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This essay aims to analyze and critique Deborah Smith’s translation of Human Acts, written by Han Kang. In the novel, Kang embodies and harmonizes polyphonic and poetic voices of the souls of the dead as well as the living who suffered from trauma inflicted by atrocious military oppression during the 5.18 Gwangju Uprising. Smith is aware of the precariousness of the translation not only because Human Acts is full of poetic and untranslatable prose, but also because it deals with a historic moment in Korea about which there has been persistent contention and misinformation. Still, rather than going through the difficulties of faithfully translating the original, Smith decided to remove significant portions of the original and modified it by deleting sentences or translating differently from the original. Rather than merely criticizing Smith’s translation or analyzing it in light of translation studies, this essay philosophically probes into core issues of translation per se, utilizing Walter Benjamin’s ontological approach to translation and Jacque Derrida’s deconstruction of translation. In turn, this essay furthers its critique on the cultural and political connotation of Smith’s translations with examples.

In Christopher Nolan’s second feature film Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby is unable to make new memories, and everything fades after 10 minutes due to his mental condition, anterograde amnesia. Despite his memory loss, Leonard continues his search to find a past he cannot remember and his investigation to catch the criminal who raped and killed his wife. Although easily classified as a film noir, specifically amnesia-noir, Memento, unlike classical film noir, refuses to have a hero who finally finds his way back to a forgotten past where the truth is hidden, sets the hero free from a false charge, or restores him to his ordinary life. Focusing on flashbacks and photographs, this paper examines memory and past in Memento and explores several questions regarding the role of memory in the murder investigation, the nature of amnesia in the film, how flashbacks construct the past, and how photographs are used to represent the past. These questions lead us to see the uncertainty pervading the film. Memento no longer entertains the audience with an adventure of a hero who retrieves his memories and catches a criminal. Instead, flashbacks and photographs in Memento undermine the clear demarcation of genuine remembrance and false memory, and they present the past as obscure and the memory as unreliable. Most of all, the ambiguity in the film reveals the illusory aspect of a hero’s subjectivity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the current state of interactive AI chatbot development, focusing on ICT based new technology trends, and suggest ways of applying this chatbot technology to develop English education chatbots. First, this study explains the major principles of AI-based interactive chatbot development in recent years. Second, it also presents the basic structure of the AI-based chatbot system and its application of intelligent learning processes in English language education. In addition, with the development of future technologies, interactive AI chatbots can be expected to be used in many fields such as personal assistant service, interactive commerce, and the entertainment industry. Especially, the chatbot system is expected to enhance learners’ foreign language competence and motivation in language education settings.

This study explores the English scores of freshmen engineering colleges in two universities and the professors' and instructors' perceptions on transition of English ability of the students and the situation of English education after the change of English section of College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) from a norm-referenced to a criterion-referenced system. For this study, 10 participants took part in in-depth interviews through a focus group, and the data were analyzed through descriptive coding, which reiterated themes or issues that showed consistent or unique patterns. The key findings of this study are as follows. First, engineering students' English skills have declined after the introduction of absolute evaluation on the English section of the CSAT. Second, engineering students have a tendency to regard English as an insignificant subject. Finally, in regards to the entrance examination policy, rather than going back to using relative evaluation on the English section of the CSAT, it is necessary to absolutely evaluate all subjects and make the CSAT a minimum requirement.

Confronted with the entangled challenges of the looming demographic cliff and the global pandemic, higher institutions have been engulfed with crippling crisis and external threats. Against this backdrop, the current research endeavored to offer a new Metaverse paradigm for English education from needs-analysis and meta-analysis results for non-fungible highfliers in metaversity. A needs analysis was performed to identify the English learning needs of 442 college students with varying majors; a meta-analysis of 37 effect sizes from 9 studies was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of Metaverse-embedded English instruction. The meta-analysis results revealed that the overall effect size of Metaverse technology for English learning is was medium and positive (0.419; 95% CI: 0.264∼0.5741) with the Q-value of 583.091 and the Higgin’s I²-value of 93.826. The effectiveness of Metaverse technology in promoting cognitive attributes was highest (0.845), followed by affective (0.572) and linguistics (0.062). The needs analysis revealed that students are in need of studying employment-related English programs such as TOEIC, English for job interviews, presentations, and so on. From the findings, this research proposes a new English education paradigm to forge ahead in the 5th industrial revolution(5IR) era.

