• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.27-33
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• 2015

Background: Since November 2012, some of over-the-counter (OTC) medications have been sold in convenience store without pharmacist' s supervision. We purposed to examine if the product labels of OTCs provide sufficient information that is appropriate for consumers who may have low health literacy. Methods: We compared the difficulty of words that are utilized in pharmaceutical product labels of interest (intervention) with those in the $6^{th}$ grade textbook (control). Pharmaceutical products of interest were comprised of 13 OTCs which have been sold currently in convenience stores. We grouped words into the 4 levels of difficulty based on the Korean Vocabulary Classification for Education, and statistically tested words frequency in each level between OTCs and control. Results: The 13 OTC labels included lay language (easier or equal to language used in primary school) about 10% less; professional language about 10% more (p < 0.001 in all). Labels for analgesics had the longest and most difficult information, followed by common cold preparations, muscle pain relievers as plaster or cataplasma and digestives. Conclusion: The 13 OTC labels might fail to provide appropriate information for safety use by consumers in terms of the difficulty level of words. The improvement of labels of OTC medications and consumer education strategies are called for safety use of OTC medications sold in convenience stores.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.181-191
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to suggest a direction for efficient teaching and learning idiomatic expressions in Korean to improve the vocabulary of Korean language learners. In order to make learning more interesting and enhance learning effectiveness for Korean language learners, the drama, , which was popular in Korea, was used as educational material. Since idomatic language is formed and used based on Korean history, culture, and social background, dramas containing Korean culture and sentiments can be said to be suitable materials for the teaching and learning of Korean idiomatic expressions. By analyzing the drama , 277 significant vocabularies were extracted from the drama based on vocabulary actually used. Among these, 124 idiomatic expressions were extracted after excluding overlapping expressions. Idiomatic expressions extracted in this way were classified based on vocabulary used more than 2 times. In addition, in order to select idiomatic expressions suitable for the level of the learners, 46 final expressions for Korean language education were selected considering the difficulty of vocabulary. Lastly, when the materials selected in the drama were used for education, the precautions for teaching and learning, and the direction of education on idiomatic language were classified into elementary, intermediate, and advanced grades and presented.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.508-512
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• 2003

In 2000, the economy of Asia made a V-character type recovery from the currency and financial crisis in 1997. The increase in exports is assumed to be one of the causes. To negotiate with foreign countries, English must be indispensable in many cases. In this study, we investigated how English education is performed in East Asian countries while focusing on English textbooks. We metrically analyzed some textbooks used junior high schools and high school in Japan and Korea, and elementary schools in China and Singapore to compare them with U.S.A and U.K textbook. We investigated some characteristics of character-and word-appearance of English textbook using an exponential function. Moreover we derived the degree of difficulty far each material through the variety of words and their frequency on the basis of the required English vocabulary in Japanese junior high schools. As a result we could show at which level of U.S.A. or U.K the English textbooks used in East Asian countries are.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.209-235
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• 2005

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching procedure for improving Korean college students' reading comprehension of English text. In particular, this study sought to explore the qualitative features, if any, in students' use of reading comprehension strategies presented in the process of Reciprocal Reading Procedure (RRP). In order to accomplish the goal of the study, transcripts of the students' dialogues, open-ended questionnaires, and researchers' observation notes were examined. The results of the study showed that the participants used different four kinds of reading strategies in the process of RRP (questioning, clarifying, predicting, summarizing). The findings also suggested that the readers with limited knowledge of vocabulary had difficulty in moving on to the next level. Additionally, future research direction and some pedagogical implications are presented for the practical EFL classroom.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.363-371
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to analyze the level of Earth science vocabularies in the 10th grade textbooks with the Science Word Analysis (SWA) program and to investigate the vocabularies selected by the 10th grade students as difficult ones. For this purpose, we extracted the Earth science vocabularies from eleven textbooks, and classified into scientific and non-scientific vocabularies with the SWA program based on the standard Korean language dictionary. In addition, we investigated the difficulty of each vocabulary by surveying five hundred sixty students with a questionnaire. Results showed that the frequency of the scientific vocabularies that were beyond the designated level was the largest among any other levels in all textbooks. Most of the vocabularies selected by students as difficult ones to understand were classified into out of the level. From these results, it were suggested that the students' cognitive level should be considered when developing science textbooks and difficult vocabularies should be replaced with easy ones without a change of meaning.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.63-86
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• 2017

This research aims to evaluate the effects and the shortcomings of strategies for teaching paraphrasing to foreign university students. For this study, the effects of teaching paraphrasing skills on student's academic writing was investigated through the assessment of pre- and post-test writing tasks and through a focus group interview. The teaching of paraphrasing was divided into 3 instructional sessions and the focus group interview was conducted at the end of the last session. After each instructional session three trained assessors evaluated the outcomes of pre and post task writings; the in-depth focus group interviews were conducted on seven of the students in order to define better positive effects as well as shortcomings. By comparing the scores of pre- and post-task assignments it is possible to affirm that there is a meaningful difference for overall scores; moreover, in an analysis conducted on each single sub-element of the paraphrasing skill, it emerged that except for "task completion", all other four elements of "structure", "understanding core content", "change of expression" and "academic expressions" showed a statistically significant improvement in performance. On the other hand, as a result of the focus group interview, it was possible to individuate as main shortcomings insufficient vocabulary knowledge, poor overall comprehension of the reference material, lack of practice and difficulty in connect sentences organically. It is possible to consider these elements as limiting factors in understanding the reference material and making correct citations by the students. Therefore, we suggest as supplementary instructional strategies a deeper attention to the difficulty level of the text, the introduction of devices to understand better the content of the reference material and an integrated practice of the paraphrasing skill.

