Despite the ever-increasing use of English in international business encounters, there seems to be comparatively little attention given to the interface between actual workplace communication and language programs in terms of identifying and meeting learners' needs. To fill that void, the present study reports on the routine communicative practices in English of fifty-one Korean corporate employees. Insightful data from the so-called 'domain experts' who use English on a regular basis were obtained through an online survey with eight participants invited to a follow-up telephone interview. Based on the types of needs operationalized in the study, the findings imply that there indeed exist different dimensions of needs. The study indicates that transactional and non-transactional communicative genres were both important but to a different extent with each genre being assessed differently according to their profession. Lastly, implications regarding the importance of incorporating needs analysis as a key process that requires constant reexamination of language programs concerning workplace communication is discussed.

Amid the increasing popularity of task-based language teaching, task motivation is considered one of the keys to success, but motivational influence among learners has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of motivation contagion in language learning pair work. Specifically, it tests the hypothesis that motivation contagion in pairs occurs either by observing the motivational orientation of the partner (i.e., priming), or as a result of the perceived expectations of the learning task (i.e., expectancy formation). A total of 140 Japanese university students worked in pairs on a picture description task. The analysis of the post-task questionnaires indicated that motivation contagion occurred both by priming and expectancy formation, but the impact of the latter was more significant. It was also found that highly motivated learners were strongly affected by expectancies about the quality of task involvement and interpersonal relations, while less motivated learners were influenced more by their partners' motivation levels. Through the learners' retrospective accounts, we also found that mutually supportive attitudes and behaviors play an essential role in boosting motivation contagion. The findings provide pedagogical implications for designing dyadic activities that can help learners motivate each other.

The purpose of this study is to identify the perceptions of 30 Korean university students majoring in English on the use of the Korean Variety of English (KVE) as well as on a class activity that promotes its use. Designed within the framework of the English as an Intercultural Language (EIcL) paradigm (Green & Lee, 2018), which is supportive of the use of localized versions of English, the activity involved having participants re-write a story that uses inner circle English to a story that uses KVE. This activity was aimed at increasing students' awareness of KVE and raising issues related to its use in the context of World Englishes. The findings revealed that the participants demonstrated a substantial awareness of many lexical forms of KVE but had less awareness of grammatical features of KVE. Regarding the legitimacy and use of KVE, a variety of opinions were expressed by the participants but the majority had negative perceptions overall; however, most participants felt the use of KVE was appropriate in certain circumstances. The majority of participants had positive perceptions of the activity used for this study. The implications of the study for both EFL learners and educators are discussed.

This paper aims to lay the groundwork for better online lectures based on a survey given to students in general university English classes on their learning states and perceptions of online classes. The online classes were conducted as non-face-to-face recorded lectures at a university in Gyeonggi, Korea, during two consecutive semesters in 2020. Ninety learners were surveyed and the questionnaire consisted of 32 questions in three parts. The results showed that the places where learners took online classes and the methods they used were similar, but the time, frequency, duration and strategies used for classes varied. When asked about their perceptions of online learning, learners were generally satisfied with the learning hours set by the school, but pointed out the long hours required for assignments, the inability to communicate with classmates, the laziness of classmates, confusion due to various platforms being used, and other technical problems. The survey also showed that communication problems between instructors and learners have been solved to some extent, but communication problems between learners are still unresolved. The results imply that it is necessary to manage learners having a difficult time with self-directed learning due to a lack of concentration, since self-directed learning skills eventually lead to educational gaps between learners. Some implications for online classes are suggested.

The present study aims to explore the relationships among self-efficacy, motivation, and autonomous English learning for Chinese learners. Questionnaires were administered to collect data on self-efficacy, motivation, autonomous English learning, and the English proficiency of 1,605 university students from eight universities in southern and northern China. The participants were divided into groups according to their scores of autonomous English learning: low scores group (LSG), medium scores group (MSG), and high scores group (HSG). Descriptive statistics, oneway ANOVA, MANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results of the analyses showed that autonomous English learning was strongly correlated with both selfefficacy and motivation. Among the motivational components, L2 learning experience and ideal L2 self were more closely correlated to autonomous English learning. In addition, the results of regression analysis confirmed that self-efficacy, L2 learning experience, ideal L2 self, and integrativeness had positively predictive effects on autonomous English learning, and that autonomous English learning had a significant predictive power on the English proficiency of Chinese learners. Finally, some implications to effectively enhance autonomous English learning and the English proficiency of Chinese learners are provided and some suggestions for future research are given.

This study investigates the nature of L2 sentence processing mechanisms by examining whether or to what extent the sensitivity to prosody would affect the resolution of relative clause attachment ambiguity. The study examines how native speakers of a high attachment language would resolve the attachment ambiguity of their second language which has the opposite preference. Twelve Korean-speaking L2 learners of English and twelve native English speakers participated in a listening task to examine the effect of different types of prosodic information, such as prosodic boundary and focal prominence, along with a silent-reading task. The results showed that L2 learners' high attachment preferences in English were consistent in both tasks, but the focal prominence factor reinforced this preference in the listening task. The findings suggest that L2 learners' parsing routines generally followed their L1-specific high attachment, and this default preference was reinforced by convergent prosodic prominence and intonation contour. Emphasizing that L2 sensitivity to prosody reflects a specific modular organization, the study argues that an L1- induced default projection in processing of relative clause attachment can be enhanced or reduced by specific accentual patterns in L2 sentence processing, without the need to claim shallow processing of L2 learners.