Lexical Productivity of Korean EFL Learners in Spoken and Written English

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This research aims to investigate the lexical productivity of Korean students in their spoken and written English by comparing it with that of British students. Forty-two Korean and British students (21 per group) participated in this study and undertook the spoken and written tasks involving descriptive narratives. Approximately 32,000 words of English data were subsequently collected and examined in terms of the STTR and the occurrences of 15 lexical features using the WordSmith Tools 4.0 software and also by a manual investigation. The findings showed that, firstly, the Korean students underused more than half of the features analysed in their speech but they overused other six features in their writing, compared to the British students. The overused features signify that the Korean students might have been primarily exposed to highly limited and formulised English expressions. Secondly, the Korean students had better lexical productivity in writing than in speaking. This implies that their overall English proficiency might be better in writing than in speech. Lastly, the Korean students inappropriately used more than half of the lexical features between their speech and writing compared to the British students. This indicates that, to a degree, the Korean students might write as the native English speakers would speak, or vice versa.

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