• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.217-234
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• 2006

This study examined variability of gestures and their correlation with vocabulary acquisition in the communication of infants. Subjects were 96 infants, 7 to 24 months of age, residing in Seoul and its vicinity. Instruments were the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (Iverson, et al., 1999) and the MacAuther Communicative Development Inventory-Korean (Bae and Lim, 2002). Data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA and Pearson's Correlation. Results identified monthly changes in types of communicative gesture used by infants: more deictic at younger and more representational at older ages. Deictic gestures were related to size of the receptive vocabulary and size of the whole vocabulary. Representational gestures were related to acquisition of expressive vocabulary, size of the receptive, and size of the whole vocabulary.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.65-71
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether young children with cleft palate differ from those of noncleft typically developing children in terms of expressive vocabulary size, phonological characteristics and lexical selectivity. A total of 12 children with cleft palate and 12 noncleft children who were matched by age and gender participated in the study. The groups were compared by size of expressive vocabulary reported on Korean version of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories and the number of different words, consonant inventory, the percentage of words beginning with obstruents and vowels, nasal, and glottal sounds, and the percentage of words which do not include obstruents in a language sample. Also, correlation analysis were performed to examine the relationship between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics. The results showed that expressive vocabulary size and consonant inventory for children with cleft palate produced significantly smaller than those for noncleft children. Children with cleft palate produced significantly more words beginning with vowel or which do not include obstruents, and fewer words beginning with obstruents than noncleft children. The two groups showed different results on significant correlations between measures on size of expressive vocabulary and phonological characteristics indicating that children with cleft palate show different lexical selectivity from their noncleft peers. The results suggest that children with cleft palate aged 18-30 months demonstrate a slower rate of lexical and phonological development compared with their noncleft peers and they develop lexical selectivity reflecting cleft palate speech. The results will have a clinical implication on speech-language intervention for young children with cleft palates.

• MALSORI
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• no.67
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• pp.181-193
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• 2008

In this paper, we propose a vocabulary coverage improvement method for embedded continuous speech recognition (CSR) using a part-of-speech (POS) tagged corpus. We investigate 152 POS tags defined in Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen (LOB) corpus and word-POS tag pairs. We derive a new vocabulary through word addition. Words paired with some POS tags have to be included in vocabularies with any size, but the vocabulary inclusion of words paired with other POS tags varies based on the target size of vocabulary. The 152 POS tags are categorized according to whether the word addition is dependent of the size of the vocabulary. Using expert knowledge, we classify POS tags first, and then apply different ways of word addition based on the POS tags paired with the words. The performance of the proposed method is measured in terms of coverage and is compared with those of vocabularies with the same size (5,000 words) derived from frequency lists. The coverage of the proposed method is measured as 95.18% for the test short message service (SMS) text corpus, while those of the conventional vocabularies cover only 93.19% and 91.82% of words appeared in the same SMS text corpus.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.1
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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.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.109-126
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• 2007

A sample of 322 18-month-old infants and their mothers were assessed longitudinally at 24 and 30 months. Maternal utterances and styles of linguistic interaction were measured during a 10 minute free play session. Mothers completed a vocabulary checklist for infants. Longitudinal data were analyzed by multilevel modeling. Results indicated that vocabulary increased with age of infants and the growth rate was highly predictable by the size of vocabulary at 18 months. The growth rate was strongly influenced by maternal questioning and feedback. The effect of the maternal linguistic input was constant with age. Gender differences in size of vocabulary did not vary systematically with age.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.12 no.12
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• pp.365-370
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• 2021

The current study aims to investigate the relationship between working memory capacity, vocabulary size, and listening competence of Korean EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. 30 English education majors from a university in Korea were recruited. The backward digit span and the operation span tasks were used to measure the participants' working memory capacity, while the Listening Vocabulary Level Test (LVLT) and the Michigan English Test (MET) were employed to measure their vocabulary size and listening proficiency in English, respectively. The correlational analyses revealed that the bigger one's working memory storage was, the better the person processed incoming input. However, no statistically significant correlation was found between working memory capacity, English vocabulary size, and listening proficiency, possibly due to the small sample size and the homogeneous subjects.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.1-24
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• 2012

It has long been shown that Korean EFL students have not practiced extensive reading in school curriculum. Their vocabulary knowledge is limited and a tool for measuring text readability for them has hardly been developed and used. The study aimed to check the current situations on the above issues and develop a reading framework appropriate for extensive reading within the national English curriculum, including the Readability Formula in Korean EFL contexts (KRF). The study consists of four steps. The study does a survey to check the current Korean EFL situations on the issues, suggests a new vocabulary learning size, develops a readability formula as a tool for measuring text difficulty based on the newly suggested vocabulary size, and finally validates the formula with various kinds of English books, including the primary and secondary school English textbooks. It is expected that this study will provide a model for the vocabulary size and the readability index for extensive reading in EFL contexts.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.125-147
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• 2012

The primary goal of the study was to provide some preliminary validity evidence for the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test (Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education, 2009), which is designed to measure the receptive vocabulary knowledge of learners in L2. For the purpose of the current study, 327 participants at the elementary school participated in the study and were asked to take two different vocabulary tests. Namely, a Vocabulary Size Test (Nation, 2001) and a Vocabulary Grade Levels Test. The data were analyzed using correlation in order to discover the relationship between these two types of tests. Following this, the Rasch analysis was conducted to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement in question. The data analysis showed that both grade separation reliability and item separation reliability were high, indicating that the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test well discriminates learners with a wide range of proficiency levels. The findings of the study are discussed, along with further improvements in order to ascertain the validity of this particular vocabulary test.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.35-50
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• 2010

Joint attention, language development, and the relationship between these two variables were compared in infants from multi-cultural and Korean families. Joint attention was observed in both the Early Social Communication Scale (ESCS) and in infant-mother free play. Language development was evaluated by means of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory-Korean. There were no group differences in initiating and responding to joint attention in ESCS. However, in infant-mother free play, joint attention episodes were less and shorter in duration with infants from multi-cultural families than in Korean infants. The size of both the expressive and receptive vocabulary was also smaller in infants from multi-cultural families than in Korean infants. In terms of Korean infants, mean duration of joint attention episodes in free play showed a significant positive correlation with the size of the expressive vocabulary and initiating joint attention in ESCS also showed a significant positive correlation with the size of receptive vocabulary. However, none of the measures of joint attention indicated a significant relationship with the size of either expressive or receptive vocabulary in infants from multi-cultural families.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1-22
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• 2007

The study examined the effects of explicit derivational morphology instruction (henceforth DMI) on the incidental vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension of 132 Korean 1st-year high school students who responded to a battery of tests (two vocabulary tests and a reading comprehension test). Multiple statistical tools were used to analyze the data: Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Simple Regression Analysis, Tests of Simple Main Effects, and effect size computation using Cohen's d. The results indicated that (a) DMI enhanced students' ability to infer word meanings in context, (b) DMI promoted high proficiency students' reading comprehension, whereas it impeded intermediate proficiency students' reading comprehension, (c) vocabulary knowledge has a strong positive predictive value for reading comprehension, and (d) the gaps of vocabulary knowledge across proficiency levels were still substantial, despite the observation that DMI promoted students' vocabulary acquisition. These results have a bearing on English as Foreign Language (EFL) reading pedagogy.