Examining Line-breaks in Korean Language Textbooks: the Promotion of Word Spacing and Reading Skills

한국어 교재의 행 바꾸기 -띄어쓰기와 읽기 능력의 계발 -

This study investigates issues in relation to text segmenting, in particular, line breaks in Korean language textbooks. Research on L1 and L2 reading has shown that readers process texts by chunking (grouping words into phrases or meaningful syntactic units) and, therefore, phrase-cued texts are helpful for readers whose syntactic knowledge has not yet been fully developed. In other words, it would be important for language textbooks to avoid awkward syntactic divisions at the end of a line, in particular, those textbooks for beginners and intermediate level learners. According to our analysis of a number of major Korean language textbooks for beginner-level learners, however, many textbooks were found to display line-breaks of awkward syntactic division. Moreover, some textbooks displayed frequent instances where a single word (or eojeol in the case of Korean) is split between different lines. This can hamper not only learners' learning of the rules of spaces between eojeols in Korean, but also learners' development in automatic word recognition, which is an essential part of reading processes. Based on the findings of our textbook analysis and of existing research on reading, this study suggests ways to overcome awkward line-breaks in Korean language textbooks.