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The purpose of this research was to investigate the characteristics of Korean college students’ writings, which have been produced without or with the help of machine translation tool in the classroom. Specifically, this research attempted to investigate the linguistic characteristics of the students’ writings, and types of errors identified in the writings. Twelve pieces of writings from three college students were collected for analysis. Two online word analysis programs, Word Counter (2023) and LIWC-22 (2023), were employed for data analysis. The findings of data analysis found out that 1) The students’ drafts consisted of 22.8 sentences including 303.9 words in 3.6 paragraphs on average. 2) In the students’ drafts, ‘unique’ words (46.8%) were included a lot more than ‘difficult’ words (27%), and students tended to write their essay writings in an unfiltered or impromptu way rather than an analytical way regardless of their English language proficiency levels. 3) The highest frequency of errors was seen in grammatical errors (41.7%) followed by lexical errors (31.6%). Based on the research findings, pedagogical implications and suggestions for the effective use of machine translation in English writing classes were presented.

This study investigated the impact of 26 EFL college students’ familiarity levels with the visual information of TOEIC listening test items on test scores and test performance procedure. Data collected measured students’ degree of familiarity with the visuals via a pre-test and their listening test scores, and responses to the post-test questionnaire were analyzed. To analyze the data, one-way ANOVA was conducted to locate the interdependency between the students’ familiarity levels with visuals and their test scores. Results found that there was no statistically significant differences in test scores regardless of the students’ levels of familiarity with the visuals. Additionally, the correlations between the familiarity with the visuals and the students’ test scores were low. However, the students experienced difficulties with unfamiliar visuals while taking the test. These findings indicate that, although test-takers’ familiarity with visuals does not predict their listening test scores, there is a need to tailor the visuals when developing listening test-items.

Conventional flipped learning instructional models are operated in a blended learning environment online and offline. In contrast, this study moved onto fully online systems and explored how a sense of presence worked for students’ learning outcomes at university English writing courses. The two research questions for this study are: 1) What is the relationship between a sense of presence (teaching, cognitive, social presence) and learning outcomes (group cohesion, class satisfaction)? and 2) What are the variables among a sense of presence that affect group cohesion and class satisfaction? For the purposes of this study, 46 university students from English composition courses answered student questionnaires in the spring of 2021. Correlation and multiple-regression analyses were conducted to look into the relationships among the variables. Additionally, focus-group interviews were conducted and teaching journals were analyzed. The major findings were revealed as follows: Firstly, a sense of presence was significantly related to group cohesion and satisfaction. Secondly, social presence and cognitive presence only had a predictive power of group cohesion. Thirdly, cognitive presence and teaching presence were significant predictors of class satisfaction. Pedagogical implications are discussed for those interested in applying flipped learning in a fully online setting.

Caldecott medal winners have been recognized as best picture books, and they become one of the most predominantly selected literary works for children. Impacts they have on children’s emotional, social, and linguistic development are well-recognized in various areas such as literacy, literature, and sociology. As educational philosophies embedded in Caldecott medal winners may contribute to their ‘didactic’, sociocultural, and linguistic impacts, this study explores what educational philosophies are embodied in 85 Caldecott medal winners from 1938 to 2022. It classifies them in terms of five major educational philosophies (progressivism, essentialism, perennialism, existentialism, and postmodernism including multiculturalism, feminism, ecology, and metafictive devices). Finally, it traces their prevailing trends from the chronological order in which they are introduced. The findings of this study are as follows: 1) Some educational philosophies such as essentialism and multiculturalism have appeared most frequently while perennialism and progressivism are no longer prevalent modes presented in Caldecott winners; 2) The changes in overall chronological flows of educational philosophies are made from essentialism to postmodernism, especially promoting picture books of metafictive devices. This study assumes that using appropriate Caldecott winners that can meet children’s different educational needs would better result in their emotional, sociocultural, and linguistic development.

This article reports on an experimental study that investigated the effects of different conditions of listener backchannels on the fluency of L2 speakers. The participants were 15 advanced Chinese learners of Korean who performed oral tasks in three different backchannel conditions: (1) verbal + nonverbal (V+NV), (2) nonverbal-only (NV), and (3) no backchannels (NB). The verbal backchannels included “[ŋ~] (Non lexical verbal form)”, “[ne]”, “[ɑ]”, “[ɨm]” while the nonverbal backchannels involved head nodding. Fluency was assessed via three temporal measures: Rate A, Rate B and MLR. The data was statistically analyzed using SPSS 25 package. The results showed that 15 Chinese participants in the NV condition were more fluent than in the V+NV or NB conditions. However, no significant differences were found between the V+NV and NB conditions. These results suggest that nonverbal backchannels may facilitate the fluency of advanced Chinese learners of Korean during oral tasks depending on the nature of backchannel use in their L1 and sociocultural environments. The present research theoretically broadens the scope of both fluency and backchannel studies and provides valuable data and methods for empirical studies on backchannels to Korean.