• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.107-116
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• 2020

This paper aims to explore the vocabulary difference between South and North Korean English textbooks as a first step toward a unified vocabulary list. To this end, both South and North Korean English textbooks in 2000s and 2010s are digitized into a corpus of text files, and a vocabulary list is constructed based on the corpus with reference to its concordances for the vocabulary use and contexts using AntConc 3.5.7. The vocabulary list of North Korean English textbooks are compared and found in their differences of quantity and quality of the English vocabulary in English education. Both quantitative and qualitative differences are found in between South and North Korean English textbook corpus. Both South and North aim that students learn about 3,000 words throughout the English education. North Korean English textbook contains more special academic vocabulary while South Korean English textbook is constrained by a strict vocabulary control which does not allow such a flexibility. Differences of vocabulary and their use are caused by the capitalistic market economy of South and the socialists' planned economy of North. Differences are also attributed to the religious words and grammatical vocabulary appearance.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.167-192
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• 2007

This study investigates the effects of written vocabulary exercises on lexical knowledge. Korean university students learning English as a foreign language were randomly assigned to one of four conditions-Condition 1 (having students match word form with word meaning), Condition 2 (having students fill in the blank provided with a list of words), Condition 3 (having students write sentences with the target words), Condition 4 (having students do three practices with the same vocabulary exercise as the condition 1). Each type of exercises in Condition 1, 2, and 3 was designed to classify a different level of mental processing except Condition 4 with multiple encounters of the target words. Learners' vocabulary knowledge of this study was obtained using a format adopted from the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) immediately and two weeks later. The findings indicated that: (1) Condition 4 having students do three matching vocabulary exercises was as effective as the condition 3 (one writing exercise) on the immediate learning of word; (2) although there was no significant difference of the effect of vocabulary exercises between Condition 3 and 4, Condition 4 asking students to do three matching vocabulary exercises was the most effective way of vocabulary retention after two weeks.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.61-94
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• 2020

The present study examined vocabulary usage in elementary English classrooms in Japan using elementary school corpus. The authors used three wordlists to benchmark the lexical items for four classes in the corpus: the CEFR-J, the General Service List (GSL), and Academic Word List (AWL). The percentage of vocabulary usage belonging to the Level A1 in the CEFR-J was below 15% (Class A: 12.1%, Class B: 12.6%, Class C: 8.9%, and Class D: 13.6%) with no statistical difference between levels. The mean ratio of Level A2 vocabulary items was below 10%, and all classes showed less than 1% of vocabulary usage for the Levels B1 and B2. Over 70% of all vocabulary items in the corpus belonged to the most frequent 1,000-word band (level 1) of the GSL, while the next most frequent word band (level 2 of the GSL and AWL) accounted for less than 10%. The results suggest that elementary school English teachers should use more vocabulary items in the CEFR-J Level A1. The findings demonstrate that elementary school teachers are less likely to expose their pupils to grammatically well-structured sentences with an abundance of lexical items since the teachers repeatedly use the same lexemes in each class.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.475-484
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• 2017

The aim of this research is the development and evaluation of a technical vocabulary list for early childhood education. The list was compiled from a corpus of 500,000 running words of written academic texts from 7 books about early childhood education. The distribution of GSL[1] and AWL[2] was 81.86% and 9.78% respectively, which meant that academic texts related to early childhood education is very similar with ones on other disciplines. The technical vocabulary list for early childhood education (TV4ECE), extracted in terms of frequency and range, contains 224 types. This word list can be used to teach early childhood education in English, especially for the preparation of reading the English texts in the field of early childhood education.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.331-341
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• 2017

This paper aims to analyze English vocabulary of the North Korean textbooks diachronically using the constructed English textbook corpus. The North Korea English textbooks attained from Information Center on North Korea of the Ministry of Unification are divided into before and after Kim Jong-Il era for the year of 1996 in which the curriculum revision has been conducted. They are stored as text files to analyse vocabularies using WordSmith Tools 7.0. The vocabulary size of the revised textbooks increased after the curriculum reorganization, but the number of vocabulary types and vocabulary diversity decreased. After the curriculum revision, it was found that lots of vocabulary related to the establishment of the Kim Jong-Il system appeared as the keyword. It was also found that some vocabularies reflected the economic and social life of North Korea. In addition, through comparison of the 100 high-frequency word list and keywords, it can be concluded that the vocabulary of the English textbooks of North Korea is gradually changing into communicative contents from contents related with written language.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2011

Listening has been a neglected research area despite the crucial role it plays. The present investigation was aimed at examining how the provision of topical knowledge and learners' listening proficiency level affect learners' listening performance under four different preparatory activity conditions: topical knowledge, vocabulary list, language structure, and no activity. A total of 134 participants, assigned to the four different activity groups, took part in the study. The results revealed that the learners who were provided with topical knowledge before listening performed significantly better than the other learners, followed by the vocabulary list group and language structure group, which might be attributed to the activation of their content schemata. The learners who did not perform any preparatory activities achieved the lowest scores. When it comes to the impact of listening proficiency, it was revealed that learners' proficiency level had a significant influence on learners' listening performance, and there was a significant interaction between the learners' level of listening proficiency and preparatory activity. Providing relevant knowledge was effective for both higher level and lower level learners, whereas teaching vocabulary before listening was effective for higher level learners but was not for lower level ones. Based on the results, some pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.35-48
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• 2010

