Korean L2 Research Articles

Lexical Processing of English Derived Words by Korean EFL Learners and NSE

Debate has continued about how L1 speakers process morphologically complex words. Consensus has been divided between single- and dual-route processing models. We conducted lexical decision experiments with a wide variety of English derived words to investigate how Korean EFL learners and L1 English speakers access complex words. First, we show that English prefixed or suffixed words are processed with greater cost than simplex words for both English L1 speakers and EFL learners. Second, suffixed words are processed with faster response times and higher accuracy than prefixed words. Third, complex words are accessed differently in terms of affixal salience according to the individual affixes that belong to the same morphological classes. Finally, the homophony of affixes with dual membership induces Korean EFL learners, not English L1 speakers to process complex words with more difficulty than those with single-membership affixes. These results suggest that derived words are processed via morphological decomposition into stems and affixes whereas simplex words are directly accessed as whole word units, supporting the dual-route processing models. Additionally, this study implies that prefixes are more likely to be parsed from the bases than suffixes. Furthermore, it is suggested that the processing efficiency of derivational words varies according to each affix type, which complements the formal structural theory of lexical morphology. Finally, it is indicated that the confusability of affixes with dual membership hinders the processing of the derivational words.

한국어 단기 유학생의 학습자 변인이 말하기 숙달도 향상에 미치는 영향

한국어 단기 유학생의 학습자 변인이 말하기 숙달도 향상에 미치는 영향

Verb learning and the acquisition of aspect

Abstract Although SLA research has extensively investigated the role of lexical aspect in L2 acquisition of tense-aspect marking, the role of L1 is not yet fully understood. This paper investigates the effect of cross-linguistic variation in lexical aspect and explores how the learning of lexical aspect interacts with the acquisition of aspectual morphology, using oral picture-description and written judgment tasks. 391 learners of Japanese (L1 English, Chinese, and Korean) participated in the study. The results show that L2 learners have problems in rejecting incorrect L2 aspectual structures (but not in accepting correct ones) when such structures involve L1–L2 discrepancy in lexical aspect. The results also confirmed a strong L1 effect at the level of surface inflected verbal form, showing significantly higher accuracy for items for which direct translation yields correct meaning than those that do not. It is argued that L1 transfer may be playing an important role in the L2 acquisition of aspect in that both positive and negative transfer collectively determine the order of acquisition predicted by the Aspect Hypothesis.

Effects of L1 on the voicing of intervocalic voiceless stops and its relation with L2 proficiency

This study investigates the correlation between the proficiency of L2 learners of English and the degree of L1 Korean intervocalic voicing rule transfer on the English intervocalic voiceless stop production by Korean English learners. Korean has a phonological rule that voiceless stops become voiced between vowels (Korean intervocalic voicing rule) but this rule does not apply in English. The aforementioned difference between the phonological rule of the two languages makes it possible to predict that Korean learners with lower L2 proficiency might produce English intervocalic voiceless stops with higher degree of voicing than the learners with higher L2 proficiency. The speech data of Korean L2 learners of English is extracted from GenieSpeeCor, rated and categorized English speech corpus of Korean L2 learners of English production, and the value of intensity drop and closure duration were used as acoustic cues for voicing difference. Alveolar stop is excluded from the data analysis because the flapped /t/ sound is difficult to distinguish from the voiced sound. As a result of the current study, when it comes to the closure duration as an acoustic cue, there was no meaningful statistical relation between learners' L2 proficiency and the degree of intervocalic stops voicing. However, in terms of the intensity drop learners with the highest L2 proficiency showed a lower degree of voicing than the learners with middle and lowest proficiency.This study investigates the correlation between the proficiency of L2 learners of English and the degree of L1 Korean intervocalic voicing rule transfer on the English intervocalic voiceless stop production by Korean English learners. Korean has a phonological rule that voiceless stops become voiced between vowels (Korean intervocalic voicing rule) but this rule does not apply in English. The aforementioned difference between the phonological rule of the two languages makes it possible to predict that Korean learners with lower L2 proficiency might produce English intervocalic voiceless stops with higher degree of voicing than the learners with higher L2 proficiency. The speech data of Korean L2 learners of English is extracted from GenieSpeeCor, rated and categorized English speech corpus of Korean L2 learners of English production, and the value of intensity drop and closure duration were used as acoustic cues for voicing difference. Alveolar stop is excluded from the data analysis because the flapped /...

