The purpose of this study is to construct Korean teacher immediacy scale, to validate Korean teacher immediacy scale, to clarify the effects of Korean teacher immediacy on student learning (motivation, affective learning and cognitive learning) and verify the correlation between teacher immediacy and student learning with proficiency, gender, different languages and ages.
First, in order to prepare the preliminary questions of teacher immediacy scale, I analyzed domestic and foreign literature data on teacher immediacy behaviors and conducted an open-ended questionnaire survey of 54 Korean language learners and 16 interviewees of Korean language learners to extract preliminary questions. 22 preliminary items of teacher immediacy behaviors were made through content analysis. Four Korean teachers who had more than 10 years of experience and one doctor examined the content validity of the preliminary questions. As a result, the final two items were eliminated because they were duplicated or ambiguous and the differences between the teachers.
In order to verify the construct validity and reliability of the developed Korean teacher immediacy scale, factor analysis was performed on 206 beginner, intermediate and advanced learners who are studying Korean at Korean educational institute. Consequently, the reliability of Korean teacher immediacy was as high as .948. The Korean teacher immediacy scale was composed of 2 components of totaling 15 items.
One component is verbal immediacy, and verbal immediacy behaviors include the ability of the teacher to operate the classroom, the ability of the teacher in relation to the teaching method, and the behavior that shows personal interest to the learner. The other component is nonverbal immediacy, which includes gestures, gazes, smiles, nods, postures, tones and voice to help learners understand the contents of the lesson.
Furthermore, the cross validity test was conducted on 216 subjects to confirm that the developed scale was appropriate for the other groups. As a result, it was confirmed that Korean teacher immediacy scale''s fit index could be used for other groups by exceeding the standard value.
I also conducted convergent, discriminant validity, another method to verify construct validity of teacher immediacy scale. As a consequence, the convergent validity was confirmed through positive correlation between Korean teacher immediacy and affective learning. Hierarchical regression was used to verify discriminant validity by revealing that teacher immediacy had a unique explanatory quantity that motivation did not have.
The effect of teacher immediacy on affective learning, motivation, and cognitive learning was analyzed through path analysis. Consequently, it was found that Korean teacher immediacy directly affects affective learning and motivation, and indirectly affects cognitive learning through the two variables.
In addition, a Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of teacher immediacy on learners'' learning (affective learning, cognitive learning and motivation) by proficiency, different languages, gender, and age in order to clarify correlations between teacher immediacy and learning according to learner variables. As a consequence, teacher immediacy had a positive effect on student learning as the higher the proficiency, the lower the age, the more influence the learner learning as a whole but teacher immediacy had a low influence on the learning of certain language students, especially Arabic and Vietnamese learners.
The purpose of this study was to develop the Korean teacher immediacy scale, to verify the validity of the developed scale, to clarify the effect of the teacher immediacy on the student learning and to clarify correlations between teacher immediacy and learning according to learner variables.
Through the results of this study, it is possible to know the immediacy behaviors of Korean teachers in detail and to use them as teacher education, evaluation and self-diagnosis evaluation tools in future. Also, I showed correlation between Korean teacher immediacy and affective learning, motivation and cognitive learning according to learner variables. The results of this study showed that Korean language teachers should pay attention to immediacy behaviors in class. This will be a helpful reference material for teachers in Korean classrooms.
In this study, only the effects of Korean teacher immediacy on student motivation, affective learning and cognitive learning were investigated. However, various studies should be carried out by expanding the scope of future research.
Teacher immediacy in Korean language education is the starting stage and Korean teacher immediacy scale based on the results of this study can be used as a basic tool for future studies of teacher immediacy and communication studies between teachers and learners.