This study aims to analyze the types of cognitive process required to perform vocabulary learning activities in Middle School English textbooks. For this purpose, 26 middle school English textbooks were examined, including 13 for the first year and another 13 for the second year of middle school. The results indicated that vocabulary learning activities emerged in the phase of reading, and then were categorized into pre-reading vocabulary activities and post-reading ones. Eight types of cognitive process emerged in the pre-reading phase and three types in the post-reading phase. That is, the number of vocabulary activities in pre-reading phase was larger than that in the post-reading phase. In addition, the diversity of vocabulary activities in the pre-reading phase was higher than that in the post-reading phase. Based on these results, this study suggests a new model of vocabulary learning activity in middle school English textbooks. A few implications on how to teach new words in English classrooms are discussed.

Despite the recognized importance of morphological knowledge to literacy outcomes such as vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, two of its subconstructs— morphological awareness and morphological processing—have received comparatively little attention. In response, the aim of the study reported here was to examine how the relationships between morphological awareness and morphological processing, especially in terms of morphological transparency and morphological frequency, contribute to the vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of 62 native Korean-speaking secondary school students—27 eighth-graders and 35 tenth-graders— learning English as a foreign language. The students’ performance on the Test of Morphological Structure and the Word Reading Test was assessed to gauge their compounding awareness, inflectional awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. The results indicated that the students’ performance was varied depending on morphological transparency and frequency. In addition, it was not morphological processing, but rather morphological awareness that explained variances in vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, when compounding awareness and inflectional awareness were controlled for. This paper discusses what such findings imply for teaching English as a foreign language to Korean learners.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of the sentence-writing task on English vocabulary learning of Korean high school students. The effectiveness of the sentence-writing task can be explained based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001); yet, there has been no consistency in the results of the previous studies on this hypothesis. In the present study, the effects of the sentence-writing task on vocabulary learning were re-examined in comparison with the gap-filling task. In addition, considering that there have been no studies addressing the effects of autobiographical elaboration (relating the meaning of a certain word to one’s own experience) on memory, the effects of the autobiographical sentence-writing task were compared to those of the imaginary sentence-writing task. Forty high proficiency and 40 low proficiency learners were randomly assigned either of the sentence-writing or the gap-filling task. The results demonstrated that the sentence-writing task is more effective in vocabulary learning than the gap-filling task, regardless of the learners’ proficiency levels. However, no significant difference was found between the effects of the autobiographical sentence-writing task and the imaginary sentence-writing task. Based on the results, the pedagogical implications were discussed in the conclusion chapter.

The study investigates the effect of different types of visual images, i.e., static images versus dynamic images, on English vocabulary learning. Eighty-four students in the fourth grade of an elementary school participated in this study, and they were divided into two experimental groups and a control group. One of the experimental groups utilized static images, and the other group, videos as dynamic images in vocabulary learning. The control group was provided with the definition or the explanation of each target word in L1. The results of the study manifested that the static image group showed higher scores for the post test than the dynamic image group. The comparison of the pre and post affective tests demonstrated that the static image group showed an improvement in confidence in language learning and the dynamic image group showed positive change in the attitude of all three areas: interest, confidence, and aroused motivation. The analysis of the open-ended questionnaires showed that many participants in the static image group tended to use pictures as retrieval cues to remember vocabulary.

This study investigates the effects of working memory capacity (WMC) and the types of vocabulary learning, i.e., explicit vs. implicit, on the acquisition of English multi-word verbs. For this purpose, a total of 60 middle school students, divided into two groups (control and experimental), participated in the study. The participants in the control group were taught multi-word verbs in a traditional and explicit manner, whereas the participants in the experimental group were exposed to multi-word verbs with short passages. The results manifested that both of the instructional styles had positive effects on the learners’ acquisition of multi-word verbs in the short-term. Although there was not a significant interaction between WMC and the overall scores on the immediate post-test, according to the scores on the gap-fill tasks which tested learners’ productive knowledge, there were significant differences between the low-WMC and high-WMC groups. High-WMC students learned more target multi-word verbs than low-WMC students on average. The results also showed that WMC and the two different learning types did not affect the students’ acquisition of multi-word verbs in the long-term. Further, the interaction effect between WMC and learning type in the long-term was not significant.

The present study aims to compare teacher talk and the course book used as a source of vocabulary input. For the research purpose, part of Yenny Corpus (Kwon, 2013) was used to analyze the vocabulary content of the two input sources. Yenny Corpus consists of a total of 247,398 words collected from EFL classes of four native and five non-native university lecturers. In this study, however, the data of 1,416 words by the native teachers and 1,651 words by the non-native teachers with their course book scripts were used. To analyze the quantity and quality of the vocabulary use (e.g., level, diversity) of the two input sources, some representative word lists such as BNC-COCA 25,000 word family list topped on Range Program (Heatley & Nation, 2002) were applied. The results show that the teachers (including both native and non-native teachers) orally provide 8,090 word types while their course books introduce 4,713. The non-native teachers provide a little more vocabulary input compared with the native teachers’ talk. In addition, the level of the vocabulary provided by the non-native teachers seems more appropriate for their students’ vocabulary ability. Nevertheless, in order to generalize the findings further research is needed in different settings.

