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Thoughtful writing from across the Asia-Pacific

Discover original stories, interviews, reviews, reflections, and reports about language, culture, education, and everyday life across the Asia-Pacific.

APALCE Voices (ISSN: 3140-4502) brings together the perspectives of young contributors, university students, educators, researchers, and community members. Every published article has been reviewed for relevance, clarity, accuracy, authorship, and responsible communication.

[YOUNG VOICES]

Korean Food: A Shared Adventure
Article · Open Access · Received: 28 July 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 30 July 2026 / Accepted: 1 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.10

So Ho Jung
Elementary Student, Incheon Eunsong Elementary School, 460 Central-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22019, South Korea.

Copyright 2026 APALCE Voices This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Jung, S. H. (2026). Korean food: A shared adventure. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.10.

Summary

From a child’s perspective, Korean food is presented as a communal experience shaped by varied flavours, family memories, and cultural traditions. The essay challenges the stereotype that Korean cuisine is always spicy, highlights a grandmother’s kimchijeon, and suggests that shared meals offer the most meaningful introduction.

Keywords

Korean cuisine; communal dining; kimchijeon; family traditions; cultural identity

As a fifth-grade student in Korea, I see Korean food as more than something we eat; it is something we share. A Korean meal often comes with rice, soup, and several small side dishes called banchan. Everyone reaches towards the middle of the table, so mealtimes can feel rather democratic—until the last piece of something delicious appears.

Having lived in the UK, I know that some people imagine Korean food as a collection of very spicy dishes. It is true that chilli and kimchi are important, but Korean food has many gentler flavours too. Bulgogi is sweet and savoury, japchae is pleasantly chewy, and gimbap is easy to enjoy almost anywhere. There is usually a good starting point, even for someone who treats chilli like a fire alarm.

My favourite dish is my grandmother’s kimchi pancake, or kimchijeon. She mixes chopped kimchi into batter and fries it until the edges turn crisp while the centre remains soft. The smell travels through the house long before the pancake reaches the table. My younger brother and I may pretend to be patient, but the crispiest pieces rarely survive for long.

Korean food also carries stories. Kimchi shows how people preserved vegetables through winter, while foods such as tteokguk and songpyeon connect meals with holidays and family memories. The best introduction to Korean food, therefore, is not a list of names. It is a shared table, an open mind, and perhaps a spare pair of chopsticks.

References

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2024). Kimchi. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 15 July 2026, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/kimchi.

[CAMPUS VOICES]

Should Decisions on Generative AI Misconduct Be Left to Individual Professors?
Article · Open Access · Received: 1 August 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 2 August 2026 / Accepted: 3 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.18

Chae Kwan Jung
Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22012, South Korea.

Jung, C. K. (2026). Should decisions on generative AI misconduct be left to individual professors?. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.18.

Summary

This article argues that decisions about generative AI misconduct should not rest solely with individual professors. Because legitimate assistance and academic dishonesty are difficult to distinguish, universities need clear, discipline-sensitive rules, transparent investigative and appeals procedures, and institutional support for faculty. AI-detection tools should serve only as supplementary evidence, not definitive proof. The article also recommends process-based assessment—including proposals, drafts, revisions, and oral explanations—to make students’ authorship and learning visible. Ultimately, trustworthy AI governance must protect students’ rights, distribute responsibility fairly, and enable instructors to make consistent, evidence-based judgements.

Keywords

Generative AI; Academic Integrity; Institutional Governance; Process-Based Assessment; Faculty Responsibility

For parents of primary-school children, generative AI evokes both hope and unease. It can widen access to knowledge, but wholesale delegation of homework and writing may erode independent thought and learning through error. Current uncertainty in university classrooms foreshadows challenges our children may soon face. Schools should therefore uphold a clear principle: students may receive assistance, but they must be able to explain their own thinking.

On 7 January 2026, Seoul National University adopted guidelines promoting responsible AI use through autonomy and trust rather than blanket prohibition. Yet fair assessment requires workable standards and procedures for distinguishing legitimate assistance from misconduct.

