This study aims to examine if a student’s major field of study is a potential factor that gives rise to differential item functioning in college-level English reading comprehension tests. To this end, a test battery composed of 15 item types used widely in standardized English proficiency tests was constructed and implemented to 129 college students in arts-humanities disciplines and 80 in science-engineering disciplines. Data were analyzed on the basis of the Mantel-Haenszel method, IRT likelyhoodratio tests, and item characteristic curves. The results show that the items intended to assess the ability to find specific information in a given passage are relatively easier to science-engineering students, whereas arts-humanities students seem to be advantageous with the items associated with discourse cohesion, implied meaning, and inference of an argumentative thesis. These indicate that certain types of items in English reading comprehension tests may function differentially according to the test takers’ cognitive traits cultivated through years of study in a particular discipline. This in turn makes it the case that teachers can predict the item types that may cause special difficulty to the students whose learning style and experience are not in accord with the ability to be measured, and thereby can guide them in a more informed way. (Chonnam National University)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the essential value of life through protagonist, Nora in The Shadow of the Glen. J.M. Synge stages the people he met on the roads, the stories he heard from them, and the Aran Islands he visited. The Shadow of the Glen is his first attempt to reflect every aspect of life that happened in the Aran Islands. Synge describes conflicts of Dan and Nora who live in secluded glen. Nora is a lonely woman maintaining loveless marriage under the repression of her husband. However, she starts her journey with Tramp for pursuing her own free, communication, and communion. Nora’s husband, Dan, does not try to understand his wife. Of course, he cannot understand Nora because he is full of prejudice. Also, Dan and Michael are similar characters in that they are enslaved by materialism. On the other hand, Tramp is a character who recognizes the abundance of nature and enjoys the richness of an emotional life. His attitude and recognition toward nature make Nora to follow him facing the danger of wandering. Nora tries to achieve the brisk life by escaping from material security offered by her husband in this work. In conclusion Nora overcomes her sufferings and succeeds in the pursuit of the rich and romantic life. (Anyang University)

Letter to Maria Gisborne is a verse letter to Shelley’s friend, Maria Gisborne, who was visiting London in the summer of 1820. Letter to Maria Gisborne is most memorable for its descriptions of the literary figures the Gisbornes will encounter in England. They are William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hogg, Thomas Peacock and Horace Smith. They are not only Shelley’s best friends but also intellectual people who were influential in forming his political views and poetic insight. With his own philosophical and poetic thoughts, Shelley can correctly face corrupt situations of politics and society. For Shelley, the corrupt unjust world acts as a source of poetic creativity as well as an active transformative process for reformation. Therefore, Shelley transforms those venal situations into the source of his poems, so poets who are isolated from society because of opposite attitude from the dominant value of the period and received unjust evaluation from critics can find strong dynamic power from oppressed reality and show the people future possibility for a better humankind. (Hannam University)

This paper aims to examine Doris Lessing``s utopian vision in her The Memoirs of a Survivor. The narrator of the story, a middle aged woman, goes and comes through an ‘opening wall,’ and because of this ‘opening wall’ device, The Memoirs of a Survivor can be considered as fantasy or science fiction(SF) writing. In a fantastic world, the narrator with Emily who pops up without any notice goes through the “it,” which causes much fear and anxiety because of its ambiguity and threat of unexplained imminent catastrophe and foreboding. Emily, as a double of the narrator, reveals the problems of the mother and daughter relationship, in particular, the mother’s rearing and caring of the children. On the other hand, in a world of SF, the narrator shows the destructive aspects of the underworld children who just survive on their own in an anarchic or dystopian city. Lessing tries to solve the personal and impersonal matters by creating her own utopia towards which all the characters move using the ``opening wall``. Like this, by mixing fantasy and SF in The Memoirs of a Survivor, Lessing suggests we all can save each other through our forgiveness and reconciliation. (Konkuk University)

This thesis is a conjecture on some of the common themes of interest that Beckett must have found in Wittgenstein. Rather than raise Wittgenstein’s philosophy as yet another ‘theory’ to read Beckett’s work, it is more of an attempt at materializing some of the common themes of understanding between the two writers. The problem lies in the resistance against the metalanguage in Beckett’s work, but more seriously with the resistance of Wittgenstein’s philosophy against any attempt at theorizing. For Wittgenstein, philosophy was not a body of doctrine but an “activity”. The most common theme that unites the two writers can be summarized as the ‘limits of language’. This is the theme of the early work of Wittgenstein, and for Beckett, the theme runs through his entire oeuvre. The limits of language discussed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is the disparity between what can be said and what cannot be said. For Wittgenstein, the limits of language is tantamount to the limits of the world, thinking and meaning and the process of delineating the limits inherently involves the paradoxical process of thinking about the unthinkable. Such an examination of the limits is also one of the key themes in Beckett’s work. The space in Beckett’s plays calls for not simply a choice between either the inside or the outside of the limits but an annotation upon the contradictory relationship between the inside and the outside. The thesis will concentrate on the shared interest of the two writers on the issue of ‘contradiction’ or ‘contradictory forms’ within the context of the limits of language. (Hongik University)