This study presents a systematic review of empirical research on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in English education published between 30 November 2022 and December 2024, covering 50 studies. The review identifies the predominant generative AI tools, their educational functions, and recent trends in their evolution. Results show that ChatGPT is overwhelmingly dominant, appearing in 56% of studies, yet 54% of them did not specify the model version, raising serious concerns regarding reproducibility. Reported functions include pronunciation analysis, interactive dialogue, vocabulary support, automated writing evaluation, idea generation, and machine translation, with applications supporting integrated language functions showing notably higher adoption rates. The findings further highlight the rapid advancement of AI capabilities, particularly in processing speed, accuracy, and multimodal functionality. These results underscore the necessity of detailed reporting on AI model versions and experimental conditions to ensure reproducibility and to establish standardized guidelines for AI-enhanced educational research.

This study examines the networks of power in a patriarchal capitalist society and resistance to it in Stef Smith’s Nora: A Doll’s House. The drama follows a tripartite structure in which the audience follows the trajectories of three different Noras from three eras: 1918, 1968, and 2018. The main focus of this paper is to contextualize the Noras’ suppression and resistance in the domestic and public spheres whilst exploring the psychiatric effects of resisting and the potential to overcome them. Nora: The Doll’s House shines a light on the absurdity of the hypocritical and impossible expectations and standards forced upon objectified women in a patriarchal society. This is refracted through the three waves of women’s emancipation in the last century: the suffragist movement in 1918, the peak of second wave feminism in 1968, and the #MeToo movement of 2018. The perennially objectified Nora struggles to act independently and find ways to resist the patriarchy. As a result of their resistance, the three Noras suffer from depression to various degrees. Their depression has different sources and manifestations, but the Noras are united in cause: familial conflict and societal inequalities. In order to reclaim their identities and overcome the trauma of resistance, the Noras require empathy from their families and those around them, not sympathy. Nora: A Doll’s House hammers home the point that- if women are to live fully, they must be liberated through radical reforms of law and legal institutions with the full support of a recalibrated familial sphere.

This study analyzes the meaning and emotions conveyed in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and visualizes the iceberg theory to understand them by utilizing network analysis. Network analysis enables multidimensional examination of the author’s emotions and values by considering the correlation between language expressions reflecting the author’s consciousness. First, the analysis showed the changes in the positive and negative aspects of emotion words according to the narrative structure by analyzing the frequency of emotion words and the frequency of emotion words that co-occur with the topic words. Second, UCINET was used to extract centrality, clustering, and network strength indicators, and the correlation between topic words and emotion words was quantified and visualized based on them. By tracking the changes in emotion words and their connections at each stage, it was possible to clearly confirm what emotions the author emphasized in what situations and how they influenced the overall story. Through specific numerical indicators provided by various indicators of the network, this study objectively quantified the correlation between topic words and emotion words, such as which emotion words are connected to the topic words and the strength of the connection. This quantitative linguistic and network analysis objectively proves how the author’s intention and message are reflected in language, and it also enabled observations of aspects that are difficult to perceive intuitively, highlighting the importance of these research methodologies in language studies.

This article discusses the significance and limitations of the studies concerning English language teaching (ELT) published in English 21 over the last 3 years (2017-2019) as an attempt to identify the current state and desirable directions of research. A total of 59 studies were post-hoc classified into three topic areas: (1) ELT methodology, (2) teachers, learners, and social contexts, and (3) materials, tools, and linguistic analyses of learner language. Evaluative comments were made not only on the internal and external validity of each study but on the overall contribution of recent efforts in the three broad areas. This review also takes account of the ideological and practical limitations of language teaching under the doctrinal guidelines of Communicative Language Teaching, and speculates that language learning in the next generation (and the teaching thereof) will be largely driven by and adjusted to personal needs rather than social ones. Finally, some suggestions for future research are drawn from the discussion.

This study aims to examine the effects of reading literary works in high school English classes. Based on the study results, some suggestions are made for designing and implementing the elective course, Reading English Literature, in the reformed curriculum for general high schools. A total of 131 students participated in a program course in which they read literary works of their choice in English and carried out follow-up classroom activities. Their perceptions and attitudinal changes were assessed through questionnaires, interviews, and performance observations. The results indicate that reading English literature in the classroom significantly improved students’ attitudes towards English learning. The vast majority of students said they would be willing to take a similar course in the future. Among the opinions of the teacher and students, three are particularly noteworthy: First, more individualized procedures are necessary to promote unmotivated students’ participation in classroom activities. Second, the advantages and limitations of using literature for language teaching can be further clarified by examining the relationship between students’ cognitive and affective involvement in the books they read and their language attainment. Third, individual differences in language aptitude, prior learning experience, proficiency, and learning style appear to modulate the effectiveness of literature-based language teaching to a large extent.