• 제목/요약/키워드: difficulty of learners

검색결과 178건 처리시간 0.028초

Vocabulary Size of Korean EFL University Learners: Using an Item Response Theory Model

  • Lee, Yongsang;Chon, Yuah V.;Shin, Dongkwang
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제18권1호
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    • pp.171-195
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    • 2012
  • While noticing that there is insufficient interest in the assessment of EFL learners' vocabulary levels or sizes, the researchers developed two tests identical in form (Forms A and B) to assess the lexical knowledge of Korean university learners at the $1^{st}{\sim}10^{th}$ 1,000 word bands by adapting a pre-established vocabulary levels test (VLT). Of equal concern was to investigate if the VLT was equally a valid and reliable instrument to be used on measuring the lexical knowledge of EFL learners. The participants were 804 university freshmen enrolled in a General Education English Course from four different colleges. The learners were asked to respond to either Form A or B. While scores generally fell towards the lower frequency bands, multiple regression found the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) to be a significant variable for predicting the learners' vocabulary sizes. From a methodological perspective, however, noticeable differences between Forms A and B could be found with item response theory analysis. The findings of the study provide suggestions on how future VLT for testing EFL learners may have to be redesigned.

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The Effects of Information Volume and Distribution on Cognitive Load and Recall: Implications for the Design of Mobile Marker-less Augmented Reality

  • LIM, Taehyeong;BONG, Jiyae;KANG, Ji Hei;DENNEN, Vanessa
    • Educational Technology International
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    • 제20권2호
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    • pp.137-168
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    • 2019
  • This study examined the effects of information volume and distribution on learners' cognitive load and recall in a mobile augmented reality (AR) environment. Information volume refers to the degree of information users are provided in a learning task, while information distribution indicates the way in which information is distributed, either in a virtual or real format. Sixteen undergraduate students participated in the study, which employed a 2 × 3 randomized block factorial design with repeated measures. Information volume and distribution were independent variables, and factors in learners' cognitive load (mental effort, perceived ease of use, and perceived task difficulty) and recall test scores were the dependent variables. Information volume had significant main effects on perceived ease of use and task difficulty, and recall test scores, while information distribution had significant main effects on perceived task difficulty and test scores. A detailed discussion and implications are provided.

수준별 어휘 조정에 따른 한국어 읽기 텍스트 이해도 비교 연구 (A Comparative Study on Korean Reading Comprehension by Adjusting Vocabulary Levels)

  • 주재환
    • 한국어교육
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    • 제29권4호
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    • pp.201-223
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    • 2018
  • The purpose of this study is to observe the effects of text modification by comparing differences in Korean reading comprehension levels that arise from differences in vocabulary levels in texts. This study intends to use simplified texts with the vocabulary difficulty adjusted differently from the original text to measure reading comprehension levels of Korean learners and analyze the result. To measure reading comprehension, the researcher divided 55 Korean learners of intermediate to advanced level of fluency into two groups; the control group read the original text and the treatment group read a simplified text in which complex vocabulary were substituted with easier words of medium difficulty. Then the two groups were tested with the same questionnaire to measure comprehension levels of each group. The result showed that the groups that read simplified texts scored higher than the control group; this suggests that the reading comprehension level was increased in the treatment group. The experiment confirmed that unknown vocabulary density has direct impact on Korean reading comprehension. The result shows that the proportion of unknown vocabulary should be reduced for meaning-focused reading. It also demonstrates that comprehension of the learner was enhanced with lexical simplification rather than structural simplification i.e. simplification of grammar or sentences. Thus, diverse reading materials adjusted to the learners' level of fluency should be developed to enable reading for learning Korean. By reducing the burden of understanding the meaning of each vocabulary, learners will be able to achieve the initial goal of reading.

Learners' Sociolinguistic Behavior: In Search of Four Major Sources of Pragmatic Errors

  • 서재석
    • 영어어문교육
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    • 제7권1호
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    • pp.35-48
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    • 2001
  • One of the areas of second language acquisition that enjoyed popularity in recent years is interlanguage pragmatics. The main reason for this popularity lies in the critical role of pragmatic competence in appropriate use of a target language. The aim of this paper was to examine L2 learners' pragmatic behavior in their speech act performance and determine main sources causing pragmatic difficulty. Four major sources of pragmatic errors were identified: linguistic proficiency, L1 transfer, waffling and teaching activities. Each source was discussed with empirical evidence in some detail, and teaching suggestions were provided for developing learners' pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms.

