There has been a gradual change in Korean English curricula and education systems over recent decades to enhance the ability to communicate in English confidently in an increasingly globalized society. The Korean government has been initiating new policies in English curricula to improve the quality of English education in state schools;…

Reflective practice can support student learning by enabling praxis: the bridging of the theory of the classroom with the students' learning experience. Students' written reflections are the most common mode for practising and documenting reflection. Available typologies for coding the level of student written reflections focus on the cognitive…

The Cognition Hypothesis postulates that more cognitively complex tasks can trigger more accurate and complex language production, thereby advancing second language (L2) development. However, few studies have directly examined the relationship between task manipulations and L2 development. To address this gap, this article reviews, via an analytic…

The present study examines the effects of schema activation and reading strategy use on L2 learners' reading comprehension, strategy use, motivation, and learner beliefs. The participants consisted of 89 Korean college students, and they were assigned to one of two reading activity groups--schema building or reading strategy instruction--or to a…

This study utilises the 'small story' approach to investigate metaphor in mobile students' narratives of intercultural experience. Metaphor in narrative is seen as a dynamic, discursive, and sociocognitive phenomenon. The narrative accounts presented in this paper derive from interviews conducted for mobility project evaluation. The participants…

As research evidence for the facilitative effects of reading strategies on reading comprehension has been accumulating, research and pedagogical interests in prereading strategies such as prediction and schema[superscript activation] are increasing. Yet, little research evidence of how actual performance on such tasks may be related to reading…

This study was designed to explore the effects of different geographical background contexts and signalling for information about global warming on comprehension, recall and cognitive load. Two different geographical contexts, US and Korean, were employed to frame explanations of global warming phenomena to US students. Two signalling conditions…

This study investigated whether task complexity may affect L2 speaking performance as predicted by the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2011), and whether the effect of task complexity may interact with individual differences in working memory capacity. A total of twenty Korean advanced-level EFL learners performed two separate picture description…

Building on the cognitive and interactive perspectives of task research, the cognition hypothesis states that increasing task complexity promotes greater interaction and feedback and thus facilitates second language (L2) development (Robinson, 2001b, 2007a). To date, very little research has explored this claim during learner-learner interactions…

This review explores Ben-Zvi Assaraf, Eshach, Orion, and Alamour's paper titled "Cultural Differences and Students' Spontaneous Models of the Water Cycle: A Case Study of Jewish and Bedouin Children in Israel" by examining how the authors use the concept of spontaneous mental models to explain cultural knowledge source of Bedouin…

Earlier research has shown that cultural schemata affect readers' comprehension from an expository text (e.g., Carrell, 1984, 1987; Swales, 1990). Previous research also suggested that there are shared features of well-designed text across cultures (Chambliss & Calfee, 1998) and that reader characteristics like background knowledge affect text…

As aging is occurring at a rate never before seen in South Korea, the present study examines the predictors of mental health in a nationally representative sample of older adults (n = 4,155), drawn from Wave I of the Korean Longitudinal Study on Aging. Findings show that sociodemographic factors, chronic health conditions, level of cognition, and…

In two experiments, five year olds produced more instances in slot-filler categories than taxonomic categories, and eight year olds produced more instances in taxonomic categories than slot-filler categories; for five year olds, slot-filler categories led to superior recall and shorter response latencies than did taxonomic categories. (BB)

Summarizes recent works addressing intercultural education in Italian schools; curriculum change via schema development; the IEA Preprimary Project; an ethnolinguistic study of 3-year-olds; community service delivery in Australia; Thai child-rearing practices; Korean kindergarten curriculum; a story-telling study in Spain; Effective Early Learning…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…