This study focuses on the violence in The Love of Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It examines two generally recognized premises on violence: inevitability and impulsiveness. It also reveals their fallacies and seeks the solution. This work shows violent scenes, which are designed to lead to the height of the conflict. Violence in the work is the main axis of the conflict or the conflict-solving element. But she uses the theatrical strategies of witnessing and questioning, which keep audience from being absorbed in the violence. The former makes the audience watch the process, the action and the result of violence, and testify them. Many pauses are inserted in the scenes for the purpose of giving the audience time to ponder about the violence. Witnessing causes audience to realize that violence can produce an innocent victim and the audience themselves can be involved in it. The Latter leads them to question themselves and reconsider which violence can be justified and what can justify it even if the violence happens impulsively. (Chosun University)

This paper is aimed at examining Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk, having been largely regarded as fiction satirizing consumer capitalism, from the perspective of self-actualization and self-healing that could help create a new healthy personality by integrating the persona and the shadow. The anonymous narrator, a yuppie persona, represents the submissive ordinary man emasculated by late capitalism. He creates his opposite character.a violent anarchist Tyler Durden. unconsciously to realize the typical masculinity idealized by modern culture. The two characters organize a fighting club, and then build a violent program called “Mayhem Project” to destroy modern society built on the idea of consumerism. In the process of carrying out the project, the narrator recognizes the reality of masculinity distorted by culture. He makes a bold decision to get rid of Tyler, his shadow character. With this resoluteness, he evolves into a new character. He integrates the characteristics of Tyler with his own. This story revolves around a man who cannot trust himself because of distorted modern culture, he realizes the opposite value instead, finds out the defect of mass media-produced masculinity and gets rid of it to integrate his broken identities. He heals himself of this modern cultural illness and grows up to develop his new identity. (Sungkyunkwan University)

The purpose of this study is to provide a rationale for utilizing Jigsaw cooperative learning for English reading classrooms in general education of university. Two research questions are addressed in this study: (1) How can the Jigsaw model-based cooperative learning be applied in the English reading classroom? (2) How are the learners`` reactions of the model class? For this goal, I examined the process of creating and implementing Jigsaw cooperative learning in the classroom and gave examples of how this teaching and learning strategy can be successfully used in the class. Along with the questionnaire for the evaluation of Jigsaw learning-based class conducted to 48 students, the interviews with 12 students were carried out. The results showed that Jigsaw model-based cooperative learning allowed learners to have more chances of communicating with class members, and to feel confident to be involved in the class actively. Finally the study suggests the importance of the professor``s role as a monitor or a guide should be emphasized in order to effectively activate reading classrooms. (Namseoul University)

The purpose of this research is to explore how pre-service teachers develop reading test items. The current research aims 1) to evaluate the quality of the reading item with reference to item assessment rubric, 2) to explore which type of item is difficult to item writers, and 3) the pre-service teachers`` perception on their item writing and development. For research question 1, 18 pre-service teachers participated in the reading item development. For research question 2 and 3, 51 subjects made their responses on the survey and six students took part in the interview. The results suggested that item writers, pre-service teachers, received relatively low score in terms of the quality of "fill-in-the-blank" item. This result was buttressed by the survey results, which showed that respondents as item writers marked "fill-in-the-blank" item as the most difficult one. Finally, the pre-service teachers reported that even though lack of English reading competence is a barrier to be an expert item writer, item writing practice helps pre-service teachers gain confidence as a item writer. (Chung-Ang University)

Reading fluency in English is an important variable in reading comprehension. Therefore some studies have been addressed familiar questions regarding reading fluency in English. Yet there have been no systematic compilations of research literature. The purpose of this study is to review and synthesize the studies in the field of English reading fluency during last 7 years and to present a direction for the future research. Twenty-five research studies from the Research Information Sharing Service(RISS) were selected and synthesized in terms of subjects and research methods. 54% of the studies focused on elementary school students and above 50% of the studies were experimental research. Based on these results, suggestions were made for the future research on English reading fluency. (Chungnam National University)