The purpose of the present study was to suggest basic word lists and contents of English for mobile games and to propose how to apply basic word lists to mobile games for English vocabulary learning because it is possible that some potential advantages of mobile games can provide elementary school students with new learning environment for English vocabulary learning. To support this idea, firstly, the basic word lists were selected from essential word lists in the national English curriculum, the word lists from textbooks, and five randomly chosen word books. Secondly, mobile games were examined and appropriate mobile games for learning English words was selected. Lastly, the basic word lists for mobile games were applied to the selected game.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.132-139
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• 2021

This corpus-driven research expounded the compilation of the most frequently occurring academic words in the domain of syntax and compared the extracted wordlist with Academic Word List(AWL) of Coxhead(2000) and General Service List(GSL) of West(1953) to examine their distribution and coverage within the syntax corpus. A specialized 546,074 token corpus, composed of widely used must-read syntax textbooks for English education majors, was loaded into and analyzed with AntWordProfiler 1.4.1. Under the parameter of lexical frequency, the analysis identified 288(50.5%) AWL word forms, appeared 16 times or more, as well as 218(38.2%) AWL items, occurred not exceeding 15 times. The analysis also indicated that the coverage of AWL and GSL accounted for 9.19% and 78.92% respectively and the combination of GSL and AWL amounted to 88.11% of all tokens. Given that AWL can be instrumental in serving broad disciplinary needs, this study highlighted the necessity to compile the domain-specific AWL as a lexical repertoire to promote academic literacy and competence.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.1
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• pp.69-108
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• 1995

Listening comprehension can be defined as a process of an integrative, positive and creative activity through which listeners get the message of speakers' production using linguistic or non-linguistic redundancy as well as linguistic or non-linguistic knowledge. Compared with reading comprehension, it has many difficulties especially for foreigners. while it can be transferred to the other skills: speaking, reading, writing. With this said, listening comprehension can be taught effectively using the following teaching strategies. First. systematic and intensive instruction of segmental phonemes, suprasegmental phonemes and sound changes must be given to remove the difficulties of listening comprehension concerned with the identification of sounds. Second, vocabulary drill through various games and other activities is absolutely needed until words can be unconsciously recognized. Without this, comprehension is almost impossible. Third, instruction of sentence structures is thought to be essential considering grammar is supplementary to listening comprehension and reading comprehension for academic purpose. So grammar translation drills, mechanical drills, meaningful drills and communicative drills should be performed in succession with common or frequently used structures. Fourth, listening activities for overall comprehension should teach how to receive overall meaning of intended messages intact. Linguists and literatures have listed some specific activities as follows: Total Physical Response, dictation, role playing, singing songs, selective listening, picture recognition, list activities, completion, prediction, true or false choice, multiple choice, seeking of specific information, summarizing, problem-solving and decision-making, recognization of relationships between speakers, recognition of mood, attitude and behavior of speakers.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.38
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• pp.145-190
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• 2015

The objective of this paper is to investigate translated individual words in J. S. Gale's "Choon Yang" in comparison with its original OkJoongHwa("獄中花") while referring to early modern bilingual dictionaries and missionaries' ethnography. Gale faced a lot of translation difficulties because the source text had a very different cultural system from the object text. OkJoongHwa was a Korean pansori novel which meant it included many Korean characteristics. However, Gale considered its Korean characteristics were deeply connected with Chinese classics. Even famous people and place names cited from the Chinese classics in OkJoongHwa represented the Korean thinking. Gale tried to faithfully translate the source text as much as possible whether the words were Chinese or Korean. In this paper, we deal with mostly various translation aspects of the Chinese-letter words in OkJoongHwa. Gale's first method to translate words made of Chinese Character is transliteration, the examples of which are the name of Chinese famous people and places, and Chinese poems. The second method is to parallel transliteration and English interpretation equivalent to the Chinese Character. The examples are the names of main characters like "Spring Fragrance or Choonyang," "Mongyong, or Dream-Dragon" and in his translation of word play in Osa (Commissioner), or Kamsa (Governor), kaiksa (a dead beggar). The third is literal translation of Chinese idiomatic phrases as Gale translated 侵魚落雁 into "She'd make the fishes to sink and the wild-geese to drop from the sky." The fourth is a little free translation of the title of public office, the various names of Korean yamen servants and the unique Korean clothing and ornaments. We expect Gale's many translation difficulties as we can see the translated long list of yamen clerks and Korean clothing and ornaments. After our investigation of his translation practices in "Choon Yang" we conclude that he tried to translate its literary language very faithfully though he could not avoid inevitable loss caused by the cultural difference involved in two languages. Gale's "Choon Yang" contributed to introducing the uniqueness of the classical Korean novel and Korean culture to the world more than any other English translation works of that time through his faithful translation.