Phonological Variations of Korean Language Use in Online Contexts

( Park¸ Chaehee ) 한국현대언어학회 2021 언어연구 Vol.37 No.1

The purpose of this study is to examine phonological variations of internet-based Korean language use. A review of data revealed variations in the consonants and vowels, and the syllable structure of a word. First, online language users tend to employ a polite speech style ending with -yeo instead of -yo, and the diphthong, /wə/ was also monophthongized into either /ə/ or /o/. Second, the nasal consonants /m/ or /ŋ/ were added into a syllable final position of a CV syllable, yielding a CVC syllable It was also found that the nasal /m/ was used in the deferential speech style with the omission of the middle syllable of -sup-ni-da, resulting in -sum-da. It is suggested that online Korean language users employ those phonological variations to deliver solidarity and intimacy to the addressee, establishing specific linguistic forms in an online speech community. (Sun Moon University)

Phonological Decoding for L2 Vocabulary Learning and Its relations to Learners’ Proficiency Levels

Chaehee Park 한국영어학회 2022 영어학 Vol.22 No.-

Instruction of Meaning Inference Strategies and Its Relation to Learners’ Proficiency Levels

Chaehee Park 한국영어학회 2021 영어학 Vol.21 No.-

Korean EFL Learners’ Development of Inflectional Morphemes

Chaehee Park,Younghwa Lee 한국중원언어학회 2017 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.43

This paper examines English inflectional morpheme development among Korean EFL learners. Two groups of children, fourth graders (N=20) and sixth graders (N=19) were given both real-word sentence completion tasks and pseudoword sentence completion tasks. The task materials measuring the students’ knowledge of inflectional morpheme include six types of morphemes (plural -s, regular past -ed, 3rd person singular -s, progressive -ing, comparative -er, and superlative -est). Twenty four sentences (four sentences for each morphology) were created and children were asked to complete the sentences using a given base form of a word. The results indicated that, in learning of the regular past tense -ed, learners using L2 for communication do not seem to override EFL learners accustomed to the function of a written task, and that the grammatical morpheme, which does not exist in Korean L1, has a strong effect on the acquisition. This study concluded that Korean L1 absent morphemes seem to be difficult for Korean English learners to acquire regardless of language learning environments: namely natural language learning and classroom language learning.

Empowering Devices in Korean Honorific Speech Revisited

Chaehee Park,Kyungyul Kim 한국중원언어학회 2014 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.30

Korean honorific expressions usually indicate politeness but it also relates to power between the interlocutors in which power variables such as age, kinship, gender, social status and occupational ranks play an important role in choosing appropriate honorific expressions. This paper reviewed Korean honorific expressions in a perspective of pragmatics and power focusing on how empowering is realized in relation to its power variables. It has been discussed that 1) the use of the polite singular second pronoun, tangsin, tayk, eolusin, instead of neo (you) transfers power to the hear from the speaker, 2) kinship terms eomma (mommy) and appa (daddy) instead of na (I) also empower more authority, 3) professional address terms such as sensayng, sacang by themselves also carry authority, and 4) honorific markers can also carry power to the referents in Korean language. It is concluded that the honorific speech in Korean has been projected to either the speaker, hearer, or the referents in case the relationship between interlocutors and referents is unequal.

Task Involvement Load and Its Effectiveness: Motivational vs. Cognitive Dimension

Chaehee Park,Sung Kyu Yun,Younghwa Lee 한국중원언어학회 2019 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.52

The purpose of this study is to test the assumption that the same amount of involvement load in a task, regardless of the degree of each component, would always lead to the same amount of vocabulary learning (Involvement Load Hypothesis, Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001). Two task materials with the same amount of load but different in the distribution of each component were created. Forty Korean EFL university students participated in the task experiments (19 for reading comprehension and 21 for sentence writing). The participants’ performance was tested three times (pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test). It was found that the sentence writing group who received cognitive focused activity was significantly more advanced in their vocabulary learning than the reading comprehension group who received motivation-focused activity. The results indicated that the cognitive-focused task was conducive to successful word learning more than the motivation-focused task. The results also suggested that the degree of each individual component should not be treated equally and that English instructors need to create vocabulary task materials that induce learners’ cognitive process for better vocabulary learning.

Vocabulary Learning: Two Dimensions of Involvement Load and Learners’ Proficiency Level

Chaehee Park 한국중원언어학회 2020 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.56

The study examines how the dimensions of task involvement load (cognition vs. motivation) and students’ proficiency levels affect vocabulary learning. Two task materials of the same amount of load, one focused on motivational need, and the other focused on cognitive evaluation were created. Thirty nine Korean EFL university students were divided into two proficiency levels, and were given cognition-focused task and motivation-focused task respectively. The participants’ performance was tested three times (pre-test, immediate post-test, and one-week delayed post-test). The results indicated overall the cognition-focused task was more effective for vocabulary learning than the motivation-focused task, and word gains of low level students of cognition-focused task were similar to those of motivation-focused task of high level students, and the significant differences of word retention were maintained only in the low level group. It is suggested that the task inducing learners’ cognitive evaluation rather than motivational need should be created for better vocabulary learning, even for low level students. Educational implications regarding to task involvement load were discussed.

Body-coda vs. Onset-rhyme: Based on English L2 Spelling Performance

Chaehee Park 한국중원언어학회 2014 언어학연구 Vol.0 No.32

This study examined English L2 spelling competence among Korean EFL undergraduates (n=63), focusing on phonology and subsyllabic structure differences between English and Korean. Two main research questions were posed: 1) whether or not the participants, seemingly phonologically fully developed, would have difficulty spelling phonemes absent in L1, and 2) whether or not they would retain their L1 linguistic properties in L2 spelling. The participants were given a spelling task with non-words of English, in which they were requested to listen to and write down the recorded non-words in English. The results showed that 1) Korean EFL learners had more difficulty in spelling English only phonemes than the phonemes common for English and Korean and 2) they had more difficulty spelling phonemes absent in the initial syllable rather than the final syllable. The results imply that even adult L2 learners have difficulty in recognizing phonemes absent in their L1, and they still hold their L1 linguistic properties in the performance of L2 spelling. Pedagogical implications and further suggestions regarding English L2 spelling are discussed.

Explicit Instruction of Meaning Inference Strategies and Success in Meaning Inference

Park, Chaehee 한국중앙영어영문학회 2020 영어영문학연구 Vol.62 No.3

Lexical inference is an important vocabulary learning method, but it is still unknown whether an explicit instruction of inference strategies would improve inference accuracy. In this study, it is investigated whether an explicit instruction of word-meaning inference strategies in class contributes to the success of meaning inference while reading. Two reading texts materials containing 10 pseudowords each were created (Hamada, 2013). Thirty four Korean EFL university students participated in the task experiments. The participants’ meaning inference accuracy rate was tested two times (pretest and posttest after treatment). It was found that the experiment group was significantly more advanced than the control group in word-meaning inference rate. The results indicated that an explicit instruction of word-meaning inference strategies was conducive to successful inference of unknown vocabulary. It is suggested that careful sections of inference strategies for instruction with consideration of learner’s proficiency levels would be necessary, that continuous training of inference strategies with practical application for reading comprehension and vocabulary learning is recommended, and that global strategies rather than local strategies would be necessary for learners to become successful in word-meaning inference.

Orthographic Differences and English L2 Spelling Errors

Chaehee Park 한국영어학회 2012 영어학 Vol.12 No.2