This study investigated the effects of exposure frequency, depth of processing, and activity repetition types on vocabulary learning. In total, 78 South Korean fifth-grade students were divided into four conditions. Students in each condition were asked to read a passage with four of the eight target words (exposure: four times) and the other four words (exposure: once) for three days, and to perform the vocabulary activities assigned to each condition. According to the results, exposure frequency and activity repetition type had significant effects on vocabulary learning. Activity repetition type also had a significant interaction effect with exposure frequency and depth of processing. Notably, presenting a word 12 times (4x3) in reading intervals had a more positive impact on vocabulary learning than presenting it three times (1x3), particularly when different vocabulary activities were repeated. Meanwhile, when the same activity was repeated, an activity with a higher depth of processing was more effective for vocabulary learning.

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.

This study investigates the claim that task-induced involvement load has an effect on vocabulary learning and examines the effect of task types and word concreteness on intentional vocabulary learning in the Korean EFL context. This study aims at testing whether productive word-focused tasks lead to equally effective vocabulary learning when the total involvement load index is equal but the distribution of index levels of each component (need, search, and evaluation) is different. The three productive word-focused task types are gap-fillig, sentence writing, and gap-filling through word transformation. In addition, in order to investigate the effect of word concreteness on vocabulary learning, two groups of target words were selected based on the level of word concreteness. In sum, the results of this study generally supported involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijin, 2001) and test types and proficiency levels proved to be important variables that affect vocabulary learning. Moreover, the findings also indicated that word concreteness was not a major factor in vocabulary learning. The pedagogical implications and further suggestions are discussed.

본 연구의 목적은 한국어 교육에서 어종과 의미 관계에 따 른 어휘 교육 방안을 제시하고자 하는 데에 있다. 현재 어휘 교육은 과목과 교재, 교수 전략이 부족한 편이다. 이에 본고에서는 어휘 교육 현황을 살펴보고, 어휘 교수 이론과 전략을 정리하였다. 어휘는 한국 어 교육에서 기본이 되는 어종에 따른 고유어, 한자어, 외래어. 의미 관계에 따른 유의어와 반의어, 다의어와 동음어, 상하위어로 분류하였 다. 교육 방안은 각 어휘 특성과 상황에 맞게 의미 발견 전략, 기억 강화 전략 등을 활용하였다. 한국어 어휘 교육의 필요성을 확인하고 어종과 의미 관계에 따라 교육 방안을 제시했다는 점에서 의의를 가 진다.

This paper examined factors affecting Korean EFL learners’ word association types in their L2 mental lexicon. Specifically, vocabulary size of the learners was examined to see if it had any significant relationship with word association types. To this end, experiment procedures that included vocabulary size test and the lexical decision task as well as the word association task were conducted on 40 Korean EFL learners. Reaction time and accuracy of responding to word associations in the lexical decision task were measured. Subsequently, a correlation analysis was conducted with their vocabulary size. Additionally, learners’ word association types were analyzed based on the results of word association task. The results showed that Korean EFL learners’ vocabulary size had significant correlations with their accuracy in identifying syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations, but not in the phonological association. However, their accuracy was not correlated with reaction times. The results indicate that L2 learners’ mental lexicon is partially dependent on their vocabulary size of the target language, and it is variable depending on word association types.

This study examines the claim that vocabulary learning and retention are dependent on a task's involvement load (i.e., need, search, evaluation), as proposed by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001a). The study aims at comparing the effects of task types and task involvement load on vocabulary retention for Korean EFL university students. More specifically, this study was designed to test whether differential levels of task involvement loads lead to equally effective results to vocabulary retention when the total involvement index being equal. Three types of productive word-focused tasks (gap-filling using a dictionary, writing original sentences, and gap-filling through word transformation) were used to examine the interplay of involvement index and task types. The result indicated that there were significant main effects of task types, test types, and proficiency levels. The results also indicated that there were significant interaction effects of task types on the retention tests, proficiency levels on the retention tests, and task types×proficiency levels on the retentions. The pedagogical implications and further research directions are discussed.

This study examined the relationship between reading and vocabulary within general and academic context. Forty-seven Korean EFL university students who participated in this research were given a reading comprehension test of general and academic topics. Also, vocabulary tests were conducted to measure the students’ size of vocabulary and their knowledge of general and academic words. The results revealed different findings for each type of vocabulary and reading. First, learners’ size of vocabulary significantly predicted reading comprehension, but the predictive power of academic vocabulary was stronger than vocabulary size. Second, general reading comprehension showed a similar result with the overall reading comprehension score in that academic vocabulary made a stronger contribution than vocabulary size. Finally, a different result was found for academic reading comprehension, and students’ size of vocabulary rather than academic vocabulary was the only significant predictor. The results indicate the different characteristics of general and academic reading, which implicates that each type of reading should be taught in a different manner.

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 explored the effects of different task types on the autonomous vocabulary learning of EFL learners. To this end, two types of tasks with similar but slightly different levels of involvement loads were developed: a corpus-based task and a word map task. The participants of the study were 41 EFL students from a university in Seoul, Korea. They were divided into two groups: a corpus group (n=20) and a word map group (n=21). A total of 33 target words were selected and the experiment was administered during a period of five weeks. Major findings from the study were as follows: First, the corpus task proved to be more effective than the word map task in productive vocabulary learning, whereas the two tasks showed similar effectiveness in receptive vocabulary learning. Second, the two tasks varied in the effectiveness of vocabulary learning depending on the learners' vocabulary proficiency levels and the specific domains of vocabulary knowledge (receptive and productive). Lastly, the corpus group responded more positively than the word map group to their task and to the vocabulary learning. The findings indicate that the corpus task has advantages over the word map task and provide ‘residual’ empirical support for Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) involvement load hypothesis. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications were made for the effective teaching and the autonomous learning of vocabulary.

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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of vocabulary learning activity types via smart-phones on vocabulary learning and the attitude of Korean college students. The participants were 56 college students, who were divided into 4 groups: a competitive and self-paced group (Group 1), a competitive and controlled-paced group (Group 2), an individual and self-paced group (Group 3), and an individual and controlled-paced group (Group 4). Vocabulary tests were administered before and after the experiment. The analyses of the post-test results showed that Group 3 had improved most and Group 1 earned the second highest score, indicating that competition can make a positive effect on vocabulary learning via smart-phone applications. The results also revealed that there was no statistically significant difference in the post-test scores between self-paced and controlled-paced groups. In addition, vocabulary learning via smart-phone applications improved the participants’ attitudes toward vocabulary learning.