Neil Briggs

DOI: Vol.19(No.1) 11-31, 2016

This study explores the outcomes and opinions of 27 mixed-proficiency Korean college students with respect to their participation in an ongoing computer-mediated dialogues with their native English speaking teacher (NEST). Informed by the Vygotskyan sociocultural perspective, communication between the teacher and students is considered to be essential in terms of creating an appropriately challenging and engaging pedagogy. However, in the classroom limitations of time and limited proficiency levels among students can make difficult to attend to individual student needs and concerns. After participating in a 15-week computer-mediated student-teacher dialogue (CMSTD), the students in this study are divided into three equal groups based on their overall word production in the written dialogues and labeled accordingly as High Production (HP), Moderate Production (MP), and Low Production (LP). These groupings are used to identify common traits of each group such as oral proficiency and English language learning goals in order to determine potential reasons why students chose to actively engage or avoid participation. The results suggest that the CMSTD helped to provide lower-proficiency students with voice, provided the students with opportunity to co-construct the classroom pedagogy, and helped to ensure that students received meaningful and individualized mediation.

student voice, communicative language learning, NEST, written dialogue, asynchronous communication, individualized feedback

Sooin Chun

DOI: Vol.19(No.1) 32-57, 2016

This is a companion paper to the previous study (Chun, 2015) on how to construct appropriate Data-driven learning (DDL) materials. As basic research for developing materials for low proficiency EFL learners, it presents the study by exploring high school teachers’ needs toward the materials, and is limited to appropriate numbers of citations when doing DDL activity in the classroom. Over the past decades, increased attention has been paid with regard to paper-based DDL materials for language learners. However, few studies suggest practical guidelines on how to develop the materials. This study particularly focused on teachers’ suggestions regarding an appropriate amount of concordance input, which is an essential factor in development of the materials. It followed 28 Korean high school teachers of English in order to analyze their needs regarding the developed materials. Data collected from the survey and follow-up interviews were used. Results reveal that teachers’ needs for numbers of citations were diverse and dependent on learning settings, e. g. for individuals or groups. They preferred more citations for group work and fewer for individual work. The study provides practical information for appropriate numbers of citations at least required for DDL activity in the secondary classroom.

corpus, DDL, COCA, inductive vocabulary learning, materials development

김혜영 He Young Kim , 박대근 Dae Geun Park

DOI: Vol.19(No.1) 58-85, 2016

The purpose of this study is to suggest a task example and design principles of mobile application for adult learners’ English speaking practice. For this purpose, this study employs a design-based research (DBR) framework to analyze, design and evaluate a speaking app as follows: 1) to identify speaking needs from target mobile users, 2) to design a mobile application that can realize social communication between learners by exchanging meanings through voice recording on SNS platform, and 3) to have the participants use and evaluate speaking tasks in the program. For this study, 120 adult learners participated in the firsthand questionnaires for needs analysis and then the researcher designed pedagogic tasks by collecting actual dialogues. The tasks were applied to the pilot mode of application and were used by 6 participants for 2 weeks. The results are as follows. First of all, the mobile speaking tasks in this study were appropriate for the participants to complete without any problem. In addition, their communications involves rich meaning negotiations in a natural discourse. The participants reported that the tasks were enjoyable and not difficult. Some design principles were also revealed. First, short and easy tasks are appropriate for speaking in mobile learning. Second, dialog trees and themes should be specific and carefully identified by needs analysis from the target users. It is hoped that further research employ this research design to build big data for the development of the actual speaking application.

mobile-assisted language learning, MALL, speaking applications, speaking tasks, design-based research, dialog tree, conversation analysis

김희진 Hi Jean Kim , 허광 Kwang Hur

DOI: Vol.19(No.1) 86-113, 2016

Building on the extensive studies of the benefits of smartphone applications in English education, this research examined three types of smartphone apps, KakaoTalk, Naver Band, and Socrative, in e-learning environments. We compared the effectiveness of each smartphone app on both cognitive and affective development in the vocabulary learning of cyber university students. Fifty students enrolled in an e-learning class were divided into three groups, one for each app, and were given seven sets of vocabulary quizzes via their respective apps for three weeks. The findings of this study suggest that the group that used Band showed the highest improvement in their vocabulary performance, followed by Socrative and KakaoTalk. All three groups showed positive satisfaction, interest, and attitude towards blended learning (e-learning+smart learning) using the apps. With regards to affective domains, i.e., students’ satisfaction, the highest result was found in the Socrative group, followed by KakaoTalk and Band. Another affective domain, students’ interest, showed a different result. KakaoTalk showed the highest result, followed by Socrative and Band. These outcomes reflect the distinctive features of these three different mediums. Based on these research findings, this smart learning designed to overcome the limitations of “one-way” e-learning has significant pedagogical implications for future cyber higher education.

smart applications, smart learning, blended learning, KakoTalk, Band, Socrative, SNS, social learning, cyber university, e-learning

안미리 Mi Ri Ahn

DOI: Vol.19(No.1) 114-136, 2016

Flipped learning is defined as a type of blended learning which students study online content by watching video lectures at home and the assignment given is followed upon in the classroom, providing more opportunities for peer and teacher feedback. The purposes of this study were to examine student perceptions on the flipped class and to identify the most influential factors behind their class satisfaction. The subjects were 46 students in TOEFL writing courses at university. A survey was used to collect the pertinent data. The results are as follows. First, more than 50% of the students confirmed that the flipped class increased student interest and concentration level. Second, in-class activities were highly pertinent to the clips and helped students attain the course objectives. Third, the flipped class stimulated interaction among students. Fourth, student perception on the ease of use was influenced by a native’s speech rate, content difficulty, and the length of the clips. Fifth, more than 60% of the students were willing to enroll in a flipped class in the future. Last, the most influential factor behind class satisfaction was revealed to be attention factor. Based on the main findings, pedagogical implications for the implementation of flipped class are suggested.

flipped learning, writing, TOEFL independent essay