• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.15-28
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• 2009

This study focused on the comprehension of texts written either in Korean script (Hangul) or Chinese script (Hanja). For this purpose, we measured the reading time and the correct response in text comprehension tasks with 104 Korean-Chinese children who were either 10 or 19 years old. There was a main effect of script : The reading time of Hanja texts was shorter than that of Hangul or Hangul Hanja mixed texts. But the older subjects who spent the same reading time in both Hangul and Hanja texts showed the longer reading time in Hangul Hanja mixed texts revealing the interaction between age and script. The correct response rate on the comprehension task was the highest in Hangul text. The results were discussed in relation to the independent dual language processing systems in Korean-Chinese.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.362-371
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate difficulties in using prosodic information to identify the meaning of ambiguous sentences in children with high functioning autism (HFA). Fifteen high functioning autistic children and fifteen children who matched their chronological age (CA) participated in this study. We compared the performance of the two groups by conducting syntactically and affectively ambiguous sentence comprehension (SASC and AASC) tasks. The results of this study show that in both tasks, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant at each condition and the performance of high functioning autistic children was significantly lower. In a correlation analysis of major variables, children who matched CA showed a correlation between prosody-only (PO) and AASC, while children with HFA showed a correlation between PO and MO (morpheme-only). Children with HFA used grammatical morpheme information to understand general sentences. We found that the ability to use prosodic information in children with HFA is significantly lower than that of normally developed children. Considering the relevance of prosody to linguistic, non-linguistic and emotional aspects of communication, improving prosodic perception is thought to be a way to mediate deficits in the comprehension of ambiguous sentences in children with HFA.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.127-134
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to present evidence for a particular processing approach based on the language-specific characteristics of Korean. To compare individuals' sentence-comprehension abilities, this study measured the accuracy and reaction times (RT) of 12 aphasic patients (AP) and 12 normal controls (NC) during a sentence-picture matching task. Four versions of a sentence were constructed with the two types of voice (active/passive) and two types of word order (agent-first/patient-first). To examine the effects of increased processing demand, picture stimuli were manipulated in such a way that they appeared immediately after the sentence was presented. As expected, the AP group showed higher error rates and longer RT for all conditions than the NC group. Furthermore, Korean speakers with aphasia performed above a chance level in sentence comprehension, even with passive sentences. Aphasics understood sentences more quickly and accurately when they were given in the active voice and with agent-first order. The patterns of the NC group were similar. These results confirm that Korean adults with aphasia do not completely lose their knowledge of sentence comprehension. When the processing demand was increased by delaying the picture stimulus onset, the effect of increased processing demands on RT was more pronounced in the AP than in the NC group. These findings fit well with the idea that the computational system for interpreting sentences is intact in aphasics, but its ability is compromised when processing demands increase.

• Child Studies in Asia-Pacific Contexts
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.47-63
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to develop a screening test for children at risk of reading underachievement and to investigate the effectiveness of the early-stage intervention program. In the first part of the study, we recruited 155 elementary first grade students for a screening test. Phonological deletion, digit naming, object naming, and sound-letter correspondence knowledge of a screening test, all assessed at the beginning of the school year, predicted the reading ability at the end of the school year. In the second part of the study, we analyzed the difference in the reading ability between fourteen children who participated in the intervention program and eighteen non-participating children. Reading ability was assessed by evaluating word recognition, oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and pseudo-word recognition. The reading ability of intervention group improved more compared to control group, and the difference between two groups accentuated over time. However, final analysis conducted in November revealed that two groups did not differ significantly in oral reading fluency. This suggests that, unlike word recognition and comprehension, fluency might not dramatically improve in a short period.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.163-175
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• 2001

This study investigated the effect on children's literacy of teacher-child discussion about the contents of storybooks. The subjects were 10 experimental and 10 control 5-year-old kindergarten children in Cheongju. The experimental design was the Split Plot design. The research instruments used for pre- and post-tests were the Vocabulary Decoding Competence Test(Lee, 1998), Writing Competence Test(Lee & Lee, 1990), Story Comprehension Competence Test(Lee, 1998; Morrow, 1990), and the Emergent Reading Ability Judgements for Favorite Storybooks(Sulzby, 1985). Data were analyzed by ANOVA with repeated measures. Results showed that the teacher-child discussions about the contents of storybooks were effective for improving children's competence in decoding vocabulary, writing, and story comprehension but not for improving emergent reading ability.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.165-172
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• 2000

