This paper presents data capturing Korean university students’ familiarity with English online acronyms, examines factors that may predict this familiarity, and presents an explicit instruction intervention involving vocabulary knowledge of online acronyms. The Vocabulary Size Test (VST) measured stude nts’ vocabulary size, while a self-report survey measured social media engagement and the percentage of engagement that occurred in English. The Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) measured initial familiarity and gains in vocabulary knowledge. The results suggest that English learners in Korean universities are not well-acquainted with English online acronyms, but that receptive vocabulary size and English-language social media engagement may offer some predictive power regarding their level of familiarity. An explicit treatment of acronym expansions and their uses resulted in a significant and robust gain in vocabulary knowledge, suggesting that explicit instruction of online acronyms may improve digital literacy and comprehension of computer-mediated communication (CMC) more effectively than simply relying on incidental gains through repeat exposures over time.

Kim, Hyun-ju & Lee, Keun-myoung. 2017. “The Effects of Computer-Mediated Communication on Participation in Group Discussion”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 25(3). 65~91. This study investigated how computer-mediated communication with non-hierarchical language use such as using no titles or honorific forms affects speakers' participation in group discussion in a hierarchical organization setting. Assuming that the complexity of the Korean honorific system could be a factor of Korean students' or employees' passive participation in discussion in class or workplace, we examined whether the use of equal-level speech styles would facilitate the active discussion environment. Furthermore, an online chat platform was served as an online discussion space, which enforced equal-level talk. The results showed that the participation rates of speakers of low position, who maintained a low participation rate during offline meetings, gradually increased during online discussion, while participants of high position, who were dominant talkers during offline discussion, appeared less active in online meetings. This revealed a statistically significant interaction between communication mode(online vs. offline) and participants' rank. Although the language effect was not significant statistically, we found a tendency that the participation rate was higher at the equal-level chat room than at the control room. These findings suggest that speakers' act should be influenced by communication modes: speakers of low position seem to participate more freely at an online mode than at an offline mode, although the effect of the Korean honorific system on speakers' participation in discussion was not conclusive.

Cho Hye-jin. 2016. “Negotiation of Meaning in Computer-Mediated Communication in Relation to Task Types”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(1). 271~309. The present study aims to explore how negotiation of meaning occurs in a task-based CMC among ESL students. Paired with one another, 18 ESL students were asked to engage in online discussion once a week for 3 weeks in order to complete 3 types of language task: jigsaw, information-gap, and decision-making tasks. The finding shows that only a few examples (11%) contributed to negotiation routines. Twenty-one percent of the negotiation routines were identified as modified interactions. The information-gap task elicited the most negotiation routines. However, what the students perceived was different from the numerical results regarding task types. They reported that the jigsaw was the most intriguing and beneficial task rather than the information-gap. Relatively little negotiation routine can be attributed to learner perceptions of tasks. Learner behaviors such as not asking questions, their eagerness to proceed with the task, and face-saving action were observed as efforts to maintain social communication. Sending segmented messages instead of complete sentences was found as a face-saving action as well.

The purpose of this study is to investigate an effective way of using real-time computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools for the development of Korean EFL learners’ oral communicative competence. The subjects of the study are the 53 first-year female university students and they are randomly assigned into three groups: text-, voice-, and video-chatting groups. The major results of the study are as follows: first, all the three synchronous CMC tools are effective in improving the fluency and accuracy of speaking skills. Second, the voice-based CMC tools, not the text-based one, are effective in improving the learners’ interactive skills and active use of communicative strategies. Third, all the three synchronous CMC tools are effective in enhancing the learners’ confidence in their English speaking abilities and beliefs in the improvement of their oral communicative competence. Lastly, the learners’ responses to the use of the CMC tools in performing communicative tasks are very positive in all the three groups. Based on these results, some pedagogical suggestions are made on the effective use of the synchronous CMC tools in Korean English classroom settings.