A case reported on 30 July 2026 illustrates the difficulty. In one computer science course, 36 of 62 students were found to have used AI for an assignment. Those who disclosed it voluntarily received zero, while students identified later received penalties including a D-minus. The student council questioned the criteria; the professor stated that all penalised students had admitted using AI.

Responsibility cannot be assigned to students or professors alone. Having AI produce prohibited work violates academic integrity. Yet voluntary disclosure loses credibility if honesty attracts punishment while concealment may avoid detection. Trust is weakened when serious penalties depend on an instructor’s suspicion and a student’s admission. Universities demanding honesty must ensure consistent procedures for everyone.

Crucially, AI use and academic misconduct are not synonymous. Refining search terms or checking wording differs fundamentally from outsourcing an assignment’s argument, evidence, and expression. Acceptable use varies across disciplines and learning outcomes. These distinctions must be established before difficulties arise, not retrospectively when sanctions are considered.

I encountered a similar difficulty while supervising an undergraduate thesis. A student submitted a highly polished manuscript before supervision had begun, yet struggled to explain the research process, data selection, and central argument. Later drafts remained difficult to verify. This raised questions of authorship, but polished prose or an unfamiliar style cannot, by itself, establish AI misconduct. Suspicion is not sufficient evidence.

AI-detection tools offer no definitive solution. Incheon National University’s guidelines recommend treating detection results only as supporting evidence. If universities require professors to penalise misconduct without standards of proof, investigative procedures, evidence-retention rules, and appeal mechanisms, institutional responsibility is transferred to individuals. This burden is considerable for full-time faculty and more troubling for lecturers with less secure employment and limited support.

Universities should define acceptable AI use for each course and assignment—for example, permitting brainstorming and language correction while prohibiting AI-generated central claims or drafts. Students should disclose the tool, purpose, and extent of use, and be able to explain and defend their work.

Suspected violations should not be adjudicated by the instructor alone. Professors may document circumstances and review the student’s learning process, but sanctions should be examined by the department and university administration. Students need notice, an opportunity to respond, and transparent appeals; faculty need clear guidance, standard records, evidence-management rules, and legal and administrative support.

Assessment must move beyond a finished product. Proposals, outlines, source reviews, drafts, revisions, and oral explanations can reveal how students develop their work. Yet process-based assessment requires manageable class sizes, teaching assistance, and recognition of faculty workload.

AI guidelines should not merely increase detection and punishment. Their purpose should be to create conditions in which students can learn honestly and professors can judge fairly. Universities must establish credible standards, procedures, and support before placing responsibility for judgement and sanction on individual professors. Building a system that students and staff can trust is among higher education’s most urgent tasks in the age of AI.

References

Jung, C. K. (2026). Why English Education Unsettles Gangnam Mothers: What Leading Scholars Say About Effective Early English Education. BOOKK.

[CAMPUS VOICES]

Different Doorways into English
Article · Open Access · Received: 26 July 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 30 July 2026 / Accepted: 1 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.4

Bo Min Kim
Graduate Student, Major in Early Childhood Education, Graduate School of Education, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22012, South Korea.

Kim, B. M. (2026). Different Doorways into English. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.14.

Summary

This reflective essay contrasts two siblings’ differing relationships with English reading. Soho’s sustained engagement with Harry Potter has strengthened both her enjoyment and linguistic confidence, while Mooho remains reluctant to choose English books despite his growing willingness to speak. Their mother, a graduate student in early childhood education, considers whether these differences reflect aptitude, interest, or access to suitable texts. She concludes that comparison is unhelpful and that meaningful support requires varied, low-pressure opportunities tailored to each child’s interests. Waiting thus becomes an active practice of respecting individual pace while nurturing curiosity and confidence.

Keywords

English reading; individual learner differences; intrinsic motivation; parental support; child-centred learning

In the evenings, Soho settles into one corner of the sofa and opens a Harry Potter book. She has read the series many times, yet she still becomes absorbed as though entering the story for the first time. At times, she reads a favourite sentence aloud; at others, she returns to a familiar scene and remains there for a while. For Soho, now in the fifth grade, reading in English is not primarily an academic exercise. It is a doorway into a world she values and enjoys.