한국어 교사는 ‘교재의 실제성’을 어떻게 인식하는가?

이 연구의 목적은 한국어 교사의 ‘교재의 실제성’ 인식 양상을 확인하는 것이다. 이를 위해 3인의 고경력 한국어 교사를 대상으로 교재 3권의 실제성을 평정하게 하였다. 실제성 평정은 ‘학습자’, ‘교실상황’, ‘실세계’ 등 3개의 평가 요소로 이루어진 ‘한국어 교재 실제성 평정 척도’를 사용하였다. 점수 차이가 큰 항목을 중심으로 3명의 교사를 대상으로 포커스 그룹 인터뷰를 시행하였다. 그 결과, 교사들은 ‘실세계’, ‘학습자’, ‘교실상황’의 세 축을 중심으로 교재의 실제성을 보다 입체적으로 평정하였으며, 그 과정에서 이들 요소들 간의 긴장과 상대적 가중치 부여 양상, 그리고 세부요소에 대한 해석과 관점의 차이 등을 확인할 수 있었다. 이를 통해 첫째, 교사마다 교재의 실제성을 바라보는 나름의 관점이 정립되어 있으며, 둘째, 실제성에 대한 교사의 기본 관점은 고정되어 있지 않고 평가 대상과 맥락에 따라 조정된다는 점을 확인할 수 있었다. 이러한 연구 결과를 바탕으로 ‘교재의 실제성에 대한 교사의 인식틀’을 구성하여 제안하였다.

Motivation as individual differences and task conditions from a regulatory focus perspective: their effects on L2 Korean speech performance

ABSTRACT The role of individual differences in second language (L2) learning is widely acknowledged; however, how teachers can accommodate individual differences in L2 classrooms receives relatively less attention. Focusing specifically on motivation, this study explores the effectiveness of communicative tasks on Korean L2 speakers’ complexity, accuracy, fluency, and lexical dysfluency. Drawing upon the regulatory focus literature, the tasks were manipulated to emphasize either promotion or prevention motivational processes. Forty-seven participants were randomly assigned to either promotion or prevention task and completed a scale-based questionnaire to assess their overall orientation to instrumentality-promotion/prevention. For data analysis, learners were median-split into promotion and prevention groups based on their responses to the questionnaire items. 2×2 ANOVAs were conducted on linguistic measures to investigate the main and interaction effects of instrumentality-promotion/prevention and task-induced promotion/prevention on L2 task performance. The quantitative findings revealed that instrumentality-prevention had a negative effect on accuracy. However, task-induced promotion/prevention had no main or interaction effects on linguistic performance. Qualitative findings showed that the mismatch between instrumentality-promotion/prevention and task-induced promotion/prevention may distract attention from idea development during task performance. The findings are discussed in terms of pedagogical implications, in particular how to accommodate individual differences when developing teaching materials.

The relative effect of recasts on L2 Korean learners’ accuracy development of two different forms and its relationship with language analytic ability

This study explored the relative effect of recasts on second language (L2) Korean learners’ accuracy development of the object relative clauses (RCs) and the honorific subject–verb (S-V) agreement in Korean and its relationship with language analytic ability (LAA). Forty-five L2 Korean learners participated in the study and five Korean native speakers participated as their dyadic partners. The learners were assigned into the recast group ( n = 27) and the control group ( n = 18). The recast group received recasts to their errors of the target forms from an interlocutor, a native Korean speaker, during their engagement in four communicative activities, but no recasts were provided to the control group. Three language tests (i.e. a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest) to measure accuracy development and a LAA test were applied to both groups. The study found that recasts benefited L2 Korean learners’ accuracy development of both forms, but their effects were not equal: recasts were more effective for the object RCs than the honorific S-V agreement. In addition, the results showed that LAA had a positive effect on the extent to which the learners benefited from recasts.

