Interpreting the Linkage among Reading Problems in L1 and L2, Strategy Use in L2 Reading, and L2 Proficiency

Yousun Shin 팬코리아영어교육학회(구 영남영어교육학회) 2017 영어교육연구 Vol.29 No.1

The paper examines the relationships among reading problems in L1 and L2, strategy use in L2 reading and L2 proficiency. The total of 126 university students participated in this study. Self-assessed survey items were used to measure reading proficiency in L1, Korean and L2, English. Then the Survey of Reading Strategy (SORS) was followed to measure the participants’ strategy use during their L2 academic reading. Some of the main reading problems involve slow reading in L2 texts, lack of vocabulary size during reading in L2, and lack of content knowledge in L2 texts. Language proficiency is greatly contributed to L2 reading proficiency, to the extent in which the participants fell below the linguistic threshold. Pedagogical implications and limitations are discussed. (120 words)

Investigating the Influential Factors of L2 Reading : Focusing on Grammar and Vocabulary

Yousun Shin 한국언어과학회 2012 한국언어과학회 학술대회 Vol.2012 No.08

Assessing the Relative Roles of Vocabulary and Syntactic Knowledge in Reading Comprehension

Yousun Shin,Yanghee Kim 한국응용언어학회 2012 응용 언어학 Vol.28 No.2

The purpose of the study was to explore the relative contribution of both vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge as predictors of reading comprehension performance. To accomplish this, a total of 337 college students voluntarily participated in the study, all of whom were then taking an English reading course at two different universities. The measurement instruments used for the study were based on three sections: vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension. Each section consisted of two different tasks. For all the tasks except the recall task, the scoring procedure proved easy and expedient, with 1 point being assigned for correct items, and 0 point for incorrect ones. To obtain valid measures for the recall task, the learners were scored using Johnson’s (1970) unweighted pausal unit analysis. For the data analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to evaluate the role of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary knowledge where it predicts the L2 reading ability of the learners. The SEM analysis indicated that vocabulary knowledge and grammatical knowledge variables made contributions to the prediction of reading comprehension performance, with vocabulary knowledge outperforming grammar in its predictive power. Implications and limitations of the study are also discussed in this study.

A Validity Study on the Vocabulary Grade Levels Test for Korean Elementary Students

Shin, Yousun The English Teachers Association in Korea 2012 영어어문교육 Vol.18 No.2

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.

L2 Writing and Vocabulary Development : A Comparison of Lexical Quality Across Written Compositions with Different Planning Activities

Yousun Shin 한국중앙영어영문학회 2010 영어영문학연구 Vol.52 No.1

The purpose of the study is mainly to examine whether learners are able to improve their level of vocabulary through different types of planning activities. In addition, the study also aims at exploring the extent to which their vocabulary is improved and what difference is made with regard to the planning activities, which they utilized during their writing tasks. To see if planning activities was useful in improving the lexical quality of writing, three sets of timed compositions produced by 71 university students were analyzed using the Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP). The results indicated that there were significant differences among written compositions in terms of the three variables—word token, lexical variation, and lexical density. Overall, word token at most of the vocabulary levels tended to increase regardless of any type of planning activities while learners showed vocabulary improvement in terms of lexical variation including 1000 and ‘not in the list’ level. However, the result of lexical density showed that the planning activities did not affect the lexical density of the composition since learners got the highest scores in the first writing task with no planning activity. The implications of these findings are discussed with the usefulness of planning activities which help learners to effectively retrieve vocabulary and select correct forms.

