The Study of Modal Verb in L2 Learners' Writing: Focusing on Certainty/Uncertainty

고성란 한국영어어문교육학회 2020 영어어문교육 Vol.26 No.1

This study attempts to explore the occurrence and the use of modal verbs which is a challenge for L2 learners for its various functions in English writing. Thus, this study examines whether the students are correctly aware of the modal verbs and can write their meanings, especially will and would expressing certainty. For methodology, this research begins with a test of Korean L2 learners to identify their knowledge of the modal verbs. Then they are asked to write their life goals using the modal verbs. Finally, their corpus will be examined and analyzed focusing on the frequency and accuracy of modal verbs. The results show that although Korean L2 learners were able to choose the correct answer on their multiple choices, they have difficulty applying it in their writing, especially will and would with a certainty meaning. These findings cast a light in terms of the pedagogical implications. It is suggested that Korean education should focus on productive learning such as writing and speaking rather than receptive learning such as reading and listening in studying English. Consequently, L2 learners will be able to write English more precisely and verbalize their ideas more fluently.

Responsive Learning Environment in the Gifted and Talented Classroom

고성란 한국청소년시설환경학회 2012 청소년시설환경 Vol.10 No.4

"Responsive Learning Environment in the Gifted and Talented Classroom". 22.2 (2012) Adaptive and responsive classroom environments play a profound role in learning outcomes of general education students, let alone gifted and talented education students (GATE). Gifted students have pronounced individuality and educators must plan for their unique educational needs. This study is based on survey responses from GATE class teachers in the U.S. Based on their judgment, four suggestions are made. One is the Responsive Learning Environment Model (RLEM), which means that the physical learning environment is the foundation of all learning environments. The other is that students' seating arrangements are an important element of the physical learning environment and should be changed on a regular basis in the GATE classroom. Another is to integrate school curriculum with technology based on its pedagogic effectiveness. The last is to provide cooperative learning experiences for the gifted students.

An Analysis of English Vocabulary Based on Corpora From the Korean and American Versions of The Good Doctor

고성란 영상영어교육학회 2018 영상영어교육 (STEM journal) Vol.19 No.4

The popular Korean drama Good Doctor (Ki & Kim, 2013) was adapted and remade in the US and broadcast from September, 2018 by ABC as The Good Doctor (Daly, 2018). Consequently, the role of subtitling also plays an important part among a variety of countries with different cultures and languages. This paper concentrates on a comparison and analysis of the subtitles for both the American The Good Doctor and the Korean Good Doctor, aiming to identify the lexical differences and frequency of English words, phrases and sentences in both. First, the lexical differences and occurrences of expressions in English open class word groups are analyzed according to a text analyzer and parts-of-speech tagger (POS tagger). Next, they are divided into three phrase groups - noun phrases, verb phrases, and prepositional phrases, which are compared and analyzed. The data is then divided into seven categories according the Bhagat and Hovy’s (2013) 25 classes. This study shows that even though the number of characters, syllables, words, and sentences in the Korean Good Doctor (KG) is higher than that of the American The Good Doctor (AG), the lexical density in AG is higher than that of KG. This implies that AG uses more vocabulary variety and less vocabulary repetition.

An Analysis of ChatGPT’s Language Translation Based on the Korean Film Minari

고성란 영상영어교육학회 2023 영상영어교육 (STEM journal) Vol.24 No.4

The emergence of ChatGPT as an AI chatbot has marked significant progress in multiple-language translation. However, concerns persist regarding its capability to precisely translate various languages. This research aims to find a more effective method for improving the quality of Korean-to-English translation by using ChatGPT for EFL learners. To achieve this, EFL learners were asked to make questionnaires to assess the overall awareness and understanding of ChatGPT among their peers. Subsequently, they were instructed to select among Korean-to-English translations generated by ChatGPT and Korean-to-English translations done by human translators, providing reasons for their choices. The script of the film Minari (Lee, 2021) was collected and ChatGPT was used to translate it from Korean to English. These translations, both by the human translator and ChatGPT, were manually evaluated and a comparative analysis of the two translations was conducted. Finally, any errors in ChatGPT’s Korean-to-English translations were addressed by providing additional prompts to achieve the best possible translations. The result showed that overall translations were significantly enhanced by the prompts and demonstrated accuracy in translation. This finding demonstrates that EFL learners should make the most use of ChatGPT as a language learning and translation tool to improve their language communication skills.

