Earticle

We investigated factors contributing to transferring an L1 allophonic change in L2 speech of 20 Korean learners of English. Realization of the Korean obstruent nasalization rule depended on the segmental environment. Stops underwent greater nasalization when the following nasal was homorganic (e.g., /ʃɪpmənt/ → [ʃɪmmənt]), compared to non-homorganic sequences (e.g., /kwɪknəs/ → [kwɪŋnəs]). The L1-transfer was also conditioned by prosodic factors. As a prominence effect, more nasalization occurred when the target word/phrase was elicited to be unfocused by context, compared to focus-driven utterances. This effect was found exclusively in the advanced learner group (N=10) but not in the intermediate group (N=10), suggesting that fluent L2 speakers better inhibit the L1 phonological process particularly in attended speech. Further, a boundary effect showed that visually-presented word boundary helped inhibit nasalization for both groups, but that even advanced learners experienced difficulty in inhibiting word-internal nasalization, particularly in unattended speech.

In the context of reading-writing integration, intermediate texts L2 students produce during reading-writing practices have been recognized as a key variable influencing their writing development. This study empirically examined the role of reading-based writing cycles(i.e., reading practice-intermediate text-writing task), using ‘reading summary’ as a task bridging reading and writing. The intermediate texts produced were classified into the four categories, or ‘Copy, Near Copy, Minimal Revision, and Substantial Revision’, to analyze how students used these texts in their writing processes. The results showed that a group with high writing proficiency used intermediate texts more effectively in their writing practices than did a group with low writing proficiency. First, the high proficiency group dominated the low proficiency group in using the substantial revision category. Second, the students in the high proficiency groups engaged in two types of writing cycles; an organic writing cycle (active reading-using more intermediate texts-writing task) and a cycle skewed to reading (active reading-using less intermediate texts-writing task). Third, students producing less intermediate texts engaged in a writing cycle skewed to writing(passive reading-using less intermediate texts-writing task). This study argues that L2 practitioners should recognize the role of intermediate texts as an essential part of teaching practices; teaching how students use intermediate texts in their writing tasks.

This study verified the effects of Korean learners’ reading motivation on reading strategies by Korean reading motivation tests and Korean reading strategy tests on 266 Korean learners as a foreign language. As a result the component factors of Korean reading motivation were reading challenge motivation, various genre reading motivation, reading efficacy motivation, reading interest motivation, recognition and competition motivation, and reading importance motivation. And the component factors of Korean reading strategy were active reading strategy, extended reading strategy, and passive reading strategy. The effects of Korean reading motivation in reading strategies were derived by conducting structural equations and bootstrapping analysis. First, reading challenge motivation and efficacy motivation affect active reading strategy. Second, reading challenge motivation, various genre reading motivation, reading efficacy motivation, reading interest motivation affect the extended reading strategy. Finally, reading importance motivation affects passive reading strategies. This study is expeced to expand the discourse on intergrated reading in Korean reading education and provide practical information based on learner information in Korean reading motivation and reading strategies.

This study investigated the letter transposition effect across the syllables of a Korean word (e.g., 전상[prime] -> 선장[target]). The stimuli that are similar to those used by Lee and Taft (2009) were used in the masked priming task. Lee and Taft argued that if letters of a Korean word is position specific, there would be no confusion when letters are transposed within a word. In addition, it is expected no transposition effect would appear because the previous study did not show any effect for the transposition of letters within a syllable. The main experimental conditions were onset-onset, and coda-coda transposition to the target (e.g., 전상 -> 선장, 성잔 -> 선장). The results showed that the nonword prime transposition conditions of onset and onset, coda and coda condition elicited inhibitory priming, which is a different pattern as compared to the prediction of the existing letter transposition hypotheses. It is interpreted that the neighborhood words activated by the prime would inhibit the processing of the target word.

This study examined the cases of English education practices at home through the lenses of some language acquisition approaches, theories, and methods. The English educational practices were guided and supported by parents at home, and the parents claimed that their children could master English by being exposed to English from early on. This study suggested some implications of the importance of establishing and implementing English reading programs for children in the public education system. The findings in the current study show that input of English is the most crucial and essential part of acquiring English. Having children exposed to oral and written English, which is fundamental in English education, many parents shared their success stories of raising children who can communicate in English as a tool for having their voices in the world. The present study found that children exposed to English at home enjoyed using English as a useful tool in today’s modern world. This study implies that well-implemented reading programs would provide good quality English education for children.

The purpose of the study is to introduce the compilation of the Korean learner corpus of spoken English, BUFS (Busan University of Foreign Studies) Spoken Learner Corpus of English (BUFS-LCSE) and its possible applications in the study of Korean learner’s use of spoken English. Since few spoken learner corpora of English have been compiled in Korea, there is a limit to describe actual language use of Korean EFL learners. For this, the BUFS-LCSE was constructed under the Language Pathfinder (LP) program supported by the project of the Korean University Innovation (2nd) in 2021. From the perspective of compilation, it focuses on the following three: 1) speaker-related characteristics, 2) corpus specification, 3) translation procedure. From the perspective of application, the corpus is able to provide patterns of Korean learner’s language use focusing on centrality and typicality. This study can contribute to providing a comprehensive description of Korean EFL learners’ interlanguage and offering insights into second language acquisition.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the semantics of the taste term sweetness by comparing two representative predicates tal- in Korean and tian in Chinese. To do this, we mainly focus on their uses and distributions in proverbs in each language. After reviewing the dictionary meaning of each predicate, we compare how various (extended) meanings can be derived in the proverb by utilizing the syntagmatic relations induced in the interpreting process of proverbs. As a result, we present six criteria to specify the core semantics of each term: 'positive taste description,’ ‘positive emotion (or judgment or attitude),’ ‘positive description on various situations,’ ‘the direct expression on benefit,’ ‘negative/positive flavors derived through the contrast with the taste term bitterness’, and ‘the residual meaning which rests on the causal relation conveyed in some proverbs.’ Concomitantly, we also pay attention to which words are closely related to tal-/tian, and thus more frequently used in proverbs. Given their distributions based on the semantic co-occurrence, it is briefly discussed which semantic features play a crucial role to specify the overall usages and meanings of tal-/tian in Korean/Chinese proverbs.