Soho has been drawn to English books from an early age. Through sustained engagement with stories, she has encountered vocabulary and sentence structures in meaningful contexts and gradually developed confidence in speaking and thinking in English. It is now difficult to determine whether she enjoys English books because she is linguistically able, or whether her ability has developed because she has read so widely and enthusiastically. More plausibly, the relationship is reciprocal: enjoyment has encouraged continued reading, while growing competence has made reading increasingly rewarding.

Mooho, who is in the third grade, has followed a rather different path. He rarely chooses an English book for himself. When his older sister used to speak to him in English, he generally preferred to respond in Korean. More recently, he has begun to show greater confidence and will sometimes continue a brief conversation in English. This is an encouraging change. Even so, he seldom settles down with an English book of his own accord. When I suggest one, he may turn a few pages before closing it and directing his attention elsewhere.

As their mother, I find the contrast between the two children difficult to interpret. It is tempting to assume that Soho possesses a particular aptitude for languages and that her enjoyment of reading is an expression of that ability. The same comparison can lead me to wonder whether Mooho has less linguistic aptitude or simply less interest in English. As a graduate student in early childhood education, I understand that children develop at different rates and engage with learning in different ways. Yet knowledge acquired through study does not always quiet the concerns that arise in parenting. When I realise that I am measuring Mooho against his sister, I am left with an uncomfortable sense that the comparison may be neither fair nor educationally helpful.

A different possibility emerges when I consider what Harry Potter has meant to Soho. She did not merely encounter a series of books written in English; she discovered a fictional world that captured her imagination. Her desire to know what happened next encouraged her to continue reading, while her attachment to particular characters and scenes drew her back to the books repeatedly. English, in this context, was not simply the object of learning. It was the medium through which she gained access to something she already cared about.

Seen from this perspective, Mooho may not be a child who dislikes reading in English. He may simply not yet have encountered a book that speaks to his interests strongly enough to make the effort of reading worthwhile. This distinction matters. A reluctance to engage with a particular set of books should not be interpreted too quickly as a lack of ability, motivation, or potential.

Mooho may need texts that differ substantially from those Soho has enjoyed. A humorous comic or graphic novel may be more inviting than a lengthy narrative. Books on science, sport, or another familiar subject may allow him to approach English through knowledge and interests he already possesses. He may also benefit from listening to a story before reading it, or from using an audiobook alongside the printed text. Such possibilities suggest that the central question is not how to reproduce Soho’s experience for her brother, but how to identify forms of engagement that are meaningful to him.

I am therefore trying to resist using Soho at the same age as the standard against which Mooho’s progress is judged. Her proficiency may offer encouragement and create opportunities for communication, but it should not become a benchmark he feels required to meet. Comparison may be especially unhelpful when it shifts attention away from the progress he is already making. When Mooho attempts even a short expression in English, the most important feature of that moment may not be its grammatical accuracy, but his willingness to use the language to communicate.

This has also led me to reconsider the meaning of support. Encouraging a child does not necessarily mean asking for more visible performance or directing him towards increasingly difficult books. Support may instead involve creating a range of low-pressure opportunities, attending carefully to his responses, and recognising small signs of confidence. It also requires allowing English to remain a means of communication and discovery rather than turning it into a continual test of competence.

Soho has already found a doorway into English that she is eager to enter. Mooho’s doorway may look different and may be located somewhere less obvious. My task as his mother is perhaps not to open it for him, still less to lead him through the door his sister has chosen. It is to make several pathways available, to notice where his curiosity begins, and to remain nearby while he decides which direction to take.

Waiting, in this sense, is not passive. It involves respecting a child’s pace while continuing to provide carefully chosen books, experiences, and opportunities. It means recognising that development cannot always be hurried and that interest may emerge through unexpected routes. I am learning to trust that Mooho can develop his own relationship with English—not by following his sister’s path, but by discovering a world that gives him a reason to open the book and continue reading.

