The purpose of this study is observing the process of learning Chinese character of preschool children and clarifying their language ability and the level and range of vocabulary. This paper sees the process of Korean children acquiring vocabulary in two ways: The first one is researching the vocabularies used in children's stories that preschool children often read or hear. The other one is researching the vocabularies that children hear or speak in the conversation with surroundings. To this end, two methodologies have been adopted: literature analysis and observation analysis. Literature analysis is investigating the fairy tales that children likes and analyzing the Chinese characters and vocabularies used. Observation analysis is recording the conversations between a child and his surroundings, and then transcribing and analyzing it. Almost every child reads fairy tales that helps to the formation of children's language ability. Therefore, the language of children's stories is the expectancy which Korean society expects children to understand the accomplished living environment and culture to. Therefore, children contact the basic cultural vocabulary in Korean society, contacting fairy tales. Children develop their intelligence and language through engaging in the daily conversations with their parents and acquaintances. Although they are influenced by communications with their peers of the same age group, the contents and range of the language used in the context of their surroundings affect a lot more. Thus, the process of children's language acquisition is developed through the conversations with parents and acquaintances. It is very possible that the language ability of a child in a family is transferred by parents rather than the intelligence and the ability of the child. Consequently, studying children’s Chinese character vocabulary through the two processes, you can see how level of the Chinese character vocabulary that children contact and use is, what characteristics it has and how much the range of use is.

• SONG Pyung Nyul(Yeungnam University; The Korea Society of Education in Chinese Characters and Classics) | 宋秉烈