An Analysis of Lexical Differences and Errors in the Subtitling of a Korean Historical Drama, Jang Ok Jung

고성란 영상영어교육학회 2016 영상영어교육 (STEM journal) Vol.17 No.4

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the necessity of academic fundamentals in the subtitling translation of the on-demand service through comparison and analysis of the lexical differences between the subtitles of the Korean historical drama, Jang Ok Jung, running on two Internet websites in the U.S. With easier access to the Internet, watching dramas and movies through an on-demand server has rapidly become popular all over the world. The role of subtitling also plays an important part among a variety of countries with different cultures and languages. Even so, the academic arena has ignored the accompanying translation field. Consequently, subtitle mistranslations often appear on the screen and the lexical choices have lacked consistency. This causes the viewer confusion and misapprehension. Translators for Korean historical dramas, or Sakuk, in particular, have a lot of difficulty in translating words that have nonequivalence in other languages. The data were classified into two main groups: Consistent Translation (CT) and Inconsistent Translation (IT). CT is the group having the same meaning, while IT is the group having different interpretations between the two websites despite having the same Korean dialogues. CT categorizes three subgroups of Synonym, Paraphrase, and Condensation while IT categorizes two subgroups of Semantic Change (SC) and Inappropriate Lexical Choice (ILC).

A Comparative Error Analysis of Neural Machine Translation Output: Based on Film Corpus

고성란 대한언어학회 2022 언어학 Vol.30 No.1

This study aims to analyze translation from Korean to English in three mainstream machine translation (MT) systems in Korea and to classify the major error problems of the MT systems. To do this, first, the Korean script of the film Minari (2021) was collected and translated by three major machine translators (Google Translate, Papago, and Kakao i). Then, the translation output of the three mainstream online translation systems was manually evaluated by humans. Next, MT errors in Korean to English were classified into four categories: missing words, word order, incorrect words, and unknown words. The ‘incorrect words’ were subcategorized into ‘sense’, ‘incorrect form’, and ‘extra words’. The most frequent type of incorrect word error was ‘incorrect disambiguation (subject)’ and ‘wrong lexical choice’ in terms of ‘sense’. Based on these findings, some suggestions are to use more developed machine translation for both MT system developers and Korean English as a Foreign Language(EFL) learners. This study sheds light on the quality of current MT systems based on the error analysis of this data and offers EFL learners insights into using MT systems better.

Interrogative Questions (IQs) and Rhetorical Questions (RQs) in English and Korean

고성란 한국중앙영어영문학회 2012 영어영문학연구 Vol.54 No.4

English rhetorical wh-questions (RQs) have been broadly researched. These RQs have been regarded as negative statements (Sadock 1971). However, they have the same syntactic behavior as interrogative questions (IQs) with respect to wh-movement. In this paper, some traits of wh-movement in rhetorical and interrogative questions in English are noted which are focus on the wh-feature and the probe-goal system. Then, some similarities between wh-word IQs and RQs in English are presented as follows: IQs and RQs in the answering function, IQs and RQs with multiple wh-words, Embedded RQs, and the Island effect in IQs and RQs. Sprouse (2007) proposes three syntactic observations about RQs in some languages and their consequences for theories of wh-movement. However, his proposal bears two problems on the validity of the analysis in relation to Korean RQs. I point out the problems in two aspects of Sprouse’s (2007) analysis in view of Korean: Island Effect (IE) and Principle of Minimal Compliance effects (PMC). Lastly, based on the analyses, I suggest that, similarly to Choi’s (2002) proposal, that wh-phrases in Korean RQs are wh-in-situ the same as the wh-phrases in Korean IQs. They do not move overtly for wh-feature checking, do not undergo LF-movement and do not move at any level of grammar. For this, two supporting reasons are presented: unselective binding and no island effect. Consequently, I conclude that wh-constructions in Korean IQs and RQs have syntactically similar structures in spite of the negative meanings of RQs.