References

Yun, S. (2026, July 30). Seoul National University Computer Engineering Students Penalized for AI Cheating. The Chosun Daily. URL: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/07/30/MCC3MYEQNBCXXKPGFS6R7F3W2Y/.

[TEACHING NOTES]

The Potential and Challenges of Using K-pop in Korean Language Education
Article · Open Access · Received: 28 July 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 30 July 2026 / Accepted: 1 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.1

Chae Kwan Jung
Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 22012, South Korea.

Jung, C. K. (2026). The potential and challenges of using K-pop in Korean language education. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.1

Summary

K-pop can be a valuable supplementary resource in Korean language education by strengthening motivation, supporting vocabulary retention, drawing attention to pronunciation, and enabling multimodal learning. Its usefulness, however, depends on careful pedagogical design. Song lyrics often contain omissions, altered word order, figurative language, pronunciation changes, and Korean–English code-switching, making them unreliable models of everyday speech. Their thematic and linguistic range is also limited, while uncritical use may oversimplify Korean culture or exclude learners uninterested in K-pop. Effective instruction should therefore begin with clear objectives, connect lyrical expressions to authentic communication, address copyright, and encourage critical cultural reflection.

Keywords

K-pop; Korean language education; learner motivation; multimodal learning; critical cultural literacy

K-pop offers considerable pedagogical potential because it can convert a general interest in Korean culture into sustained engagement with the Korean language. The wish to understand the nuances of a favourite song, follow an artist’s interview without subtitles, or communicate with other fans in Korean gives learners a clear and personally meaningful purpose for study. Korean may consequently be perceived not simply as a language that must be learned, but as one that learners actively wish to acquire. This motivation can extend well beyond the classroom, as music, videos, interviews, and online fan communities provide continuing opportunities for exposure, participation, and independent learning.

The repetitive structure of popular music also lends itself to the acquisition of vocabulary and grammatical expressions. Words relating to emotions and interpersonal relationships, together with frequently repeated adverbs and sentence patterns, may become especially memorable when embedded in a familiar melody or chorus. Listening and singing activities can likewise direct learners’ attention to features of Korean pronunciation, including syllable structure, final consonants, sound linking, contraction, and rhythm. When songs are combined with music videos, subtitles, interviews, and fan commentary, they can support multimodal learning across listening, reading, speaking, writing, translation, and cultural interpretation. A single song may therefore provide the basis for a varied and integrated sequence of language-learning activities.

These benefits should not, however, obscure the linguistic particularities of song lyrics. Lyrics cannot automatically be treated as representative models of everyday Korean. To accommodate rhythm, melody, and syllable count, lyricists frequently omit particles, alter conventional word order, employ incomplete clauses, and modify pronunciation. Figurative and highly compressed expressions are also common. In addition, code-switching between Korean and English has become a prominent feature of contemporary K-pop. Although this offers valuable material for advanced discussions of identity, globalisation, and multilingual creativity, it may make it difficult for beginning learners to distinguish Korean grammatical structures and lexical patterns. The pronunciation and rhythm of sung Korean may also differ substantially from those of ordinary spoken interaction. Teachers therefore need to explain where and why particular expressions occur and to compare lyrical forms with the expressions that speakers would more naturally use in everyday conversation.

A further limitation concerns the range of language represented in K-pop. Songs frequently address love, separation, youth, identity, aspiration, and success, making them a rich source of vocabulary associated with emotions and personal relationships. They are much less suited to the systematic teaching of Korean for academic, professional, or public purposes. Honorific usage, extended explanation, formal argumentation, reporting, and the management of sustained interaction are unlikely to be adequately represented through song lyrics alone. An overreliance on K-pop may therefore produce an uneven linguistic repertoire, particularly when learners require Korean for study, employment, or institutional communication.