This study examined how smart device applications affected elementary school students who have learning difficulties in English. Five 6th grade students who needed remedial instruction were selected and given 50 hours of instruction using English vocabulary flash cards in a smartphone application. one hundred vocabulary words were chosen and developed for flash cards for the students to examine their intellectual and emotional changes in English learning. The research results showed that the students' vocabulary improved in listening, reading and speaking. It also revealed that the students gained confidence and interest in English learning, and their anxiety decreased. In addition, the application was easy and convenient for the students to use, especially in recognizing the pronunciation and the meaning of the vocabulary words. This study recommends further development and use of smart device applications for elementary school English instruction.

With an effort to verify the involvement load hypothesis, this study investigates the effects of three different vocabulary learning tasks - reading, filling in blanks, and sentence writing - on learners' short and long term memory when they are provided with the theoretically identical level of involvement tasks. It is also to examine whether there are any differences of learning effects between input and output vocabulary learning tasks. The experiments were conducted with 86 Korean middle school students grouped by three different task types. Pre-/post-tests and delayed tests were administered and analyzed. It was found that three vocabulary tasks with theoretically identical levels of involvement do not have the same learning effects: the involvement load hypothesis was not completely proved in the case of Korean students' vocabulary learning. The findings implied that (i) the difference of vocabulary learning tasks should be considered even though they have the same involvement load; (ii) given that EFL students learn new words in a limited amount of time in class, the reading task using a dictionary is found to be very helpful; and (iii) it is important to study target vocabulary repeatedly during class and to expose the vocabulary with different tasks to enhance students' retention of the newly learned vocabulary.

This study aims to compare the English vocabulary used in Korean high school English textbooks with the one in the College Scholastic Ability Tests (afterwards CSAT) administered in the years of 2009-2013 by using a concordance program, NLPTools, and to make a list of vocabulary used only in CSAT. The findings are as follows: First, when compared with Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List, the 'Basic Words List' shows a conformity rate of 98.78%. Second, in terms of TTR (Type Token Ratio), there is no noticeable difference among the English textbooks. Third, in the respect of TTR, CSATs show higher figures, which means that CSATs' vocabulary is more difficult than that in the English textbooks and that for CSATs, annually each test has shown a gradual increase in the number of valid types. (This shows that more valid types to be learned are needed for the preparation of CSAT. Also the degree of difficulty in CSAT is getting higher.) Lastly, the higher level of the 208 words which occur only in CSATs illustrates that the gap between the vocabulary level of textbooks and that of CSAT needs to be reduced for normalization of public education.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine prominent features of frequency in the new vocabulary of the middle school English textbooks based on the 2007 revised national curriculum and thereby to provide meaningful data to be compared with those on the 2009 revised national curriculum. This study used an online software (Vocabprofile) to divide words into four categories by frequency: K1 (1-1,000), K2 (1,001-2,000), AWL (Academic Words List), and Off-List Words (the remainder). Salient features discovered from the frequency-based categorization of words in textbooks by grades or publishers were further examined for pedagogical implications regarding textbook writing and curriculum revisions in the future. The analysis has revealed the following results. K1 words accounted for the most among the words presented in English textbooks, reflecting the significance of the high-frequency words in L2 learning. The number of other words showed a steady increase as the grade gets higher. Finally, most textbooks presented multi-words as new vocabulary, which indicates the importance of idioms or collocations. The vocabulary analysis by frequency could be of use to textbook evaluation, considering the growing importance of frequency-based vocabulary teaching.

This study aims at investigating the effects of phonological short-term memory (PSTM), learning styles, and oral repetition on middle school students" learning of English vocabulary. Two groups had different treatments (semantic learning and oral repetition) and vocabulary learning was assessed in spelling, meaning, and production twice, immediately after the learning sessions and two weeks thereafter. The results reveal that oral repetition and the PSTM capacity affected the vocabulary learning significantly, but not learning styles. The students with a higher PSTM capacity learned significantly more words but didn"t remember them better for a longer period than those with a lower PSTM capacity. No clear effects of learning styles were noted, while the PSTM capacity of auditory learners was higher than that of visual learners. The oral repetition group learned significantly more words than those who did only semantic learning, which suggests the usefulness of oral repetition in learning new vocabulary.

The present study aims to examine vocabulary analysis programs suitable for English textbook authorization in the amended version of the national curriculum. The analysis of WordLister 2002, a conventional vocabulary analysis software, reveals that it fails to meet the needs necessary to authorize textbooks in terms of user-friendliness and limited uses of the vocabulary analysis output. The design of WordLister 2002 is too complicated to be used without special training. While it provides useful information on new vocabulary, it fails to provide information in comparison with the existing research on vocabulary. NLPtools, on the other hand, applies corpus analysis techniques to the analysis of textbook vocabulary. In this program, texts in the textbook are seen as a corpus. Another characteristic is that NLPtools employs analysis methods based on dictionaries. It is found that NLPtools processes special characters in the text, so that the user does not need to process them by using specified input codes as in WordLister 2002. Wordlister 2002 requires its user to register a number of words in the process of vocabulary analysis, whereas the user with NLPtools does not need to register words as its built-in dictionary has a wide range of information on words. NLPtools also provides its users with functions, by which they can get and analyze the information they need. With these advantages over the conventional software, it is suggested that NLPtools can be used as a vocabulary analysis program for textbook authorization in the amended curriculum.