This study proposes a methodology for constructing linguistic resources to train Natural Language Understanding (NLU) models for the legal counseling service. A dataset based on the language resources we propose is essential for developing non-face-to-face legal services that provide information related to legal problems. The linguistic resources were constructed through a bottom-up analysis of linguistic patterns of legal expressions, background descriptions, and discourse types in online legal counseling texts. Moreover, we analyzed the hierarchical classification of keywords in existing legal service systems and newly determined 20 keywords that belong to 4 representative legal categories. Local Grammar Graphs (LGGs), effective in describing local linguistic phenomena, were adopted to describe various linguistic patterns in this domain. These local language patterns, modularized in LGG format, are converted into Finite State Transducers (FSTs) and generate datasets required for training a language model for NLU. To evaluate this processing, we trained an NLU model of the open-source chatbot architecture Rasa with our dataset. The model performance shows a 0.91 f1-score, which affirms that the linguistic resources and the methodology proposed in this study can be practically applied in developing legal counseling chatbot systems.

This research investigates the collocational behaviors and semantic preferences to discriminate among near-synonyms. The research focuses on the nominal collocates of near-synonymous adjectives(complex, complicated, intricate, and elaborate) in terms of the overall usage patterns of collocates, semantic preferences of collocates, and shared collocates. Based on data collected from Brown and LOB corpus, Words analyzes frequency patterns of near-synonyms, and GraphColl builds and visualizes the collocation networks, which provide important insights into meaning relationships. Also, WordNet online is operated to group the collocates of each near-synonymous adjective into definable semantic categories. Findings from the research revealed there are some similarities and differences among four adjectives; firstly, they had different frequency patterns across genres, and secondly, they tended to appear selectively with the collocates indicating particular semantic preferences despite vagueness in accurately capturing and classifying meanings neatly. Lastly, they had some shared collocates which show some common semantic preferences.

This study aims to explore usage differences among near-synonym verbs based on COHA and GloWbE through a diachronic and synchronic trend analysis and differentiate the subtle semantic similarities and differences in the authentic usage of COCA through two analysis tools like Wmatrix 5 and NetMiner 4.0. The former shows that the overall frequency of catch is higher than that of grasp and seize from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective, and that the frequency of all three near-synonym verbs could be higher in some countries using English as their second language. The latter mainly deals with two options like semantic domains shared with all near-synonym verbs and semantic domains exclusively shared with each near-synonym verb. The results shed light on the subtle semantic similarities and differences among three near-synonym verbs according to shared or unshared relationship with the noun collocates of the corresponding semantic domains, despite a gap in the frequency size of them.

This paper discusses generative linguistics and corpus linguistics from the perspective of their philosophical foundations, research methodologies, and basic notions. It focuses on how they make distinct but complementary contributions to the development of AI. It is shown that generative linguistics and corpus linguistics arrive at language from fundamentally different directions in that the former is rationalism, reasoning-oriented, and based on deduction and introspection while the latter is empiricism-oriented and resorts to induction and data. Moreover, generative linguistics is said to focus on generic features of language, mentalism, and linguistic competence, but corpus linguistics is claimed to stress the sociality of language and linguistic performance. It is also held that both generative linguistics and corpus linguistics have made contributions to AI development, especially in the field of NLP, machine translation, and information retrieval. In particular, generative linguistics can provide theoretical support for language-related aspects of AI, and corpus linguistics can help AI by providing tools to analyze various aspects of a language system based on powerful real data and by generalizing language patterns based on probabilistic information. The paper then suggests that generative linguistics and corpus linguistics can be used in a symbiotic methodology to boost AI study.

This study aims to examine the influence of two types of instruments, a checklist and a rating scale, on Korean EFL college students’ ability to summarize. A checklist and a rating scale were developed to encourage students’ autonomy in developing summary writing skills. While referring to each instrument, thirty-six students were asked to write a summary, followed by a questionnaire. The findings were that students using a checklist while summarizing performed better than students with a rating scale. Similarly, more than half of the students mentioned the checklist as more beneficial. Several supplementary methods were suggested to increase the efficiency of using a checklist or rating scale. Even though this research was conducted on a relatively small number of participants, the findings of this study provide new perspectives on how to develop students’ summarization skills with guidelines or frameworks, on which scare research has been conducted.

This study investigates the effectiveness of dynamic written corrective feedback(DWCF) on the writing of intermediate learners of Korean as a foreign language(KFL). Nineteen intermediate Korean learners at a large private university in the United States participated in this research and were divided into two groups. The treatment group(n=9) received DWCF, while the control group(n=10) did traditional types of take-home essay writing with direct feedback. Pre- and post-test results were analyzed to determine differences in linguistic accuracy, fluency, and complexity between the two groups. A mixed-model repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the treatment group's accuracy significantly increased compared to the control group, and there was no significant difference in fluency or complexity for either group. Based on the study results, DWCF is an effective teaching strategy to improve the linguistic accuracy of writings for intermediate Korean learners without negatively impacting fluency and complexity.