• Language Facts and Perspectives
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• v.48
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• pp.33-59
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• 2019

In this paper, I analyzed the usage patterns of Chinese Korean learners in the Korean learners' corpus. To this purpose, I compared NIKL learners' corpus 674,553 words with the native speakers' corpus 1,055,790 words. According to the analysis, Chinese Korean learners used about 28 more adverbs per 1,000 words than native Korean in their writing. And Chinese Korean learners have either overused or underused the high frequency adverbs, the degree of overuse was stronger than underuse. And compared to native speakers, they lacked the diversity of the use of adverbs. From this corpus analysis, we were able to identify the characteristics of Chinese Korean learners' use of adverbs. Korean learners overused adverbs such as '너무, 아주'and modal adverbs '정말, 진짜'to reinforce their own discourse, and they also used a lot of mimetic adverbs due to the influence of teaching. In addition, through the analysis of the learners' corpus, we were able to identify problems with the use of adverbs by Chinese Korean learners. Chinese Korean learners should try to expand available adverbs and diversify their choice of adverbs in their composition. And they should also develop the recognition of written and spoken registers when selecting adverbs.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.61-85
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• 2006

The purpose of the present study is to compare Korean EFL learners' speech corpus (i.e. oral productions) with their composition corpus (i.e. written productions). Four college students participated in the study. The composition corpus was collected through a writing assignment, and the speech corpus was gathered by audio-taping their oral presentations. The results of the data analysis indicate that (i) As for error frequency, young adult low-intermediate Korean EFL learners showed high frequency in determiners (mostly, indefinite articles), vocabulary (mostly, semantic errors), and prepositions. The frequency order did not show much difference between the speech corpus and the composition corpus; and (ii) When comparing the oral productions with the written productions, there were not many differences between them in terms of the contents, a style (i.e., colloquial vs. literary), vocabulary selection, and error types and frequency. Therefore, it is assumed that the proficiency in oral presentation of EFL learners at this learning stage heavily depends on how much/how well they are able to write. In other words, EFL learners' writing and speaking skills are closely co-related. It implies that the teacher does not need to separate teaching how to speak from teaching how to write. The teacher may use the same methods or strategies to help the learners improve their English speaking and writing skills. Furthermore, it will be more effective to teach writing before speaking since they have more opportunities to write than speak in the EFL contexts.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.477-490
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• 2024

This study identifies the vocabulary usage patterns of Korean heritage language learners. We analyzed the interlanguage of the Korean heritage language learners and examined their vocabulary usage patterns, especially the major content keywords being used at their respective proficiency levels. The Korean Learner's Corpus from the National Institute of Korean Language is used for the data analysis. We found that as the heritage language learners' proficiency increases, low-frequency (high-level) vocabulary is often used as the keywords and the semantic vocabulary areas expand from daily to social to specialized fields. It is therefore confirmed that the vocabulary use of Korean heritage language learners develops as their proficiency increases. This study confirms the development of Korean vocabulary in Korean heritage language learners and exemplifies how corpus-based applied linguistic research and computer science can be integrated using a keyword extraction algorithm.

• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.83-102
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• 2004

The purpose of this paper is to find out some major characteristics of intermediate-advanced Korean learners' English by corpus- linguistically analyzing their essays in comparison with native speakers'. We construct a corpus of CBT TOEFL essays by Korean learners, NNS1 (94076 words in 402 texts), and its sub-corpus, NNS2 (14291 words in 45 texts), and then a corpus of model essays written or meticulously edited by native speakers, NS (14833 words in 35 texts). We compare NNS1 and NNS2 with NS, and with some other corpora, in terms of high-frequency words, and show that Korean learners' writings have more features of informal writing than those of formal writing, which is in accord with the reports in Granger (1998) that EFL writings by European advanced learners are characterized by informality.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.177-194
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• 2011

This study examines the use of discourse markers in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of discourse markers in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of discourse markers in the learners' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The results indicate that discourse markers are useful interactional devices to structure and organize discourse. EFL learners are found to display more frequent use of referentially and cognitively functional discourse markers and a relatively rare use of other markers. Native speakers are found to use a wider variety of discourse markers for different functions. Suggestions are made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them become more interactionally competent speakers.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.91-106
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• 2010

