The purpose of current study was to examine whether the language medium of classroom instruction, English only or both English and Korean, has an effect on Korean college students' vocabulary learning, speaking ability and attitude. As the Korean Mini...
The purpose of current study was to examine whether the language medium of classroom instruction, English only or both English and Korean, has an effect on Korean college students' vocabulary learning, speaking ability and attitude. As the Korean Ministry of Education pursues the policy, 'Teaching English Through English (TETE)', many teachers and students are now expected to have classes taught only in English. As a result, there have been many studies on TETE, which investigated the effects of language variables on both instructors and learners in the classroom. However, in order to better understand the learning process of many students, supplementary in-depth examinations should be made from the learner's viewpoint. Therefore, current study focused on investigating the effects of classroom language on Korean college students, using variables of vocabulary learning, speaking ability, and attitude of English learners, who performed six different speaking tasks. Two groups, consisting of four college students, participated in this study. In order to promote learners' participation and elicitation, the current study was conducted within the small group setting. The tasks were designed to elicit students' utterances as much as possible in order to analyze learner's language and interaction abilities. The topic of each activity was closely related with college life. The participants were engaged in six sessions, each involving 30-minute speaking tasks. All the spoken language and interaction among teacher-student, student-student was audio-recorded, video-taped, and transcribed. The findings through this study were as follows:
First, the classroom language use did not have any statistical effect on vocabulary learning. Although the statistics results didn't show significant differences, the Experimental Group I, whose classroom language was controlled as English-only environment, scored better on the pretest, posttest and delayed test that was performed one week after the lesson. In consideration of proficiency levels, learners of lower proficiency showed greater improvements than learners of higher proficiency for both experimental groups.
Second, the results from the speaking tests indicated no statistical differences between the two experimental groups. However, while the Experimental Group I, which used English as a classroom language showed improvement after the lesson, Experimental Group II, which used English and Korean as a classroom language scored lower on the posttest than on the pretest. In addition, students with lower proficiency levels showed meaningful differences between pretest and posttest in fluency and complexity category of analytic scoring. These results are consistent with the vocabulary tests, whichi indicated the group using English as a classroom language showed better performance on speaking test as well. It is speculated that the result is due to the different language input and output among learners, since students in Experimental Group I engaged in the activities with various modifications of their English input, which indeed promoted language learning. Furthermore, while performing the speaking activities, students used 'negotiation of meaning' pattern. Among the 4 sub-categories of negotiation of meaning pattern, 'clarification request' was the most commonly practiced category. Also, students rarely used 'comprehension check' and 'recast' skills to communicate within the classroom environment, offering some meaningful suggestions for both teachers and learners: to promote more a meaningful interaction in a language classroom setting, teachers should guide students and provide exemplary models of interaction patterns, so that students can take advantage of different functions of the negotiation of meaning. Thus, students would eventually incorporate such patterns into their own language learning skills.
Lastly, through the questionnaire, students ed that rather than being exposed to the English and Korean mediums of instruction, they preferred to be in the English-only speaking environment to develop their communicative competence. Accordingly, in order to promote students communicative competence, the teacher's role in the classroom is critical, because the teacher presents the most of the input in the classroom. Based on this idea, through well-organized and stratified 'teacher talk', students will be able to improve their English language skills and gain meaningful classroom experiences. When learners communicate with each other, appropriate feedback and guidance from the teacher is a necessity in order to benefit numerous students who are in the EFL learning environment.
While there were many concerns regarding the application of TETE in the Korean-English education context, with learners' active participation and teachers' well-planned, structured lesson, both learners and teachers will ultimately benefit from TETE. Through learners' and teachers' active engagement, learners can improve their communicative competence and gain meaningful classroom experiences. Even though this study displayed several results and implications in the language classroom surroundings, further investigations are suggested involving a greater population, extended periods and different classroom settings.
，韩语论文，韩语毕业论文 |