Investigating L2 Learners and Native Speakers’ Intuition of Word Frequency

Yousun Shin,Junil Oh 한국영미어문학회 2018 영미어문학 Vol.- No.131

The study attempted to examine the usefulness of non-native learners’(NNS) subjective frequency estimates as a measure of part of second language proficiency. Participants consisted of 106 Korean university students (NNS) and 27 English native speakers (NS). Each group received the lists of 27 sets of the paired words which consisted of synonymous words on the basis of the speech part (noun, verb, adjectives) and degree of frequency (1000, 2000, 3000 levels) and were asked to rank the frequency of the paired words. The results suggested that the subjective estimates were valid on the ground that both NNS and NS are able to discern more frequent words. However, the result of one-way ANOVA revealed that NS performance of subjective frequency judgement was consistently better than that of NNS with regard to both speech parts and degree of frequency. Correlational analyses and ANOVA results indicated that L2 learners’ lexical proficiency level was not closely related with subjective word frequency test. Limitation and implications of the study were further discussed.

L2 Writing and Vocabulary Development: A Comparison of Lexical Quality Across Written Compositions with Different Planning Activities

Yousun Shin 21세기영어영문학회 2010 21세기영어영문학회 학술대회 Vol.2010 No.1

The Effects of Graphic Organizers in L2 Writing Instruction

Yousun Shin 팬코리아영어교육학회(구 영남영어교육학회) 2009 영어교육연구 Vol.21 No.1

This article describes a case study that investigated the effects of using graphic organizers to enhance L2 writing ability. The results of the interview with an L2 writing instructor were used as the main sources for data analysis in the study. During the interview, the instructor was asked 12 questions which were categorized into three sections: the instructor's own definition of graphic organizers, instructional practices and applications of graphic organizers in writing instruction, and the instructor's perceptions on the effects of using graphic organizer as a writing strategy. The interview data demonstrated that graphic organizers can be a potential vehicle for L2 learners to enhance writing ability but proper instruction should carefully link to learners' proficiency level. Furthermore, learners also need to be cognizant of the purpose of a writing task, the requirements inherent in the task, and the criteria by which their written products are evaluated while employing a variety of graphic organizers. It is suggested that learners need to have an opportunity to use graphic organizers as a strategy to stimulate L2 writing which may contribute to cultivating learners' thinking and generating ideas for a given task.

The Effect of Automated Written Feedback through Grammarly: Focusing on Improving Language-related Writing Quality of English

( Yousun Shin ),( Gyumi Kim ) 한국멀티미디어언어교육학회 2022 멀티미디어 언어교육 Vol.25 No.2

Providing corrective feedback on L2 learners’ writing is considered essential by both learners and instructors. The present study aimed at investigating the effects of the automated written feedback tool, Grammarly, on reducing writing errors of L2 learners in their writing tasks. In this study, seventeen first-year university students majoring in English education completed two types of writing tasks in class and revised their drafts by using Grammarly. A total of 68 writing samples were analyzed by language-related features including the number of words, sentence length, or error types. Overall findings indicated that some significant decrease in the errors was observed between the 1st and 2nd drafts in the two tasks. However, it was also shown that the length of the compositions from the two tasks was positively proportional to the number of errors they made. The most frequent errors identified by Grammarly included ‘determiner use’, ‘incorrect verb forms’, ‘word choice’, ‘punctuation in sentences’, ‘misspelled words’, and ‘wordy sentence.’ The study also presented the positive relationship between their L2 language proficiency and L2 writing ability. The pedagogical implications and future research direction were discussed.

Measuring Receptive and Productive Collocational Knowledge of Korean Learners of English

Yousun Shin,Youngkyong Jung 한국외국어교육학회 2021 Foreign languages education Vol.28 No.3

The purpose of the study is two-fold: (a) to investigate L2 learners’ receptive and productive collocational knowledge concerning the learners’ lexical proficiency levels, and (b) to explore the degree of their productive collocational knowledge. A total of 358 Korean university students participated in this study and completed a Vocabulary Size Test, two receptive collocation tests, and one productive collocation test. The results revealed that there was significance among the scores of three collocation tests. It is also observed that receptive and productive collocational competence tends to increase as L2 learners’ vocabulary size develops. Regarding productive collocational knowledge gains, significant differences were found among collocation combinations but no interaction effect was found between combination types and vocabulary levels. The findings indicated that L2 learners need to be aware of the importance of learning collocational knowledge while teachers need to attempt to help them notice high-frequency collocations that regularly occur in various contexts.