Similar caution is needed when K-pop is used as a source of cultural knowledge. K-pop forms an influential part of contemporary Korean culture, but it does not represent Korean society in its entirety. If presented without critical discussion, it may encourage an overly narrow image of Korea centred on youth, physical appearance, consumption, competition, and romantic relationships. Learners should therefore be invited to consider whose experiences are represented, which social perspectives remain absent, and how commercial images differ from everyday life. Such discussion can help them approach K-pop not simply as an authentic cultural product, but as a constructed discourse shaped by particular industries, audiences, and global markets.

Learner diversity must also be taken into account. Not all students are interested in K-pop, while those who are may differ considerably in their preferred artists, genres, and levels of engagement. K-pop should consequently remain one resource among a broader range of cultural and linguistic materials rather than become the organising principle of an entire programme. Practical issues of copyright and permitted use also require careful attention when lyrics, recordings, videos, photographs, and subtitles are reproduced or distributed for educational purposes.

K-pop is thus most productively understood as a supplementary resource rather than a substitute for a comprehensive Korean language curriculum. Effective instruction should begin with clearly defined learning objectives, followed by the selection of a song or brief lyrical extract that serves those objectives. The educational value of K-pop lies not in its popularity alone, but in the activities constructed around it. Learners need opportunities to move beyond listening and appreciation, compare lyrical language with everyday usage, and apply newly encountered expressions through speaking and writing. When such work is combined with critical reflection on cultural values and social representations, K-pop can make a distinctive contribution to Korean language education by supporting motivation, linguistic development, learner autonomy, and intercultural understanding.

References

Suh, J., & Park, E. S. (2025). BTS and Languages: K-pop Transcending Language and Communication. Routledge.

[ACROSS CULTURES]

Key Priorities for Restoring Trust in the CSAT English Assessment: A Focus on Validity, Fairness, and Ethics
Article · Open Access · Received: 27 July 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 29 July 2026 / Accepted: 1 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.7

Young Ok Jong
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Foreign Language Education, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, 107 Imun-ro, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, 02450, South Korea.

Jong, Y. O. (2026). Key priorities for restoring trust in the CSAT English assessment: A focus on validity, fairness, and ethics. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.7.

Summary

The paper argues that restoring trust in the CSAT English assessment requires an integrated commitment to validity, fairness, and ethics. It calls for closer curriculum alignment, more authentic assessment of reading comprehension, objective passage selection and difficulty control, and stronger positive washback on teaching and learning. The 2023 item-overlap case illustrates weaknesses in review, verification, and appeal procedures. The paper also highlights risks arising from commercial use of test-development experience, limited expert pools, and AI-generated test items. It recommends data-driven validation, clearer criterion-referenced standards, conflict-of-interest safeguards, broader specialist development, and stronger ethical oversight.

Keywords

CSAT English assessment; assessment validity; procedural fairness; test ethics; data-driven validation

Discussion of the English section of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) should not be confined to whether the examination is too difficult or too easy. A more fundamental question is whether it assesses students’ English proficiency validly within the boundaries of the high school curriculum, exerts a constructive influence on classroom teaching and student learning, and is administered in a manner that sustains public confidence in a national-level examination. Restoring trust in the CSAT English assessment ultimately requires the validity of the test, the fairness of its procedures, and the ethical conduct of those involved to be secured within a coherent system.

Research published over the past 19 years in the journal Secondary English Education has examined these issues from a range of perspectives. Studies have investigated whether the vocabulary, syntax, and readability of CSAT passages are appropriate for high school students and consistent with the curriculum. They have also considered whether high-difficulty item types, such as gap-filling inference, sentence insertion, and text-ordering questions, assess English reading proficiency or place excessive demands on test-taking strategies and logical reasoning. Other recurring concerns include the washback of the EBS linkage policy, which encouraged translation- and memorisation-based classroom practices; fluctuations in grade distributions and difficulty following the introduction of criterion-referenced grading; and the limited capacity of a test focused on reading and listening to reflect the communicative competencies emphasised in the curriculum.