This study examines the use of hedges in cross-cultural communication between EFL learners in an e-learning environment. The study analyzes the use of hedges in a corpus of an interactive web with a bulletin board system through which college students of English at Japanese and Korean universities interacted with each other discussing the topics of local and global issues. It compares the use of hedges in the students' corpus to that of a native English speakers' corpus. The result shows that EFL learners tend to use relatively smaller number of hedges than the native speakers in terms of the frequencies of the total tokens. It further reveals that the learners' overuse of a single versatile high-frequency hedging item, I think, results in relative underuse of other hedging devices. This indicates that due to their small repertoire of hedges, EFL learners' overuse of a limited number of hedging items may cause their speech or writing to become less competent. Based on the result and interviews with the learners, the study also argues that hedging should be understood in its social contexts and should not be understood just as a lack of conviction or a mark of low proficiency. Suggestions were made for using computer corpora in understanding EFL learners' language difficulties and helping them develop communicative and pragmatic competence.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.433-442
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to reveal the Korean learners' usage pattern of '의', the genitive particle, according to semantic classification, so that it can be referred to in determining the contents and methods of related education. The method of this study adopts a quantitative analysis using learners corpus established by National Institute of Korean Language. As a result of the analysis, as proficiency increases, the overall frequency of '의' increases and the number of meaning senses used increases. However, the frequency of errors also increases with it. As for the usage pattern of each sense, the meaning of 'ownership, belonging' is the most frequent, and followed by 'acting entity', 'kinship, social relations', and 'relationship(area)'. In conclusion, the meanings of 'acting subjects' and 'relationships(area) need to be supplemented with explicit education. Other meanings need to be discussed, and decisions should be made in consideration of learning purpose and proficiency.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.11
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• pp.1019-1029
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• 2014

In recent years, researchers have become increasingly interested in the creation and pedagogical use of English learner corpora. Many studies have shown that learner corpora can not only make a significant contribution to second language acquisition research but also contribute to the construction and evaluation of language tests by advancing our understanding of English learners. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the Korean EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' corpus. The Yonsei English Learner Corpus (YELC 2011) is a specialized, monolingual, and synchronic Korean EFL learner corpus that was developed by Yonsei University from 2011 to 2012. Over 3,000 Korean high school graduates (or equivalents) who were accepted by Yonsei University for their further studies participated in this project. It consists of 6,572 written texts (1,085,828 words) at nine different English proficiency levels. In this paper, we describe its compilation, and more specifically, how we have corpusized from a text archive to a corpus. After introducing the process of corpusization, we report arresting insights into the specific linguistic features that different proficiency levels of Korean learners of English have. This study also discusses the potential use of the YELC 2011 which is now freely available for research purposes.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.29-33
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• 2005

This study aims to establish a speech corpus for Korean as a foreign language (L2 Korean Speech Corpus, L2KSC) and to examine the aspects of the foreign learners acquisition of the phonetic and phonological systems in the Korean Language. In the first year of this project, L2KSC will be established through the process of reading list organizing, recording, and slicing, and the second year includes an in-depth study of the aspects of foreign learners Korean acquisition and a contrastive analysis of phonetic and phonological systems. The expectation is that this project will provide significant bases for a variety of fields such as Korean education, academic research, and technological development of phonetic information.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.239-265
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• 2010

This study investigates the effects of corpus-based vocabulary tasks on the acquisition of English vocabulary in an attempt to explore the influence of corpus use on EFL pedagogy. For this to be realized, a total of 40 Korean high school students participated in the study over a 4-week period. An experimental group used a set of corpus-based tasks for vocabulary learning, whereas a control group carried out a traditional task (i.e., the L1-L2 translation) for vocabulary learning. To assess learning gains, the students were asked to complete the pre- and post-treatment tests measuring the word form, meaning, and use aspects of target lexical items. Results of the study indicate that in the experimental group the corpus-based vocabulary tasks were beneficial for the learning of word forms and use. In particular, corpus-based benefits were greatest in the low-proficiency EFL learners' collocational aspects of vocabulary use. On the other hand, in the control group, the traditional vocabulary tasks benefited the meaning aspects of target vocabulary items the most. In addition, survey results revealed that most students were positive about the corpus-based learning experience although some expressed reservations about the heavy cognitive load and the time-consuming nature of the analysis of corpus data primarily due to learners' lack of language proficiency.