Subjacency and ECP in LF wh-movement

고성란 현대영미어문학회 2005 현대영미어문학 Vol.23 No.1

According to Huang, there is an asymmetry between overt syntactic movement and covert LF movement of wh-expressions with respect to Subjacency and ECP. In overt syntax, both Subjacency and ECP apply, but at LF, only ECP applies. But Nishigauchi (1986, 1990) argue there is no independent motivation for assuming that LF is not constrained by Subjacency, suggesting LF pied-piped. Attractive as it may appear, however, Nishigauchi's pied-piping analysis runs into many problems and I show LF pied-piped problems and argue the case in Hindi that Subjacency applies LF. In the minimalist version of Chomsky, Huang's analysis has many problem. This paper argues the problems of Huang's Subjacency and ECP analyses and treats wh-movement as an instance of Quantifier raising. And then, I show that Huang's proposal encounters problem in accounting for Korean.

φ-features and Discourse-agreement features

고성란 대한영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학연구 Vol.39 No.2

Agreement is one of the most familiar and well-studied parts of grammar. Many languages have distinct patterns depending on a range of language families. In general, some languages have been identified as an agreement-based language, whereas others are discourse-configurational languages. Miyagawa (2005) has categorized languages as agreement or focus prominent, depending on the type of grammatical features (discourse or agreement) they allow to inherit from C to T. Some languages have been identified as agreement-based languages, highlighting agreement markings such as in English. On the other hand, other languages are discourse-configurational languages, emphasizing on discourse functions such as in Japanese. Miyagawa (2010) argues that in agreement languages, the φ-probe triggers movement at T, whereas in discourse-configurational languages, topic/focus triggers movement at T. The φ-feature agreement and topic/focus are computationally equivalent in narrow syntax. Miyagawa (2010) claims that Korean is considered as a discourse-configurational language. However, in this paper, I claim that there is a third category which has both agreement and discourse features and that Korean is an example of this type of language. To support this, I analyze Korean as a discourse-prominent language by using Miyagawa's (2010) proposal. The analyses are based on the following: Subject agreement, Inheritance of topic/focus features from C to T, and Pro-drop. At the same time, I suggest that Korean is also an agreement-prominent language through imperatives and promissives, honorification, and the blocking effect. My analyses justify my theory of combination languages which are based on both agreement features and discourse features.

The Impact of Captions and Subtitles in Film on the Listening Comprehension and Oral Communication of EFL Students

고성란 영상영어교육학회 2013 영상영어교육 (STEM journal) Vol.14 No.1

Visual multimedia is believed for many years to be a great enhancement for teaching EFL classes, and the combination of both image and sound significantly helps in the achievement of the pedagogical goals of reading, writing, listening, and speaking English. The impact of captions and subtitles has been discussed for years, and many researchers have found them to be effective. Even so, agreement on them has not yet been attained. Some researchers claim that the use of captions and subtitles in film for the EFL classroom is better than presenting films without them. In contrast, others argue that non-captioned films are more beneficial than captioned ones in the EFL classroom. The purpose of this paper is to analyze, through in-depth study, whether the impact of using captions and subtitles in film is positive, or not, and to find ways to improve listening comprehension through film captioning and oral communication skill through subtitles. It is suggested that keyword captioning according to the level of proficiency and the order of caption use contribute to listening skill improvement, while reversed subtitling on TV improves oral skill. Furthermore, the need for cultural translation of subtitles is suggested