These studies point in a relatively clear direction. The CSAT English section should move away from distinguishing students primarily according to their familiarity with particular item formats and instead assess their ability to understand English texts accurately and draw reasonable inferences. Put differently, the emphasis should shift from English for test taking to English for real-world use. Although differentiation is necessary in a university entrance examination, it should not be achieved through abstruse passages beyond the curriculum or questions designed primarily as traps. Given the substantial influence of the CSAT on schools, promoting positive washback that guides student learning and classroom teaching in a desirable direction should also be regarded as an important responsibility of the assessment.

More objective criteria are required for passage selection and difficulty control. The topics, vocabulary, sentence structures, and cognitive demands of CSAT English passages should be aligned with the high school curriculum. Passages should not privilege particular political, religious, gendered, or regional perspectives, and materials requiring specialised background knowledge available only to certain students should be treated with caution. Each passage should also constitute a coherent and complete text with a clear central idea and logical progression, rather than a collection of disconnected sentences. While the experience and professional judgement of test developers remain important, difficulty should be predicted and managed more objectively through evidence such as lexical frequency, syntactic complexity, readability indices, and corpus analysis.

The substantial overlap between Question 23 of the 2023 CSAT English section and a passage used in a privately produced mock examination prompted renewed scrutiny of the safeguards within the test development system. When a passage of approximately 130–150 words is more than 90 per cent identical, it is difficult to attribute the similarity solely to coincidence. At the same time, it would be equally premature to conclude immediately that deliberate collusion occurred. On the basis of publicly released investigation findings, it is necessary to examine whether late-stage item replacement, severe time pressure, the omission of particular commercial materials from the verification process, and shortcomings in the handling of post-examination objections operated in combination. The central issue should not be reduced to the mistake of one individual. Rather, it concerns whether the multiple safeguards covering item development, review, final approval, and post-examination adjudication functioned as intended.

The relationship between experience in CSAT item development and the private education market also warrants careful reflection. Participation in national test development or review ordinarily signifies that an individual’s assessment expertise has been recognised by the state. Yet when information asymmetry surrounding the test development process is combined with market demand for CSAT-like questions and a limited pool of qualified specialists, such experience may be commodified as a form of commercial premium. This concern may become more pronounced as generative AI enables private education providers to produce large numbers of standardised CSAT-style questions. The greater the reliance on repeatable formats such as gap-filling inference and text-ordering items, the greater the risk that test performance will reflect intensive training in question types rather than genuine English proficiency.

Several institutional reforms therefore need to proceed in parallel. First, reliance on formulaic high-difficulty items should be reduced, and the ability to understand and infer meaning from texts should be assessed more directly. Second, the level of achievement represented by each grade under the criterion-referenced system should be clearly defined and applied consistently from year to year. Third, data-driven validation using corpora, readability measures, and pilot-testing evidence should be strengthened, together with pre-examination screening for overlap with commercial materials and potential conflicts of interest. It is equally important to develop a broader pool of assessment specialists over the long term, strengthen post-participation ethical regulations and oversight, and ensure that objection and appeal procedures function substantively rather than merely formally.

Trust in the CSAT English assessment does not arise from making questions difficult. It depends on how validly and fairly students’ English proficiency is assessed in relation to the curriculum, how responsibly the entire development and verification process is managed, and how constructively the resulting assessment influences school education. The task now is not simply to preserve or defend existing practices, but to move carefully towards a sustainable assessment system in which validity, fairness, and ethics are secured together.

References

Jung, C. K., Kim, T., Lee, S., & Kim, J. (2025). An analysis of question type classification in the 2025 CSAT English test: Focusing on the listening section. Studies in Foreign Language Education, 39(4), 233-250.

Kim, J., Nam, I., & Jung, C. K. (2026). Question type classification in the 2026 CSAT English section: A focus on reading comprehension. Studies in Foreign Language Education, 40(2), 85-103.

Kim, J., Lee, S., & Jung, C. K. (2026). Validating linguistic difficulty in the language forms for communication of the Republic of Korea’s 2022 National English Curriculum. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 23(1), 34-51.

