Earticle

This study examines the contexts in which non-native English-speaking international students engage in English as a Lingua Franca(ELF) interactions at K University and investigates their awareness of cross-cultural ELF communication. Data were collected through three individual interviews and three paired interviews with nine participants and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The findings revealed that ELF communication occurs in a wide range of contexts, indicating that ELF serves as an essential communicative infrastructure for international students and that K University campus promotes an ELF-friendly environment. The participants recognized ELF communication skills as vital global competencies and noted that studying in Korea offers frequent opportunities to boost their confidence in using English. They also gained insights into the role of ELF in cross-cultural communication, the need for intelligibility, and the importance of tolerance for linguistic diversity. Conversely, prevalent issues in ELF research—such as native-speaker ideology, lack of ELF speaker identity, and translanguaging—were also observed. Based on these findings, this study underscores the necessity of and future directions for ELF education within international student programs.

This study investigates how the perceived politeness of English imperatives is shaped by the interaction between imperative intensity and social contextual variables. Intensity is conceptualized as a composite of three dimensions — directness, coerciveness, and urgency — linguistically realized through imperative forms ranging from bare imperatives to highly mitigated indirect requests. The study examines how Korean EFL learners perceive and select appropriate imperative forms across social contexts defined by power relations, social distance, and imposition. Power relations had the strongest influence on politeness judgments, with higher politeness forms preferred in hearer-dominant contexts and more direct forms in speaker-dominant contexts. Social distance showed a significant but weaker effect, whereas imposition did not yield a statistically significant impact, suggesting that relational factors take precedence over the burden of the requested action in Korean learners' politeness judgments. The study contributes to pragmatic research by reconceptualizing imperative forms as realizations of imperative intensity and highlights the importance of context-sensitive instruction in English language education.

This study seeks to address how the use of ChatGPT impacts Korean university EFL students’ reading comprehension. This study was prompted by two factors: limited research into the impact of AI-assisted practice on EFL reading skills and a lack of classroom-focused research on applying AI methods in education. One teacher and ten students of low-intermediate levels of English proficiency participated in a twenty-four-hour long reading course which included interactions with ChatGPT. Students’ actual work with ChatGPT and class interactions were documented for qualitative analysis. The findings saw two distinctive ways that ChatGPT could contribute to students’ reading comprehension. ChatGPT was used to monitor students’ progress by quizzing them and providing feedback which encouraged students to revisit the text, to reconfirm their previous comprehension and to re-steer their comprehension. ChatGPT provided a proactive avenue for active conversation partner on reading passages; thus, not only providing students with richer language use but also sophisticating their previously-acquired comprehension. The use of AI technology for receptive foreign language acquisition along with the crucial role of human teachers in the creation of interactive scaffolding is discussed.

This study conducts a longitudinal bibliometric analysis of 325 academic papers on Tourism English education from 1996 to 2025, sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection. Factorial mapping signifies a transition from fundamental pedagogy to advanced technology integration, from Natural Language Processing to Generative AI. Thematic evolution reveals a three-phase process: an initial ESP phase, a pandemic-driven machine learning phase, and an extended ESP phase marked by a shift from collaborative learning to anthropomorphism. This shift redefines learner interaction — from form-focused exercises toward scenario-based, socio-emotionally responsive communication — and reframes the educational goal as cultivating distinctively human competencies that AI cannot replicate. This study proposes a hybrid competency model combining broad pedagogical frameworks with advanced technology in the post-pandemic era.