and their perspectives on feedback in teaching and learning pronunciation. 128 university students in participated in 16-week classes. The data for this research were collected throughout 2 semesters. Data sources included weekly voice recordings, tag-line critiques on BBS, weekly journal entries, and the questionnaire. The results are as follows: 1) The majority of learners were interested in and all were satisfied with using multimedia; 2) the learners considered using multimedia and giving and receiving feedback to be positive; 3) the learners found individual work interaction to be difficult yet helpful multimedia resources were considered neither highly difficult nor helpful; 4) ``Th,`` ``R,`` ``intonation expanding,`` ``L`` and ``authentic speech`` were considered to be difficult pronunciation features; 5) The learner perspectives on difficult pronunciation features displayed a pattern of high usefulness followed by improvement and low value in easiness, and activities with suprasegmental features were more positive than segmental features; and 6) the only area showing significant difference between gender was in motivation for voice recording where the females responded more positively than males. Therefore, based on the findings, it seems that using voice recordings and promoting interaction through BBS can help learners in learning English pronunciation.

pronunciation, voice recording, bulletin board system, feedback