'Lexical competence' refers to the abilities which are involved in all the procedures to fully understand the lexicon and use the lexicon efficiently. In other words, it is different from the 'vocabulary knowledge' which means 'How many words does the...
'Lexical competence' refers to the abilities which are involved in all the procedures to fully understand the lexicon and use the lexicon efficiently. In other words, it is different from the 'vocabulary knowledge' which means 'How many words does the person know.' If the vocabulary knowledge means the quantity of the words, the 'lexical competence' means the ability about the words.'Lexical competence' is closely connected with linguistic thinking ability. If we regard linguistic thinking ability as the ability to solve the problem, the problematic situations can be solved with the lexical competence which is involved in maneuvering all the thinking procedures from the low-level thinking to high-level thinking. Therefore, the improvement of lexical competence can bring the enhancement of linguistic thinking ability.This thesis aims at developing the evaluation device of lexicon which can improve the linguistic thinking ability based on the lexical competence. This also aims at reconsidering and developing the lexicon evaluation of Korean language in the College Scholastic Ability Test(CSAT).The lexicon evaluation in the current Korean high school tends to evaluate the vocabulary knowledge needed in reading rather than lexical competence. Especially the evaluation question of the lexicon in the College Scholastic Ability Test is asking about the meaning of the words, mainly focusing on the contextual meaning and idiomatic expression. This means that the test intends to assess the vocabulary knowledge of reading and understanding the reading material instead of lexical competence.But as the learner grows, the amount and the ability to use the vocabulary is increasing. Therefore it is more desirable to assess the lexical competence rather than the vocabulary knowledge. If the learner is the elementary student, it would be better to evaluate the vocabulary knowledge, but for the high school student, the ability to understand and command the lexicon fluently should be assessed. This evaluation can extend to evaluate the abundance of lexicon, as this abundance makes it possible to show the lexical competence easily.The basic things needed to prepare for the lexicon evaluation is evaluation objectivity. The explicit objectivity of evaluation helps to make the evaluation device. This thesis sets up the evaluation objectivity in the realm of the contents based on the current educational courses of Korean language in high school and the revised course. The evaluation objectivity in the realm of the contents can be suggested in two ways; in the aspect of using lexicon and understanding lexicon. The evaluation objectivity are like these; lexical meaning, the relationship between lexicons, the change of meaning in lexicon, the combination of lexicon, the structure of lexicon, the condition of lexicon, content lexicon, functional lexicon, connective lexicon, and so on. Also, in this study, I suggest four evaluation objectivities in the realm of behavior for the lexicon evaluation. To be specific, four evaluation objectivities of behavior in CSAT consist of realistic thinking: a) understanding lexicon, b) connecting lexicon, deductive thinking: a) deducing lexicon, b) analyzing lexicon, c) distinguishing lexicon, d) grasping the structure of lexicon, critical thinking: a) judging lexicon based on the accuracy and propriety, b) judging lexicon based on the validity and efficiency, creative thinking: a) complementing the meaning of lexicon, b) establishing the researching strategy, c) describing the meaning of lexicon, d) utilizing lexicon.This study designs the evaluation device based on the above evaluation objectivities. The evaluation device of lexicon is made according to the linguistic thinking ability which contains realistic thinking, deductive thinking, critical thinking and creative thinking. Specifically, I suggest evaluation questions with several evaluation objectivities. In this study, I choose 'connecting the information of lexicon' as the item of realistic thinking ability, 'deducing the meaning of lexicon and utilizing the information of lexicon' as that of deductive thinking ability, ‘judging the usage of lexicon with the criteria of accuracy and propriety’ as that of critical thinking ability, 'describing the meaning of lexicon and utilizing lexicon' as that of creative thinking ability. The evaluation questions are total eight questions with two questions in each thinking ability. And the two questions are made up of the separate question and the text-dependant question. The separate question is good for evaluating linguistic thinking ability related to the lexical competence, as it can deal with the information of lexicon wholly. Contrary to this, the text-dependant question have the limitation that the factor of the contents can be changed according to the features of the reading materials. So, if possible, the text-dependant question should be designed with the lexicon-related materials.The result of the test which was done in the third grade students of high school shows 0.51 degree of item difficulty and 0.37 degree of item discrimination in the evaluation question. With this result, the evaluation device of this thesis can be interpreted as 'having middle degree of difficulty and discriminative'. And this interpretation is based on the Classical Test Theory. This result implies that it is possible to develop the evaluation device which can evaluate the linguistic thinking ability based on lexical competence. Meanwhile, the lexicon evaluation questions of Korean language in the CSAT should try to evaluate the lexical competence as well as the vocabulary knowledge. The education of lexicon also should move to reconsider improving the lexical competence as well as vocabulary knowledge.This thesis has simple wish that the setting of the evaluation objectivity and the developed evaluation devices in this study can help to improve the lexicon evaluation both in the high school education and in the College Scholastic Ability Test.