• Journal of Korean language education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2017

This article explores the developmental history of TOPIK over the last 20 years and its recent trends. Over the last two decades, TOPIK underwent two major systematic reforms, achieving both quantitative and qualitative growth over the course of its 52 testing sessions. TOPIK has utilized a six-level evaluation system from its inception to the present. The evaluation system was amended from the earlier six-test set - whereby each level corresponded with a separate test (1997~2005: the $1^{st}{\sim}9^{th}$) - to the three-test set (2006~2014: the $10^{th}{\sim}34^{th}$), and finally to the two-test set (2014~present: the $35^{th}{\sim}42^{nd}$). In the earlier exams, abilities in Vocabulary Grammar, Writing, Listening, and Reading were assessed. However, beginning with the $35^{th}$ TOPIK, abilities in Listening, Reading, and Writing (only in TOPIK II) were assessed and the evaluation of the writing section was changed to a task-based process, improving TOPIK into a more qualified analysis of proficiency. Over the last 20 years, the number of countries TOPIK is administered in has greatly increased from 4 to 73 countries, and the annual number of test-takers has also significantly increased from 2,692 to 250,141. The distribution of proficiency levels of the test-takers has shifted over time - initially "Beginner>Intermediate>Advanced" in the earlier exams, to "Intermediate>Advanced>Beginner" after the mid 2000s - as the number of those studying the Korean language for specific purposes and continuing education increased. Test-takers have indicated a shift in their purpose for taking the exam, initially citing "to assess proficiency" and more recently selecting "to study abroad," and this could also correlate with changes in the proportion of test-takers' proficiency level. In general, 85~95% of beginner, 50~65% of intermediate, and 45~60% of advanced test applicants passed the respective proficiency level. To date, no practices have yet been implemented to standardize the difficulty level longitudinally across test sets.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.87-102
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to analyze vocabularies used the section of 'Living Earth' in 11-grade Earth science textbooks with the Science Word Analysis (SWA) program and to investigate the vocabularies selected by the 11th grade students as difficult ones. For the purpose, we extracted the Earth science vocabularies from six textbooks, and classified into the scientific and non-scientific vocabularies with SWA program based on the standard Korean language dictionary. Also, we investigated the difficulty of each vocabulary by using questionnaire to three hundred sixty students. From the results analyzed with the program, it was found that the frequency of the scientific vocabularies out of the level was the largest any other level in all textbooks. And from the survey, most of the vocabularies selected by students as difficult to understand were classified into out of the level. From these results, it were suggested that the students' cognitive level should be considered in developing science textbooks and difficult vocabularies should be replaced to easy ones within the limits of changeless in the meanings.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.45-53
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• 2018

Recently, studies about bilingual word embedding have been gaining much attention. However, bilingual word embedding with Korean is not actively pursued due to the difficulty in obtaining a sizable, high quality corpus. Local embeddings that can be applied to specific domains are relatively rare. Additionally, multi-word vocabulary is problematic due to the lack of one-to-one word-level correspondence in translation pairs. In this paper, we crawl 868,163 paragraphs from a Korean-English law corpus and propose three mapping strategies for word embedding. These strategies address the aforementioned issues including multi-word translation and improve translation pair quality on paragraph-aligned data. We demonstrate a twofold increase in translation pair quality compared to the global bilingual word embedding baseline.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.603-612
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to allow beginner level English learners to experience the English speaking task using pictures, and to analyze the meanings of the experience using a phenomenological research method. As research participants, 10 freshmen majoring in Power Generation Facilities at Korean Polytechnic University in Gangwon-do were selected. Face-to-face interviews and SNS were used for data collection, and Colaizzi's research method was adopted for data analysis. As a result of the analysis, 9 themes, 4 theme clusters, and 2 categories were derived. The results are as follows. First, the participants were able to find hope that they could speak English at their own level through the English speaking task using pictures. Second, they stated that the effect of the visual medium of painting increased concentration and curiosity and lowered anxiety. Third, it was recognized that self-confidence, a speaker like a native speaker, and quickness of speaking improved due to familiarity with speaking English. Fourth, the biggest difficulty in the English speaking task was vocabulary. So, they felt the limitation in explaining the picture, and they were having a lot of trouble in translating Korean words into English words. Finally, through the results of this study, the effect of the medium of picture was confirmed, and necessary future studies were suggested.