In recent years, text elaboration (which is a method of text modification) has been a focus as an aid to effective learning for foreign language learners. The purpose of this study is to bring more awareness to the importance of vocabulary as well as ...
In recent years, text elaboration (which is a method of text modification) has been a focus as an aid to effective learning for foreign language learners. The purpose of this study is to bring more awareness to the importance of vocabulary as well as to investigate the effects of text elaboration on reading comprehension of learners and incidental vocabulary learning in the Korean learning environment. Since text elaboration’s aim is to add redundancy to the difficult vocabularies in a text, it assures that the learners still have an authentic text.
Ninety foreign students, from various countries, participated in this study. The students were studying Korean in an university’s language institute located in Kyonggi province. The participants consisted of beginning, intermediate and advanced learners. The experimental group was provided elaborated text and the control group was provided non-modified text. Both of these groups took the reading comprehension test, open-ended vocabulary, and the first multiple choice exams. The second multiple and open-ended vocabulary tests were executed to gauge the efficiency of learners’ vocabulary memory, two weeks after the first test.
Analysis of the collected data used: descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, and paired t-test of the SPSS 14.0 program. The effect-size of the treatment was also analyzed to get a more reliable result.
This study has the following three research questions.
Question 1. Does text elaboration have a meaningful effect on the reading skills of Korean learners?
Question 2. Does text elaboration have a positive effect on incidental vocabulary learning?
Question 3. Does text elaboration have a positive effect on how efficiently incidental vocabulary learning helps learners in terms of memory?
Summaries of results drawn from this study are as follows:
First, in the levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced, the difference of scores between the experimental group and the control group demonstrated statistical significance. It was verified that text elaboration helps reading comprehension in Korean and best facilitates the area of reading comprehension.
Second, although the beginners did not show a statistically meaningful difference in the scores of the open-ended vocabulary test, all of the other level of learners did demonstrate this difference between the experimental and control groups. In terms of the multiple choice vocabulary test, all levels of learners showed a statistically significant score difference between the experimental and control groups, which verified the effectiveness of text elaboration on incidental vocabulary learning.
Third, although the score of the experimental group given the elaborated text was higher than the control group given the original(non-modified) text, the result of the second vocabulary test showed only the intermediate level of learners demonstrated statistical significance in the open-ended vocabulary test. Moreover, the scores of the second vocabulary tests decreased in both the experimental and the control group. The degree of the decrease was statistically valid, and it was concluded that text elaboration did not affect the learners' power of memory.
Results showed that text elaboration (providing extra information) is more helpful to learners' understanding of reading and incidental vocabulary than replacing difficult vocabularies or omission. Therefore, it was proved that text elaboration is an effective modification of reading materials which can help compensate for the disadvantages of several established text moderating methods.
In addition, thanks to the fact that text elaboration has affirmative effects on incidental vocabulary learning as well as the understanding of reading, it is expected that elaborated texts will contribute to overcoming explicit time limitations of language classes and to developing a variety options for vocabulary education. Lastly, it is concluded that text modification which has restrictively considered only proficient learners can be also applied for all levels of learners.