Research Trends in College English Education in Korea －A Topic Analysis Using LDA Topic Modeling

Abstract

This study investigated the research trends of college English education in Korea from 2001 to 2020. The data was collected using a Biblio data collector and a total of 313 papers were analyzed. For research purposes, the data were analyzed using frequency analysis, LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation), and time series analysis. The summary of the findings is as follows: In the first instance, the number of research papers regarding college English education has increased significantly in quantity for 20 years. Secondly, in analyzing the topics of the chosen papers, a total of 10 topics in college English education were found. The topics were “curriculum and level-differentiated programs (T1)”, “learners’ affective factors (T2)”, “assesment and learning strategies (T3)”, “teachers’ factors (T4)”, “English vocabulary, grammar and writing (T5)”, “English for specific purposes (T6)”, “teaching and learning methods (T7)”, “web-based learning (T8)”, “learner-centered education (T9)”, and “textbook analysis etc. (T10).” Among these topics, the three that were identified as topics increasing in popularity were “learners’ affective factors (T2)”, “English for specific purposes (T6)”, and “learner-centered education (T9).” The topics increasing in popularity shared one key characteristic: the topics were related to learners’ factors such as the learners’ motivation, the learners’ goals, and the learners’ activities in class. This study is meaningful in that it collected a wide range of data related to college English education in Korea and produced more reliable results by using big data-based LDA topic modeling techniques.