This study was focused on finding an effective way for improving English listening ability of students. who are majoring in Office Automation at Dong Seoul College, In order to achieve the best method, the study was to investigate the theories and the teaching techniques of listening comprehension approach. In this regard, Toeic tests were conducted. and the results were analized. This study suggests that various listening experiences should be given to the students to achieve the ultimate goal of listening comprehension for communication.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.649-667
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• 2015

This study handled underachievement issue of gifted students by developing and validating educational programs as a solution, or relief, of their academic underachievement problems. The proposed educational program was designed to enhancing reading comprehension ability of gifted students with underachievement. Based on comprehensive literature review, this study found that key issues of underachievement have to do with learning strategy, and also that learning strategy was established as 'reading comprehension strategy.' Considering diverse reading comprehension models and strategies suggested by preceding studies, the reading comprehension strategy program in Korean was customized for underachieving gifted students on the middle school level. The effectiveness of the reading comprehension strategy program as a solution to underachievement of gifted students was explored by applying the developed program to 36 identified students after school twice a week for 6 weeks, conducting pre- and post-tests that were selected to measure their reading comprehension abilities, collecting their academic achievement data before and after the intervention by this study, and interviewing students. As the results of this study, reading metacognition ability, reading comprehension skills, and school grades of gifted students with underachievement were meaningfully improved as a group. On the individual level, 12 identified students, exactly one third of the whole group of underachieving gifted students, showed so improved academic achievement as we can say they overcame underachievement based on the Supplee's definition.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.25-38
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• 2021

Objective : This study aimed to establish an analytic methodology that can objectively evaluate the proverb comprehension levels that vary based on the aging process. Method : This study recruited 70 normal elderly aged ≥ 65 years and performed proverb comprehension tasks using an explanation method. A scoring estimation method was designed on 3 and 5-point scales. The difficulty and discrimination levels were calculated based on the two scales, thereby selecting the final questions and evaluation scale. Results : First, the item discrimination index on the 5-point scale was relatively higher than that on the 3-point scale, and 10 items were finally selected. Second, in terms of proverb comprehension ability, the elderly group aged 70 ~ 84 years showed significantly lower performance than those aged 65 ~ 69 years. Additionally, subjects with ≥ 10 years of education showed significantly higher performance than those with 9 ≤ years of education. Third, the performance of the proverbs comprehension task negatively correlated with the reaction time of the executive function task. Conclusion : Proverb comprehension is a task that can distinctively show a deterioration of brain functions in line with the aging process even among the normal elderly group and therefore, can estimate the difference more effectively with an increase in the score of the evaluation scale.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.235-252
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• 2000

This study investigated the effects of story making activity with wordless picture books on the language abilities of 5- and 6-year-old children. The 52 subjects attending a kindergarten in Kwangju were randomly assigned to an experimental group or a control group of 26 children each. The experimental group made stories with wordless picture books while the control group listened to stories. Experimental treatments were given twice a week for 6 weeks. Assessment was by The Language Comprehension-Cognition Test(1994), The Picture Vocabulary Test(1995), and The Sentence-Comprehension Test(1996). Qualitative level of the stories was analyzed by Morrow's(1985) revised Instrument Assessing Children Understanding of Stories(Chae, 1996). The vocabulary, language-comprehension, and story-composing ability of children who made stories with wordless picture books were higher than those of children who listened to stories told by teachers.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.185-191
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• 2001

This study was designed to determine what components of spoken language have been relatively neglected in the teaching of listening comprehension in Korea and to suggest a model of listening process. Two types of tests were undertaken using spoken and written forms of English with secondary school teachers of English and college students. Findings: Hearing power has been generally neglected in the teaching of listening comprehension. Hearing power which can be thought as an active process is defined as an ability to transfer the sequence of discrete phonetic segments without word boundary into the sequence of words in phonemic representations by using both nonlinguistic factors and linguistic factors including perception rules based on phonetics and phonology. Vocabularies, hearing-speaking power, syntactic structures and idiomatic expressions are to be taught for spoken English. A model of listening process was suggested and discussed.