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Information Structure and the Use of the English Existential Construction in Korean Learner English

  • Lee, Hanjung
    • 영어영문학
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    • 제57권6호
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    • pp.1017-1041
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    • 2011
  • This study investigates Korean EFL learners' awareness and use of the English existential there-construction by examining data collected from 54 Korean EFL learners of English by means of a pragmalinguistic judgment task and a controlled discourse completion task. The results of the judgment task reveal that lower proficiency learners rated canonical sentences and existentials with a preposed locative best in the communicative situations where the use of existentials would have been most appropriate. A comparison of the ratings by more proficient learners and native speakers shows that existentials received highest ratings by both groups where they are the most natural option, while canonical sentences received significantly higher ratings by the learners. With regard to the production data, learners tended to avoid existentials, but rather relied on canonical sentences. Existentials were rarely used by lower proficiency learners and not used productively even by more proficient learners in the situations where existentials would have been the most natural option. These results suggest that Korean learners' difficulty with the use of existentials is not merely a product of performance limitations, but attributable to limited knowledge about existentials and their syntactic alternatives in terms of contextual appropriateness. Lower proficiency learners lack such knowledge, and more proficient learners, while showing better awareness of the use of existentials, have problems as to the placement of new information when engaging in writing tasks that place lower level of demands on attention to the information status of noun phrases compared to communicative, oral tasks.

비전공자를 대상으로 한 프로그래밍 수업에서 동질적 학습 집단 구성을 위한 사례 분석 (Case analysis for constructing a homogeneous learning group in programming lessons for non-specialists)

  • 이경숙
    • 디지털융복합연구
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    • 제17권12호
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    • pp.59-65
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    • 2019
  • 본 연구는 비전공생 대상의 프로그래밍 교육에서 중·소규모의 학생 수로 구성된 학습에서도 학습 성취도를 높일 수 있는 방안으로 동질적 학습 집단 구성의 필요성을 제안하기 위하여 진행되었다. 학부전공별 수업이 진행되고 있는 현실에서 이러한 집단구성이 학습자를 동질 집단으로 분류할 수 있는 요인인지 살펴보았다. 학습내용의 난이도는 동질 집단을 분류하는 요인에 영향을 미칠 것으로 보고, 난이도가 쉬운 중간성취도와 기말성취도를 나누어 요인을 분석하였다. 또한 난이도와 상관없이 학기내 지속적 학습 의지를 갖는데 영향을 끼치는 요인을 분석하기 위해 두 성적간의 차이에 영향을 미치는 요인도 살펴보았다. 학습자의 성별과 학부전공은 학업성취도에 유의미한 영향을 미치지 않았다. 현재 학부전공별로 프로그래밍 수업이 진행되고 있는 수업환경을 재고해볼 필요가 있을 것으로 보인다. 난이도가 쉬운 학습내용의 학업성취도에는 학습자의 개인적동기가 영향을 미쳤고, 난이도가 어려운 학습내용의 학업성취도와 성취도의 유지에는 수행자기효능감이 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다.

중국어를 학습하는 한국어 모국어 화자의 중국어 성조 지각과 산출 (Perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones in Korean learners of Mandarin Chinese)

  • 고성실;최지연
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제12권1호
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    • pp.11-17
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    • 2020
  • 비성조 모국어 화자가 성조 언어를 학습할 때 모국어에 없는 성조 체계 학습에 어려움을 보인다. 본 연구는 비성조 언어인 한국어 모국어 성인 화자가 중국어를 학습할 때 중국어 성조의 지각과 산출에서 어떤 어려움을 보이는지 규명하고자 하였다. 추가적으로 중국어 분절음이 한국어와 유사하지 않을 경우 초분절음인 성조 지각 및 산출에 어려움을 가중시키는지 알아보기 위해 중국어 자음의 한국어 자음과의 유사성을 조작하여 실험을 진행하였다. 실험 결과, 지각과 산출 간 정확도 및 반응시간이 각 성조 별로 차이를 보였다. 즉, 1성과 2성에서는 지각 과제에서 산출 과제에 비해 어려움을 보인 반면 3성에서는 산출 과제에서 지각 과제보다 어려움을 보였다. 오류 패턴 분석 결과, 지각 과제에서 2성과 3성을 서로 혼동을 하는 반면 산출 과제에서는 2성을 3성으로 산출하는 오류는 줄어들고 3성을 2성으로 산출하는 오류가 증가한 것을 보였다. 마지막으로, 한국어 유사성의 조작은 성조의 지각 및 산출에 영향을 주지 않았다.

