Korean L2 Learners’ Vocabulary Gap between Receptive and Productive Knowledge and the Factors Affecting the Gap

Abstract

The study aims to explore Korean L2 learners’ gap between receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge and the factors affecting it. Taking an individual word-based approach, this research initially screened the participants out so that only the learners who perceived to ‘know’ all the target words were tested. A total of 90 out of 101 university students were tested with 96 questions (adopted from Nation 2001 and created based on Nation 2012). The results of an independent t-test suggest the imbalance of their vocabulary knowledge with smaller productive than receptive knowledge. The results of comparison between the words with production-based learning treatment and the ones without confirm the effectiveness of the production-based learning in order to narrow the receptive-productive gap. The results of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient suggest that the learners with more experience in L2 production had narrower gap between receptive and productive knowledge.