Publications (Kent Lee)

1. Lee, K. (in press). A “the” or the “a”? L2 learner problems and patterns. KOTESOL Journal. doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2018.1438442
2. Lee, K., & Lee, H. (in press). Korean Graduate Students’ Self-perceptions of English Skills and Needs in an English-medium Instruction Context. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. *
3. Lee, K., & Lee, H. (2017). Korean graduate students' perceptions of guidance and professional development. Higher Education, 73(5), 725–740. doi:10.1007/s10734-016-9988-9 [Survey items, 70 MB, PDF ] *
4. Lee, K. (2013). Right dislocation in Chinese: Interface of syntax and information structure. Korean Journal of Chinese Language and Literature, 55, 3-50. +
5. Lee, K. (2013). Sentence stress in information structure. Oeneohag [J. Korean Ling. Soc.], 66,3-30. +
6. Lee, K. (2013). Koreans' use of English connectors and topic management in writing. English Language Teaching, 25(2), 81-103. +
7. Lee, K. (2013). Tonal reduplication in Kibondei. The Journal of Studies in Language, 29(1), 129-150. +
8. Stine-Morrow, E., Shake, M., Miles, J., Lee, K., Gao, X. & McKonkie, G. (2010). Pay now or pay later: Aging and the role of boundary salience in self-regulation of conceptual integration in sentence processing. Psychology and Aging, 25, 168-176. doi:10.1037/a0018127. *
9. Lee, K. (2009). [Book review of Brinton (2008), The comment clause in English.] Studies in Language, 33, 1004-1011. doi: 10.1075/sl.33.4.09lee.
10. Lee, K. (2009). Phonological and semantic information used in reading Chinese characters.Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Chinese Regional Culture and Language, Hanyang University.
11. Lee, K. (2009). Phonological and semantic processing of Chinese characters. Dissertation, Educational Psychology Dept., University of Illinois.
12. Lee, K. (2008). Phonological and other linguistic effects in recognition of Chinese characters. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Cognitive Science (pp. 233-236). Seoul: ICCS.
13. Lee, K. (2003). Discourse Markers 'well' and 'oh'. In Bardovi-Harlig, K. (Ed.), Teaching Pragmatics. Available online at http://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teaching-pragmatics. US Information Agency & Indiana University.
14. Lee, K. (2001). Teaching discourse stress to Asian students. KOTESOL Proceedings 2001, pp. 103-116.
15. Lee, K. (2001). Focus and discourse stress. M.A. Thesis, Div. English as International Language (TESOL), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
16. Lee, K. (1997). Chinese Tone Sandhi and Prosody. M.A. Thesis, Linguistics Dept., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Notes: * SSCI/A&HCI indexed; + KCI indexed; % Scopus indexed

1 Submitted or under review

1. Lee, K., & Lee, H. (submitted). An EAP professional development program for graduate students in Korea.
2. Lee, K. (submitted). English sentence stress: Form and function.
3. Lee, K. (submitted). Teaching determiners: Addressing Korean university students’ misconceptions.
4. Lee, K. (submitted). Chinese ESL writers’ use of English contrastive connectives.

2 Abstracts

Abstracts for my linguistics articles.

Lee, K., & Lee, H. (2017). Korean graduate students' perceptions of guidance and professional development. Higher Education, 73(5), 725–740. doi:10.1007/s10734-016-9988-9

• Past studies have indicated shortcomings in the training of graduate students in the US, especially for practical career skills, teaching skills, and non-academic careers. Students thus find professional development and guidance lacking for the demands of the modern marketplace. This study extends this research to the unique situation of current graduate students in Korea, who represent an under-studied population and face further challenges from the demands of internationalization. From survey data at one representative university, this study examines (1) whether Korean graduate students feel that they receive sufficient guidance, training, and support for professional development and (2) whether Korean graduate students feel prepared for specific academic and professional careers and career skills. Additionally, English skills, motivation, and other factors are examined. Various shortcomings in these areas are reported, which parallel those found in the US, while unique problems also arise from the demands of English for academic and professional purposes. Korean graduate students require additional support and professional development programs to address these shortcomings.
• Note: The publisher does not allow archiving of the final published article on personal websites, so only the pre-publication draft is available here. If you need the final published version, please contact me.

Lee, K. (2013). Right dislocation in Chinese: Interface of syntax and information structure. Korean Journal of Chinese Language and Literature, 55, 3-50.

• While forms of left dislocation and topicalization serve topic management functions, the status and function of right dislocation are less clear. Various studies have treated it as afterthought, a repair device, a focus marking device, or a form of illocutionary emphasis. However, the Chinese data (Mandarin and Cantonese) also pose particular problems for structural analysis, as these forms in Chinese exhibit violations of syntactic integrity and coreferentiality. Previous syntactic and pragmatic analyses only partially explain their structure or use, but a more comprehensive explanation of both has been lacking. This paper examines the roles of syntax and information structure, and proposes a more unified pragmatic explanation, with a refined model of information structure. Right dislocation phrases are treated as a form of minor or secondary information, with their coherence deriving from pragmatics. Specifically, these phrases follow constraints of an information structure hierarchy, which accounts for their structural integrity.

Lee, K. (2013). Sentence stress in information structure. Oeneohag [Journal of the Korean Linguistic Society], 66,3-30.

• A typical English utterance is marked with a sentence stress, that is, a prominence on one word or syllable that is greater than other lexical stresses in the clause or utterance. This stress consists of a pitch prominence that demarcates the intonational phrase. An Optimality Theory analysis of sentence stress is presented here, which integrates insights from the generative and applied linguistic approaches under one framework. Sentence stress is explained in terms of the interactions between prosodic structure, stress, syntax, and information structure, that is, stress assignment on the main focus or most prominent information. The constraints and constraint interactions can explain some non-canonical stress types that are not handled so well by traditional generative approaches, and also address some stress patterns and linguistic structures that functional accounts do not address. The Optimality framework can explain this interface of different linguistic domains, and this interface can better explain the behavior of English sentence stress.

Lee, K. (2013). Koreans' use of English connectors and topic management in writing. English Language Teaching, 25(2), 81-103.

• Some previous studies have examined the use of connectors by second language writers of English, particularly studies comparing connector usage of L2 and native English writers. This study does so with corpora of written essays, comparing the frequency of connector usage between native English writers from the U.S. and U.K., and English essays by Korean ESL learners in the US. The statistical comparisons used here also offer some refinements over previous corpus studies. The Korean writers overused and underused various connectors compared to the native writers, specifically in their use of contrastive markers, topic transitionals, there is and there are, markers for enumerating sequences, and exemplifiers. They also certain expressions used incorrectly as connectors due to apparent transfer errors. These data indicate a number of issues for ESL/EFL writing teachers to address, and some suggestions for teaching are discussed below.

Lee, K. (2013). Tonal reduplication in Kibondei. The Journal of Studies in Language, 29(1), 129-150.

• This paper examines the tonal system of Kibondei, a Rantu language and its tonal and reduplication patterns. The appearance of otherwise unrealized tones from verb stems that spread onto adjacent materials is first discussed. Then reduplication patterns are examined, which exhibit some unusual tone shifting patterns. These are explained within the framework of Optimality Theory, with constraints on segments, tones and morphemes. Finally, implications of tone systems for Optimality Theory and the interface of different linguistic components are briefly discussed, as these hint at interesting and possible interpretations of Optimality Theory.