The purpose of this paper is to show a efficient way of Korean vocabulary education for foreigners and to consider it as an active speaking strategy for dealing with communication problems. Training for active strategy usage can solve the communicativ...
The purpose of this paper is to show a efficient way of Korean vocabulary education for foreigners and to consider it as an active speaking strategy for dealing with communication problems. Training for active strategy usage can solve the communicative problems and improve the speaking fluency.
In this point of view, this paper focuses on 'paraphrase strategy', which suggests learner's positive intention of problem-solving based on target language, and I propound a way of activating this strategy by vocabulary education. In chapter 1, I describe the main purpose and emphasize the necessity of this study.
In chapter 2, several fundamental concepts in former studies are reviewed, and I redefine them in much precise point of view. Firstly, I use the term "unfamiliar word" not in the sense of receptive manners in reading situation, but also in the sense of productive manners in speaking situation, which means the learners have the concept of a certain word in their mother language but not in the second language. Secondly, the term "activation" can be defined as a process of active use of words in productive way through a kind of stimulus exercises. In this paper, this concept is applied to the use of strategies as well as words. Thirdly, the meaning of the term "error" is not much different from other studies. However, unlike general standpoint, I take the point that there can be a positive errors, which are made in the process of paraphrasing, and I argue that even mistakes should be observed as errors if they occurs repeatedly.
Chapter 3 presents the research methodology and the procedure of experiments, showing the significant meaning of experimental researches. In this study, most research data are collected by observation and interview studies, avoiding controlled experiments. Though the controlled experiment can show exact interactions of cause and effect, the outside classroom situation may not reflect the classroom authenticity.
Chapter 4 shows four significant explanations as a result of various surveys, observation studies, and experimental researches. Firstly, students use different ways in handling unfamiliar words in mother tongue and second language situation. This is an important fact to stress, because the consideration of word learning in mother language provides crucial ideas for efficient word learning methods in second language. Furthermore, the difference in dealing with unfamiliar words suggests us that the word learning plan should be different in each situation. Secondly, the errors shows the patterns and causes of language use failure in two cases; errors in using learned words and errors in processing unfamiliar words. To analyze the patterns and causes of word errors, I collected variety of errors occurred in writing assignments from malay students for one year and classified them. I longitudinally accumulated error data and compiled statistics of them. Thirdly, I described the speaking strategies of Korean language learners, and provided an account of Korean teachers' attitude towards them. Lastly, I introduced the results from experiment about word memory duration to offer an ideas to increase the duration.
In chapter 5, the results from the experiments and observations are summarized and some ideas are suggested to make a development in Korean language education. Based on the results, I suggested efficient methods to present words, especially the unfamiliar ones, and offered effective word lesson plans to activate the learners active problem-solving strategies.
Chapter 6 summarizes ideas of this study and proposes future direction of research. I firmly believe that this study is an important step towards speaking strategy activation through word education and further consideration on this subject will make it progress in developmental way in Korean language education.