[BOOKS, MEDIA & ARTS]

Book Review: English Corpus Linguistics Made Easy
Article · Open Access · Received: 28 July 2026 / Received in Revised Form: 30 July 2026 / Accepted: 1 August 2026 · Publication date: 3 August 2026 · DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.15

Jeong-eun Kim
Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Jeonbuk National University, 567 Baekje-daero, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si, Jeonbuk-do, 54896, South Korea.

Kim, J. (2026). Book review: English corpus linguistics made easay. APALCE Voices, 1. DOI: 10.23404/apalcevoices.2026.1.15.

Summary

Chae Kwan Jung’s English Corpus Linguistics Made Easy introduces corpus linguistics as an accessible, evidence-based approach to understanding language in use. Moving from key concepts to practical tools such as AntConc, AntWordProfiler, and TagAnt, it guides readers through corpus construction, analysis, and interpretation. The book connects corpus methods with language education, translation, discourse studies, AI, and learner-language analysis while acknowledging their interpretive limits. Designed for students, teachers, translators, and novice researchers, it encourages readers to move beyond intuition and become active investigators of patterned, socially situated English.

Keywords

Corpus linguistics; data-driven language study; corpus analysis tools; learner language; English language education

Chae Kwan Jung’s English Corpus Linguistics Made Easy begins with a deceptively simple proposition: English is best understood not only through rules and intuition, but also through evidence of how people actually use it. Corpus-based approaches now inform language education, translation, discourse analysis, and artificial intelligence, yet the field’s terminology and analytical tools can still appear daunting to newcomers. The book’s principal achievement is to make this area accessible without reducing it to a collection of technical procedures.

The volume moves carefully from conceptual foundations to practical inquiry. The first chapter introduces central ideas such as representativeness, sampling, frequency, keywords, collocation, and recurring patterns. Just as importantly, it acknowledges the limitations of corpus evidence. Numerical regularities may reveal important tendencies, but they cannot fully explain context, intention, or social meaning without informed interpretation. This balanced treatment helps readers understand corpus linguistics as an empirical approach rather than an unquestioning reliance on numbers.

The second chapter turns from principles to practice through AntConc, AntWordProfiler, and TagAnt. Readers are guided through frequency analysis, concordance lines, collocations, lexical profiling, and part-of-speech tagging. The explanations proceed gradually and assume little prior experience with computational methods. Particularly valuable is the guidance on constructing small corpora from written texts, spoken material, and learners’ own language production. Readers are thus invited to participate in the full process of inquiry: collecting, cleaning, analysing, comparing, and interpreting data.

The third chapter demonstrates how these methods can illuminate meaningful differences in English use. Written and spoken language are compared across genres, while recurrent features of Korean learners’ English are examined through overuse, underuse, literal translation, grammatical patterns, and collocational choice. An example such as make a photo rather than take a photo shows how corpus evidence can make visible a pattern that might otherwise remain an impression based largely on teacher intuition. This connection between empirical analysis and pedagogical decision-making is one of the book’s strongest features.

The scope extends beyond conventional language teaching to translation, social and cultural discourse, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing. The appendix reinforces this applied orientation through small-scale project ideas, guided activities, recommended readings, online corpus resources, and a glossary. These materials make the book adaptable for university courses, teacher development, independent study, and introductory research projects.

As an introductory volume, the book does not attempt to provide advanced statistical training, programming-based analysis, or a comprehensive account of corpus research design. Readers wishing to pursue these areas will need more specialised sources. This is less a weakness than a consequence of the book’s clearly defined purpose: to provide a manageable and intellectually credible point of entry.

The book’s lasting value lies not simply in teaching readers how to operate corpus software. More significantly, it encourages them to question intuition, examine evidence, and recognise language as patterned yet socially situated. Students, teachers, translators, and beginning researchers are positioned not as passive recipients of linguistic rules, but as active investigators of language in use

References

Jung, C. K. (2026). English Corpus Linguistics Made Easy. Incheon National University Press.