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English reading and reading motivation of Korean EFL middle school students
최은숙 Woosong Univ. 2011 국내석사
As English is getting more and more important as a means to international communication, students and parents are showing a special interest in English Language Learning (ELL). In the Korean EFL context which has some limitations to ELL, however, students have not had many opportunities to use English except for the English classroom at public schools or language institutions. Therefore, English reading becomes more important in order to provide students with the environment where they can be more exposed to English. To hold their interests in English reading, students are required to develop their own reading motivation, especially an intrinsic motivation such as goal setting and achievement. Therefore, seven Korean middle school students participated in this research to find out 1) how they perceived English reading, 2) which motivation was required for better English reading, and 3) how English reading motivation could be effectively stimulated. From the data analysis, the findings of this study are as follows. Most of the participants had a difficulty in English reading. Concentrating more on vocabulary and grammar, they spend time more in translating the given texts into Korean than understanding the general meaning which the book intended or its author intended to say. Also, they were forced to read English books for their homework or English exams. In order to concentrate on more reading and to motivate them to read more books, therefore, it is necessary to guide them to select an appropriate book for their own interests. Teachers and parents can play an important role in internally motivating students who have more extrinsic reading motivation. They could also motivate, by exposing an English environment through the Internet, I hope these points will help to improve their English reading motivation.
Factors that influence a child's English pronunciation in the Korean context
장현경 Woosong Univ. 2011 국내석사
This study explored of factors: an amount of English exposure and gender which influence a child’s English pronunciation in the Korean context. The experimental study for this present paper was conducted based on twenty four 6-year-old kindergarten students who take English lessons in an English institute which is located in the Mannyeon area of Daejeon. All the participants were divided into two groups: Group A which started learning English at age 6 and Group B which started learning English at age 5. Both groups were asked to pronounce five survey words and sentences. The experimental results which were recorded on a MP3 recorder were evaluated by three native raters. The raters were asked to select the best description in the given 5-point Likert scale after listening to all the participants’ utterances. This study looked to answer the following questions based on two survey groups: 1. Are there differences in English pronunciation between children who are exposed earlier in a formal English classroom and children who are exposed later? 2. Is the student’s gender a factor in terms of a child’s English pronunciation? In contrast to the people’s general perception, ‘The younger, the better’, under the critical period hypothesis, the results from this study found that there is no correlation between acquiring English pronunciation and the amount of English exposure it has received. As a result, this paper does not support the critical period hypothesis in the Korean context. However, for only /z/ pronunciation among other survey words and sentence pronunciations the researcher found a significant difference between the two survey groups (t=2.120, p<.05). The argument can be made that the amount of exposure in early English education (EEE) can have a positive effect in producing and acquiring English pronunciation. Therefore, more study is needed to investigate the consistent difference between the groups. The results of this study also found that there is no correlation between acquiring English pronunciation and gender differences. This paper does not support the argument that gender affects L2 pronuciation accuracy. This paper concludes that considerable work needs to be done about the methodology for maximizing L2 acquisition and applying previous research into the Korean context. Key words: English pronunciation, amount of exposure, gender, early English education (EEE)