중국인 학습자의 한국어 모음 습득에 대한 제2언어 습득 모델 비교 연구 (A Comparative Study of Second Language Acquisition Models: Focusing on Vowel Acquisition by Chinese Learners of Korean)

  • 김주연
    • 말소리와 음성과학
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    • 제6권4호
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    • pp.27-36
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    • 2014
  • This study provided longitudinal examination of the Chinese learners' acquisition of Korean vowels. Specifically, I examined the Chinese learners' Korean monophthongs /i, e, ɨ, ${\Lambda}$, a, u, o/ that were created at the time of 1 month and 12 months, tried to verify empirically how they learn by dealing with their mother tongue, and Korean vowels through dealing with pattern of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (henceforth PAM) of Best (Best, 1993; 1994; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the Speech Learning Model (henceforth SLM) of Flege (Flege, 1987; Bohn & Flege, 1992, Flege, 1995). As a result, most of the present results are shown to be similarly explained by the PAM and SLM, and the only discrepancy between these two models is found in the 'similar' category of sounds between the learners' native language and the target language. Specifically, the acquisition pattern of /u/ and /o/ in Korean is well accounted for the PAM, but not in the SLM. The SLM did not explain why the Chinese learners had difficulty in acquiring the Korean vowel /u/, because according to the SLM, the vowel /u/ in Chinese (the native language) is matched either to the vowel /u/ or /o/ in Korean (the target language). Namely, there is only a one-to-one matching relationship between the native language and the target language. In contrast, the Chinese learners' difficulty for the Korean vowel /u/ is well accounted for in the PAM in that the Chinese vowel /u/ is matched to the vowel pair /o, u/ in Korean, not the single vowel, /o/ or /u/.

공과대학생의 질문태도에 따른 학습자 질문 활성화 전략에 대한 인식 비교 (Perception Comparison of Fostering Learner-generated Questions by the Questioning Attitude of Engineering Undergraduate Learners)

  • 정영숙;성지훈
    • 공학교육연구
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    • 제22권3호
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    • pp.49-58
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study is to compare learners' perceptions regarding the processes and the educational effects of fostering learner-generated questions in engineering education according to the questioning attitude of engineering learners. For this, after developing and implementing the appropriate strategies for fostering learner-generated questions in an engineering statistics course, this study analyzed 56 learners' survey responses and used ANOVA to investigate the group differences. The results showed that the educational effects and implications of fostering learner-generated questions were different according to the learners' questioning attitude. The study also confirmed that learners' questioning attitude should be considered as one of the important learner's characteristics in developing and implementing the strategies of fostering learner-generated questions in engineering education. Especially, fostering learner-generated questions produced positive effects on the passive questioning learners but not particularly on the learners who were asking no questions at all in other courses. Learners who asked no questions still have difficulty in generating deep meaningful questions and presenting them and thus require more instructors' strategies and active support for them.

On the Effect of a Pilot Coding Education Support System for Complex Problem Solving Tasks

  • Jeon, Inseong;Song, Ki-Sang
    • International journal of advanced smart convergence
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    • 제7권4호
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    • pp.128-137
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    • 2018
  • In the programming education, there is a great need of a teaching support system that can support the learner in the programming process regardless of the computer language due to instructor's difficulty of checking the progress of learners in real-time. Its importance is especially important in lower grade coding classes such as in K-12 education because they are not used to coding and so simple problems can be regarded as complex problems. For this, a pilot coding education support system based on Levenshtein distance algorithm which shows learners' progress to given solution in real-time was developed in order to help learners to solve complex problems easily, and the learners' motivation and self-efficacy was measured for estimating the usefulness of developed system targeting elementary school students. When the learners use the developed system, it was found that a statistically significant difference appears in the sub-factors of learning motivation compared with traditional class teaching environments. Among the sub-factors of self-efficacy, the efficacy dimension showed statistically significant difference too.