Rethinking the teaching of grammar from the perspective of corpus linguistics

Chongwon Park,Elizabethada Wright,David Beard,Ron Regal 경희대학교 언어정보연구소 2019 언어연구 Vol.36 No.1

Despite calls from many composition and rhetoric scholars for instructors of writing to stop teaching prescriptive grammar, a vast number of handbooks intended for college writing classes encourage this tradition. For example, Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual has a section on grammar with instructions for students on how to write appropriately. While Hacker may not intend for her instructions to be taken as dictums, they often are, and much time is spent in many classrooms teaching students these rules of grammar. This article uses the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to support the calls from composition and rhetoric scholars that prescriptive instruction in grammar is more a hindrance to writing instruction than a benefit. Focusing on a few specifics from frequently used grammar handbooks and illustrating how big data shows the “rules” are incorrect at best, this article argues that, just as scholars of English have begun using big data to better understand literary history, scholars of rhetoric and composition might better understand how to help students to write by understanding patterns within big data. Certainly, this argument recognizes that “common usage” may not necessarily be the most eloquent usage. In making this argument, this article focuses on the [neither or either of X] + Verb construction, where the Verb may have either a plural or a singular form. Our findings illustrate that the “real world” writing is different from what textbooks dictate, and we suggest the data-driven observations need to be appropriately incorporated in writing classes.

Voice Type and QSR NUD*IST: Computer Aided Qualitative Data Entering and Analysis

Chongwon Park 팬코리아영어교육학회(구 영남영어교육학회) 2002 영어교육연구 Vol.14 No.2

Factors that Negatively Influence Oral Interaction in-and-out of the Classroom

Chongwon Park 한국외국어교육학회 2004 Foreign languages education Vol.11 No.4

Although interactionists’ input, interaction, and output hypotheses offer a clear picture of what goes on in one's language learning product as well as in one's process, they fail to explain why interaction is not possible or even desirable for certain groups of learners. To explore negative factors which hamper selected Korean learners' oral interaction processes (N=14) in-and-out of class, a one-year ethnographic study was conducted with different methods (interviews, observations, and social network analysis) and multiple sources of data. Participants strongly voiced the importance of interpersonal relationships among students, between the students and the instructor, and their effect on second language learning. The results of this study indicate that both institutional and social contexts impact learning far more greatly than the choice of teaching method, material, or techniques. This result contradicts the popular belief that learners are ready to learn once the educational environment is optimalized. This study is significant in that it raises the importance of understanding the students' group dynamics that originate in their own culture. Based upon the findings of this study, coping strategies for interactional barriers are provided for the future Intensive English Programs (IEP) for students and teachers.

Peer Pressure and Learning to Speak English Voices from the Selected Learners

Chongwon Park 한국영어교육학회 2000 ENGLISH TEACHING(영어교육) Vol.55 No.4

Attrition and Feelings in Foreign Language Writing

Chongwon Park 새한영어영문학회 2023 새한영어영문학회 학술발표회 논문집 Vol.2023 No.5

The Frames and Semantic Network of the English Particle to

Chongwon Park 고려대학교 언어정보연구소 2009 언어정보 Vol.10 No.-

NVivo R1: How to Broaden the Scope of Research by Using Search Functions

Chongwon Park 한국언어과학회 2020 한국언어과학회 학술대회 Vol.2020 No.10

As of today (15th of August), QSR international have released a computer based software handling numerous, unorganized data such as interviews, pictures, sounds, audio files. These various types of data need to be organized to be analyzed. Regardless of numbers of participants, diverse data need to be managed economically to draw valid results. At this point, working with computer assisted qualitative data is an obligation not an option. This presentation focuses on critical elements of NVivo R1 in terms of ameliorating the qualitative data analysis as well as writing up. In line with QSR’s claim, functions introduced in this presentation will be connected with the previous research work in an effort to link between theory and practice of computer assisted qualitative data analysis. Specifically, studies on written corrective feedback using NVivo will be addressed, and the direction for future research will be sought.

The Evolution of Korean Dative Markers: Its Formal and Cognitive Motivations

Chongwon Park,Sook-kyung Lee 서울대학교 언어교육원 (구 서울대학교 어학연구소) 2009 語學硏究 Vol.45 No.2

This article examines the grammaticalization process of the Korean dative markers -eykey, -hanthey, -tele, and -pwokwo based on the two motivations for grammaticalization. The first motivation, frequency, is explained by providing token frequencies of each marker in the largest historical corpus available in Korean. All four dative markers arose through the highly frequent usages of their source constructions, though several cases cannot be fully accounted for solely based on this frequency effect. The apparent exceptions are explained based on the functional nature of grammaticalization. The second motivation, the semantic-pragmatic motivation, is explained within the cognitive linguistics framework, which views linguistic meaning as a manifestation of conceptual structure. More specifically, we argue that the four dative markers arose through various semantic-pragmatic mechanisms, which stem from the conceptualization of meaning. Although the specific semanticfunctional motivations for the four dative markers vary, the driving force of the motivations is deeply rooted in our conceptualization of meaning and our embodied cognition. Our semantic analysis of the grammaticalization of the dative markers is based on these conceptualization theses of cognitive semantics.

The Impact of Sociocultural Constraints on the Process and Product of Language Learning

Chongwon Park(朴鍾元) 동북아시아문화학회 2016 동북아시아문화학회 국제학술대회 발표자료집 Vol.2016 No.10

Motivated by input, interaction, and output hypotheses, it was assumed that ‘teaching English through English’ (TETE) could be one way of ameliorating current teaching and learning practices. However, most perception and attitude oriented studies from diverse teaching contexts report mixed results lacking actual linguistic development of language learners. In addition, little attention is paid to how pre and in-service teachers perceive and acquire the language from TETE. To fill the gap between the previous studies and the reality, this study was conducted to better understand pre and in-service teachers’ language acquisition processes and products. To reach a valid conclusion, multiple sources of data, interviews, diaries, classroom observations, a survey, and other relevant documents were used. In spite of the participants" unanimous agreement on the need to implement TETE, they did not show any linguistic development in terms of accuracy, fluency, and complexity. It was concluded that selected learners’ locally shared values, age and social status, hampered both the processes and products of language learning. It is argued that before implementing a specific method, factors affecting learning from localized contexts should be a primary concern because they tend to have been taken for granted.

Effects of Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback on the Different Levels of Learners

Chongwon Park 동북아시아문화학회 2017 동북아시아문화학회 국제학술대회 발표자료집 Vol.2017 No.10

In the field of teaching second language writing, it has been questioned whether written corrective feedback is effective or not. In responding to this contentious and ongoing question, this study was conducted to introduce a newly designed instructional strategy in writing and test its efficacy over both short and long periods of time. By using a newly devised testing tool integrating accuracy and fluency at the same time, advanced (N=23), intermediate (N=25), and beginning (N=28) level learners participated in this study, and 304 writing samples were analyzed from the pretest, task 1, task 2, and posttest respectively. The results indicate that all of the groups show statistically significant mean differences both short and long term period. Thus, one can conclude that a newly designed instructional strategy, dynamic corrective feedback is effective in reducing error rates, increasing learner fluency, and multiplying the effect of revision on the subsequent and new pieces of writing. Before jumping to any harsh conclusion, the researcher postulates that further research validating the findings of the result is highly desirable, and it will deepen the understanding toward the nature of complex and context-sensitive second language writing.