L1과 L2 언어 간의 영향과 문법난이도의 차이 분석 - 중국어문법능력평가 시험 개발을 위한 분석 -

L1과 L2 언어 간의 영향과 문법난이도의 차이 분석 - 중국어문법능력평가 시험 개발을 위한 분석 -

A Study on the Usage of ‘Adverb+Verb’ Collocation in English with the L2 Korean Students’ Academic Writings

A Study on the Usage of ‘Adverb+Verb’ Collocation in English with the L2 Korean Students’ Academic Writings

On the distribution of English long-distance Wh-movement in complex syntactic conditions by Korean Learners

This article investigates the correlation between avoidance strategies and the activation of English long-distance (LD) wh-movement among L2 Korean learners. To expand the pool of resources that have already been produced and accepted on this subject, this experimental task was carried out in several complicated syntactic conditions such as definiteness and grammatical position, weight of the wh-phrase, and negative barrier. The data were elicited from 30 Korean learners who were divided into high and low-proficiency groups based on their TOEIC scores, with the aim of providing more independent results. This article suggests that L2 learners, in the process of the English LD wh-movement, are ineluctably bound to use avoidance strategies due to the difficulties related to derivational complexity and associated processing pressures.

한국어 모국어 화자의 영어 파생접사 학습 및 사용 오류에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate Korean L1 students’ awareness of L2 English derivational affixes and the relationship between one’s morphological knowledge and overall language proficiency. A total of 150 high school students participated in the study. A diagnostic test was developed to assess their morphological knowledge with a set of high-frequency prefixes and suffixes. The results indicate that the degree of ease and difficulty in acquisition of an affixal morpheme is related to its frequency and compositionality but not with its productivity or uniformity; the acquisition of prefixes appear to differ in function of frequency while that of suffixes is more closely associated with grammatical categories. Korean students show some characteristic error patterns. Most notably, they tend to overgeneralize the prefix in- to a wide range of stems, often producing morphologically ill-formed words. A student’s ability to use suffixes predicts the student’s overall English proficiency to a significant degree, but no such relationship is found between one’s knowledge of prefixes and proficiency. Since Korean students can hardly notice and acquire L2 English derivational morphology only on the basis of natural input, explicit instructional interventions and consciousness raising seem to be necessary.

The Role of Auditory Perceptual Simulation in L2 Syntactic Processing

Auditory perceptual simulation (APS) reading is a virtual auditory representation of other speakers reading out a text. A previous L1 study showed that native speakers of English using APS reading read faster and more accurately. This study investigated whether using a similar paradigm can enhance L2 learners’ weak syntactic processing with more salient prosodic information. In eye-tracking experiments, L2 Korean learners of English, with or without APS-manipulation, read experimental sentences that employed the plausibility effect, such as The cat that the mouse chased was fast. The plausibility effect would occur when the participants properly established the structural relation and disappear when they overcame the difficulty with accurate syntactic interpretations. The results demonstrated that the APS-reading group showed larger plausibility effect at the critical region during the initial processing, but smaller plausibility effect during the late processing. The APS group detected the implausibility of the sentence earlier than the control group and had less difficulty accurately parsing the structure. This finding suggests that APS reading can improve L2 learners’ syntactic processing, as it does in L1 processing, by facilitating their prosodic representations.

