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Djanet Sears’ Harlem Duet engages the lasting impact of the long history of black oppression on the characters, especially on knowledge construction shaped by the history of racism. Taking Djanet Sears’ words that her play is a means of ‘exorcising’ the ideological structures behind the literary representation of black people throughout history, this paper aims to look at Sears’ work as a means of subverting the inherited epistemological structures of racism through the implementation of blues music. Following an observation of the existing binary structures shaping the thoughts and speech of the characters Billie and Othello, the paper will analyse how the prevalent musical presence throughout the play functions both as an affective means of subverting the binary construction of racial discourse, as well as a means of extending and further cultivating the tradition of “black performance” through the utilisation of “phonic substance” as another means of resistive dialogue happening within the margins of the play.

This paper examines how Elizabeth Bowen explores both the failure of hospitality and its enduring potential to foster forms of connection among marginalized figures, marked as “other” from dominant political and social perspectives. Focusing on “The Cheery Soul,” one of Bowen’s wartime short stories, this paper argues that the story exposes the realities of wartime Britain, where ideals of hospitality break down amid a social landscape reshaped by wartime regulations and shifting public attitudes. Through Gothic conventions, a brief analepsis, deliberately awkward syntax, and disorienting paragraph openings, Bowen traces the narrator’s growing recognition of the limits of conventional hospitality and of their own vulnerability to the wartime state’s suspicion and exclusion. The story ultimately signals the possibility of a more ethical openness to those marginalized by dominant wartime social and political norms.

This article explores care in family and kinship communities, focusing on When You Trap a Tiger and Foster. It is analyzed that we, as ‘the vulnerable subject,’ live in a network of interdependence, and the ethics of interdependence and care support and sustain the lives of human beings and global living. Individual vulnerability is intertwined with one another, society, and the global networking. Lily in When You Trap a Tiger tries to care for Halmoni through releasing the stories locked in the jars. When Tiger asks Lily to free the stories, she realizes unlocking the stories is a way of care for Halmoni. The girl in Foster temporarily lives with a foster family. The Kinsellas give warm care to the girl she has never had in her own home. With this love and care, the girl understands when to keep silence and who her ‘real’ daddy is.

Marilynne Robinson’s Jack, the prequel to the Gilead series, confronts the structural evil of racial segregation through the forbidden love between Jack, a white vagrant, and Della, a black teacher. The opening cemetery scene transcends its role as a mere backdrop. It functions as a liminal space where social norms are suspended, paradoxically allowing the two protagonists to engage in intellectual exchange without racial hierarchy. However, as a domain of the dead and a place of stasis, the cemetery serves as a pessimistic foreshadowing, implying that their relationship cannot endure without “social death.” This tragic destiny is further displayed through Jack’s immersion in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and identification of himself with the Prince of Darkness. Jack projects his own guilt onto the Hamletian tragedy, confessing through the metaphor of a broken string that his very proximity to Della inevitably destroys her social standing. By defining himself as the Prince of Darkness, which is a traditional epithet for Satan, Jack acknowledges that his white privilege itself is a destructive power that infringes upon Della’s life, regardless of his intentions. Ultimately, Robinson suggests that the resolution of racial antagonism begins at the intersection of Della’s “light”—her ability to perceive the unadulterated soul—and Jack’s agonizing reflection on his own structural violence, asserting the inviolable value of human dignity even within the kingdom of darkness.

The increasing use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in language education has expanded learners’ access to linguistic resources and alternative language expressions. However, the ability of AI to generate linguistically appropriate language does not necessarily lead to meaningful learning. This study therefore analyzes creative meaning construction in advertising discourse and develops a corpus-informed teacher scaffolding framework for AI-assisted creative language learning. A corpus-informed qualitative content analysis was conducted on 100 English-language advertising texts from ten global brands across four domains: automotive, sports, luxury/fragrance, and technology. The texts were analyzed to identify recurring patterns of creative meaning construction and the linguistic features through which advertising discourse extends meaning beyond literal product descriptions. The identified features were subsequently interpreted in relation to potential learner meaning-making demands and mapped onto pedagogical scaffolding functions. The analysis identified five major patterns of creative meaning construction and six major linguistic feature categories: metaphor, personification, identity construction, sensory imagery, conceptual blending, and linguistic deviation. Based on the pedagogical interpretation of the meaning-making demands associated with these features, four complementary teacher scaffolding functions were conceptually developed: analytical, cognitive, creative, and reflective scaffolding. These corpus-informed scaffolding functions were subsequently organized into a four-stage framework consisting of exploring, interpreting, creating, and evaluating. The proposed framework conceptualizes generative AI as a mediational resource rather than a replacement for teacher guidance. It suggests that teachers can guide learners in critically interpreting AI-generated language and transforming linguistic resources into context-sensitive and creative expressions. Because the framework has not yet been empirically validated, it is presented as a corpus-informed pedagogical framework that provides a basis for future classroom-based research on teacher-mediated AI-assisted creative language learning.

This study examined teacher emotional support and social-emotional competence among Korean EFL university students across different proficiency levels. A total of 153 students participated in the study and were assigned to three groups based on their English proficiency: high-, medium-, and low-proficiency learners. Four research instruments were utilized: a background questionnaire, the Teacher Emotional Support Scale, the Social Emotional Competence Scale, and an English proficiency test. The results show that high- and medium- proficiency learners reported significantly higher levels of teacher emotional support than lower-proficiency learners in terms of positive climate, teacher sensitivity, and regard for adolescent perspective. Regarding social emotional competence, significant group differences were observed across all five dimensions, with high-proficiency learners consistently outperforming lower-proficiency learners and medium-proficiency learners showing advantages over the low-proficiency group in selected dimensions. Significant associations were identified among teacher emotional support, social emotional competence, and English proficiency. This study suggests practical and supportive teaching methods that can be implemented in L2 classrooms to foster learners’ psycho-affective and social development.

