An Empirical Study on the Authenticity of Item for Testing Advanced Korean Language Learner’s Comprehension of News Headline in Reading Section of TOPIK

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to verify the authenticity of items for testing Korean language learners’ comprehension of news headlines in reading section of TOPIK, and to present some proposals for improving the authenticity of items. The 84 items for testing advanced Korean language learners’ comprehension of news headlines are extracted from the reading section of 39 kinds of TOPIK. And then, the authenticity of 84 news headlines is investigated on the semantic structure, theme, lexical expression, ending form, and punctuation mark or symbol based on the 683 Internet news headlines extracted from the Internet portal site, NAVER. Through an analysis on the authenticity of news headlines in TOPIK, a couple of differences between the news headlines in TOPIK and the Internet news headlines are found as follows: (1) The cause-effect structures as semantic structure of news headlines are used the most in TOPIK, but the composite structures are used the most in Internet. (2) The themes of news headlines in TOPIK are not as various as them in Internet. (3) Numbers, direct quotations, and proper nouns are used a lot in Internet, while idiomatic expressions are used a lot in TOPIK. (4) The roots of words are used the most as an ending form of news headlines in TOPIK as well as Internet. Meanwhile, connective endings are used the most in TOPIK. On the other hand, final endings are used the most in Internet. (5) Commas are used the most in TOPIK, while ellipses are used the most in Internet.