L1 and L2 Korean Evidential Use: Using the Discourse Completion Task (DCT)

본 연구는 한국어 원어민(L1) 화자와 비원어민(L2) 화자의 직접 경험, 전문, 그리고 추론을 나타내는 증거성 어미의 사용 양상을 살펴보았다. 다양한 담화 상황에서 양적 분석도 질적 분석도 가능한 담화완성시험(Discourse Completion Task; DCT)을 통하여 14명의 참가자에게서 데이터를 수집했다. 참가자 중에 한국어 원어민(L1) 화자는 5명이고 고급 수준의 비원어민(L2) 화자는 9명이었다. 연구 가설로서는 두 가지의 결과가 예상되었다. 첫째, L1화자와 L2화자의 두 그룹에서 증거성 어미의 사용에 있어서 차이가 보일 것이라는 것이고 둘째는 L2화자의 그룹 중에도 언어 배경에 따른 차이가 보일 것이라는 것이었다. 담화완성시험의 실제 결과는 다음의 네 가지로 요약할 수 있다. 첫째, L1화자는 L2화자에 비해서 더 많은 증거성 어미를 사용했다. 둘째, L2화자는 적접 경험이나 인용, 전문을 나타내는 증거성 어미보다 추론을 나타내는 증거성 어미를 더 많이 사용했는데 L1화자들은 모든 항목의 증거성 어미를 사용했다. 셋째, L1화자들은 전문이나 인용을 나타내는 증거성 어미에 있어서 축약형도 많이 사용했는데 L2화자들은 주로 축약되지 않은 형태만 사용했다. 넷째, L2화자 데이터 중에 각 L1화자의 모국어나 한국어가 쓰이는 환경에 접근의 정도에 따른 영향이 보였다.

On Knowledge of the Incompleteness Effect in Korean L1 Acquisition

On Knowledge of the Incompleteness Effect in Korean L1 Acquisition

The Correlation of Speaking Lexical Diversity with Psychological and Social Factors of L2 Korean Learners

The Correlation of Speaking Lexical Diversity with Psychological and Social Factors of L2 Korean Learners

The Speech Act of Offering Advice in Learner English in Korean Context

Taking a cross-cultural pragmatic approach, this paper compared the speech act of offering advice as realized by Korean L2 learners of English with that of English native speakers. The study investigated pragmatic transfer from L1 Korean while offering advice in L2 English. The study also aimed to examine whether Korean L2 learners’ perception of directness vs. indirectness in the realization of offering advice differs depending on their proficiency. The findings showed that Korean L2 learners of English were not as balanced as native English speakers in the use of indirect strategies of offering advice. The results also revealed that both Korean L2 learners and native English speakers are inclined to use similar strategies for the realization of offering advice. Findings call for further research on pragmatic transfer of the varied English proficiency level and considering appropriate pragmatic teaching methods.

Prator의 난이도등급 가설의 검증 : 중국어 문법의 능숙도 시험 개발을 위한 분석

Prator의 난이도등급 가설의 검증 : 중국어 문법의 능숙도 시험 개발을 위한 분석

N-gram measures and L2 writing proficiency

Productive knowledge of English phraseology can assist second language writers in composing more effective and target-like texts. As such, researchers have taken a great interest in L2 phraseological competence by comparing the use of multi-word sequences by L2 writers with that of native speakers as well as comparing the use of multi-word sequences of L2 writers from different proficiency levels. This study expands on this research by investigating how multi-word sequence use can predict human judgments of writing proficiency using a multi-faceted approach. The study specifically examines multiple indices of bigrams and trigram use (frequency, range, association strength) in a corpus of English placement test essays written by L1 Korean learners of English. Results of the multiple regression revealed that n-gram proportion and association strength measures were predictive of human judgments of writing proficiency, indicating that higher rated essays include more strongly associated academic bigrams, a greater proportion of frequent academic trigrams, and more strongly associated spoken trigrams. These results highlight the importance of including instruction on multi-word sequences in the second language writing classroom.

A Comparative Study on Oral Fluency Between Korean Native Speakers and L2 Korean Learners in Speech Discourse - With Focus on Speech Rate, Pause, and Discourse Markers

A Comparative Study on Oral Fluency Between Korean Native Speakers and L2 Korean Learners in Speech Discourse - With Focus on Speech Rate, Pause, and Discourse Markers

학습자 요인이 L2 문어의 통사적 복합성 발달에 미치는 영향

학습자 요인이 L2 문어의 통사적 복합성 발달에 미치는 영향