This study examined research trends in general English education for adult learners in Korea by analyzing 24 journal articles published between 2016 and 2025. The literature selection process was organized with reference to the PRISMA 2020 flow framework. The studies were classified into formal, semi-formal, and non-formal education. Seven studies were conducted in formal education, five in semi-formal education, and twelve in non-formal education, with 70.8% published since 2020. The comparison revealed distinct research foci across educational types. Formal education research primarily addressed adult learners’ needs in general English and the suitability of curricula and programs, whereas semi-formal education focused on learning purposes, motivation, online general English, and self-directed learning. Non-formal education mainly examined middle-aged and older learners, affective factors, and age-related language learning. The review also identified inconsistent age criteria across studies and a limited body of research on adult learners studying alongside traditional-age college students in regular university general English courses. These findings provide theoretical implications for defining adult learner age categories and practical implications for general English education in higher education.

This study proposes a university general English writing instruction model that integrates academic vocabulary instruction and generative AI-assisted feedback. This study is a literature-based instructional model development study rather than an empirical investigation of the effects of a particular classroom intervention. Drawing on research on the Academic Word List, vocabulary breadth and depth, genre-based writing instruction, process writing, and generative AI-assisted feedback, the study identifies five design principles: learner agency, contextualized academic vocabulary use, critical verification of AI suggestions, process-oriented writing, and differentiated instruction by proficiency and disciplinary context. Based on these principles, the proposed model consists of seven stages: diagnostic goal setting, genre-based vocabulary selection, model-text analysis, AI-free drafting, targeted AI feedback, verification and revision, and portfolio reflection. The model positions generative AI not as a text-generation substitute but as a resource that helps learners compare, evaluate, and revise their own language choices. It also presents genre-based activities, prompt examples, a process-oriented assessment framework, and a 15-week implementation plan. The study argues that responsible use of generative AI in university English writing courses should emphasize learner authorship, transparency, and critical judgment. Future research should empirically examine changes in students’ academic vocabulary use, revision processes, and responses to AI feedback through actual classroom implementation.

This study investigated the effects of grammar e-portfolios on grammar learning and learners’ perceptions among low-achieving college EFL students. By adopting a learner-centered and process-oriented approach, this study aimed to support low-achieving learners in improving the English proficiency required for academic study and future employment while fostering their development as self-directed learners. During the program, students received instruction in key grammatical structures and completed web-based portfolio tasks, including lesson summaries, quizzes and reviews, sentence-writing activities, and reflective journals. They also participated in student-teacher conferences throughout the course. The students showed significant improvement in grammar learning and reported that the portfolio activities positively influenced their motivation, interest, confidence, class participation, and self-regulated learning. These findings suggest that grammar e-portfolios may support grammar learning and self-directed learning among low-achieving college EFL students. This study contributes to the existing literature by extending portfolio research, which has primarily focused on reading, listening, writing, and speaking, to English grammar.

This study examines the pragmatic properties of discourse-functional like (N = 70) within segment SBC0001 of the Santa Barbara Corpus (SBC; Du Bois, 2000). Descriptive distributional results reveal that like most frequently occurred as a macro-structural Clause/Utterance Linker ([LINK], 41.4%) for floor-holding and cognitive planning. Focus Markers ([FOCUS], 24.3%) and Quotative Markers ([QUOT], 21.4%) follow as key devices for highlighting information salience and framing constructed dialogue or somatic enactments, while Approximators ([APPROX], 10.0%) and Exemplifiers ([EXEMP], 2.9%) serve as specialized scalar hedges and illustrative markers. Qualitative evidence demonstrates that these functions systematically map onto distinct syntactic environments. Far from representing vocal noise, like operates as a vital interactional resource balancing cognitive processing demands with dynamic stance-taking in natural discourse.

This study investigated how Chinese students’ perceptions of English varieties changed through their study-abroad experiences in Korea. The findings revealed that, prior to studying in Korea, participants’ views were strongly shaped by English education in China, where American and British English were widely regarded as the most standard and authoritative varieties. They also reported insecurity about speaking English with a Chinese accent. After arriving in Korea, however, they were exposed to a wider range of English varieties through classroom learning, intercultural communication, and everyday interactions. These experiences gradually reshaped their criteria for evaluating English. Although American and British English continued to be valued for their perceived standardness, participants increasingly emphasized intelligibility and communicative effectiveness over conformity to native-speaker norms.

This corpus-based study examined whether Korean learners of English and L1 English writers differ in their written use of <l>- and <r>-initial content words. The study analyzed the Gachon Learner Corpus and LOCNESS, using relative proportions of orthographically defined initial-letter tokens and essay-level lexical frequency based on SUBTLEX-US. Korean learners showed lower proportions of both <l>- and <r>-initial content words than L1 English writers, and the between-corpus difference was larger for <r> than for <l>. However, a whole-alphabet comparison showed that several other initial letters also exhibited between-corpus differences of comparable or greater magnitude. Mixed-effects modeling showed a significant Corpus × Letter interaction, which remained after mean-centering lexical frequency. At the same time, the findings do not establish a direct causal relationship between phonological difficulty and lexical choice, because the study did not directly measure phonological processing, lexical access, or individual learners’ perception and production of /l/ and /r/. The results are therefore interpreted as evidence of corpus-level differences in written lexical distribution, rather than as direct evidence of contrast-specific phonological avoidance.