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.

The present study examined the receptive and productive knowledge of collocations of second language (L2) and heritage speakers of Korean and also investigated the influence of phrasal frequency, exposure to Korean, and phonological short-term memory (PSTM). Seventeen L2 learners and 14 heritage speakers of Korean were tested on 30 Korean noun-verb collocations, which varied in phrasal frequency, using an acceptability judgment task and a collocation completion test. The results showed that both L2 and heritage speakers demonstrated considerable receptive knowledge of Korean collocations while productive knowledge was more limited for both groups. The mixed-effects modelling results of four independent variables of interest (i.e., phrasal frequency, exposure via media, academic use, and PSTM) showed that phrasal frequency was the only significant predictor of receptive knowledge of collocations for both L2 and heritage speakers; none of the four factors had a significant impact on productive knowledge of collocations for either group. These data are discussed in relation to previous studies on collocation development of L2 learners and heritage speakers.

The purpose of the study is two-fold: (a) to investigate L2 learners’ receptive and productive collocational knowledge concerning the learners’ lexical proficiency levels, and (b) to explore the degree of their productive collocational knowledge. A total of 358 Korean university students participated in this study and completed a Vocabulary Size Test, two receptive collocation tests, and one productive collocation test. The results revealed that there was significance among the scores of three collocation tests. It is also observed that receptive and productive collocational competence tends to increase as L2 learners’ vocabulary size develops. Regarding productive collocational knowledge gains, significant differences were found among collocation combinations but no interaction effect was found between combination types and vocabulary levels. The findings indicated that L2 learners need to be aware of the importance of learning collocational knowledge while teachers need to attempt to help them notice high-frequency collocations that regularly occur in various contexts.

The present study aims to investigate the direct and indirect contributions of Korean EFL college students’ L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge to their L2 writing performances by using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with a goal to explore the pathways of vocabulary knowledge to writing. Data from 178 students were collected through tests of receptive and productive vocabulary breadth and depth, a writing test and a reading test. In testing a hypothesized model on the roles of receptive and productive vocabulary in writing, the results of the SEM analysis reveal the direct role of productive vocabulary in writing. The indirect role of receptive vocabulary on writing was observed through the mediating role of productive vocabulary or reading ability due to the direct contribution of receptive vocabulary to both productive vocabulary and reading and that of productive vocabulary and reading to writing. Findings from the study shed light on the relations of L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge with L2 writing abilities, suggesting potential benefits of both receptive and productive vocabulary learning for L2 writing.

This article reports on a study that compared EFL freshman university students’receptive and productive recall vocabulary knowledge and their ability to use that knowledge, as it remains unclear in the literature to what extent knowledge of vocabulary, especially productive knowledge, is indicative of learners’ ability to use vocabulary to communicate. The study first measured the vocabulary size of 169students from 24 majors. Next, deeper meaning word knowledge and vocabulary userelated knowledge were assessed by administering depth tests to 51 of the students who completed the size tests. The study found that the participants were able to use only 60.3% of the words that were known receptively and productively on the size tests, and that receptive deeper meaning vocabulary knowledge was 43.0% greater than productive knowledge. Finally, the study results support the concept of a vocabulary knowledge continuum, but highlight the importance of including both receptive and productive knowledge, as they were found to develop in a dissimilar manner.