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.

This study examined the effects of teaching contextual inference and word association strategies on 5th grade elementary school students' vocabulary knowledge development. A total of 56 students participated in the current study, as divided into either the contextual inference group or the word association group. The vocabulary proficiency levels of the participants were also considered and the students in each group were further divided into either the upper level group or the lower level group. The participants experienced six treatment sessions, and in each session they had to study five vocabulary items using each of the two vocabulary learning strategies. The posttest and delayed posttest results indicated that both strategies were effective for the vocabulary knowledge development of the upper level group as well as the lower level group. Some possible implications for elementary school English classrooms in Korea are discussed.