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Spoken Texts in a High-Stakes EFL Test in Korea: Impact on High School English Teaching

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Abstract

The author worked as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher in a high school in South Korea for 15 years. During her career from 1996 to 2010 the Korean national curriculum was reformed five times. Central and regional governments emphasised communicative English use for each version, and funded various programmes such as English Villages where students could use English, Teaching English through English (TEE) for training English teachers, and English Program in Korea (EPIK) for hiring native English-speaking teachers in schools. However, she recalls that most of her English language teaching was test-oriented: vocabulary and grammar tests for lessons and mid-semester and final school tests, all targeting high scores in the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT English).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    NB: Both tests were administered in 2013 for Year 12 students. The items in the ‘Listening’ and ‘Indirect speaking’ tasks were provided with spoken texts; the others were given with written texts. The numbers indicate the percentage of items in each test.

  2. 2.

    NB: The instruction is translated: “Listen to the dialogue and choose the price the woman is going to pay”.

  3. 3.

    NB: The test instructions are translated: “Listen to the dialogue, and choose the best response of the male speaker to the female speaker’s last remark”.

  4. 4.

    NB: The test instruction is translated: “Listen to the dialogue, and choose the most proper response to the man’s last statement”.

  5. 5.

    NB: The test instruction is translated: “Listen to the dialogue, and choose the most proper main idea of what the two people are talking about”.

  6. 6.

    NB: The test instruction is translated: “Listen to the content about the sausage tree, and choose what is not true”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Jonghee Lee

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  1. Jonghee Lee
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts, University of Adelaide Faculty of Arts, Adelaide, Australia

    Peter Mickan

  2. University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Elise Lopez

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Lee, J. (2017). Spoken Texts in a High-Stakes EFL Test in Korea: Impact on High School English Teaching. In: Mickan, P., Lopez, E. (eds) Text-Based Research and Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59849-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59849-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59848-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59849-3

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