This research aims to elucidate the necessity for the teaching of Sino-Korean words, the largest portion of Korean vocabulary, and to provide efficient and suitable methods for teaching them in order to enhance the lexical competence of Korean langu...
This research aims to elucidate the necessity for the teaching of Sino-Korean words, the largest portion of Korean vocabulary, and to provide efficient and suitable methods for teaching them in order to enhance the lexical competence of Korean language learners.
This dissertation examines the direct method of teaching Sino-Korean vocabulary, using the morphological characteristics of Sino-Korean words, and argues that the direct method is highly useful for teaching them. In Chinese characters, the morpheme of Sino-Korean words has its own meaning, so after learning the basic meaning of Chinese characters with the highest word formation ability, expanding Sino-Korean words (word family) related to and derived from their respective Chinese characters is meaningful. Thus, Sino-Korean vocabulary education linked to Chinese character education can be of great service.
Expanding Sino-Korean vocabulary with this methodology has two effects on learning Korean vocabulary. The first effect is that students can learn by classifying 'meaning relations', that is, Sino-Korean words based on the same meaning. The second effect is that students can improve their long-term memory through learning Sino-Korean words by recognizing similar forms (spelling).
The outline of this dissertation is as follows. First, the thesis reviews the state of Sino-Korean vocabulary education in domestic and overseas Korean language programs and textbooks in order to understand the current situation of Sino-Korean vocabulary education. Second, this surveys the needs of Sino-Korean vocabulary education, targeting Korean language instructors and Korean language learners with the purpose of finding the most efficient Sino-Korean vocabulary teaching methods. Having reviewed the current situation and needs of Sino-Korean vocabulary education, the dissertation moves to the core of its research. The third section of this thesis focuses on methodologies and materials for Sino-Korean vocabulary education: it examines different teaching methods such as expanding Sino-Korean vocabulary through derivatives with high frequency affixes which have similar meanings, and teaching Sino-Korean vocabulary using semantic mapping; it presents a university-level course, "The Theory of Chinese Character Education for Korean Language Learners", which I revamped for training Korean language instructors; and introduces a Sino-Korean vocabulary list and Sino-Korean textbook, both of which I developed, for non-Chinese cultural learners and intermediate level students. Lastly, the dissertation tests the effectiveness of these teaching methods through a one-month long experimental study on non-Chinese cultural intermediate level learners using the textbook I developed.
As the result of reviewing domestic Korean Language programs, five universities have elective Sino-Korean vocabulary classes based on Chinese character education for building learners' lexical competence. Intermediate and advanced level students from non-Chinese cultural countries participate in the classes. Korean language programs in non-Chinese cultural countries have many courses on Chinese characters and Sino-Korean vocabulary which are compulsory subjects for their major. Korean language programs in Chinese cultural countries instead have some courses on reading Sino-Korean and contrastive analysis. So Korean language programs in non-Chinese cultural countries are more active in teaching Sino-Korean vocabulary based on Chinese characters as a part of Chinese literacy education.
In this survey of the educational needs of Sino-Korean vocabulary, 92% of Korean language instructors and students answered that the relationship between Chinese character competence of Korean language instructors and teaching Sino-Korean vocabulary was very close. So it was found that Korean language instructors need to develop their Chinese character competence for efficient teaching of Sino-Korean vocabulary. Regarding students' Chinese character competence and their lexical competence, more than 90% of Korean language instructors and students answered that there was a close relationship between two. Thus, it would be advisable to raise Chinese character competence to expand Sino-Korean vocabulary in Korean language learners.
According to this survey, Chinese cultural students answered that they had undergone difficulties in learning Native Korean words most, but non-Chinese cultural students answered that it was the most difficult for them to learn Sino-Korean vocabulary. Therefore, non-Chinese cultural students need the Sino-Korean vocabulary education linked to Chinese characters education because Sino-Korean vocabulary education is more urgent for non-Chinese cultural students. Both teachers and students pointed out that the best textbook for expanding Sino-Korean vocabularies would be one based upon the word formation ability of Chinese characters.
As the result of examining textbooks, this dissertation argues for the necessity of developing Sino-Korean vocabulary textbooks to teach Sino-Korean vocabulary on the basis of word-formation units. In light of the survey, my research presents goals and contents of the course, "The Theory of Chinese Character Education for Korean Language Learners" at degree and non-degree levels for training Korean instructors as one of various strategies for raising their Chinese character competence. I also develop a Sino-Korean vocabulary list with word-formation ability and the positional frequency of Chinese characters which were drawn from word entries listed in <Learner's Dictionary of Korean> (2006). For Sino-Korean vocabulary education connected to Chinese character education, my thesis selects 595 Chinese characters for education according to eight key criteria. On the foundation of this Sino-Korean vocabulary list, I also created a textbook for expanding Sino-Korean vocabularies using the word-formation ability of Chinese characters and present efficient pedagogical methods for teaching Sino-Korean vocabulary.
Lastly, this research tests the effectiveness of this teaching method by using the researcher developed textbook on the subjects of non-Chinese cultural intermediate level learners for a month. This experimental study showed that the teaching method of focusing on the meaning of Chinese characters and Sino-Korean word formation principles and to use them for learning vocabulary was very effective for expanding and memorizing Sino-Korean vocabularies. Learners could improve their long-term memory of the words by learning the form and meaning of learned Sino-Korean words through Chinese characters. In addition, learners could build up their vocabulary learning strategies to infer unknown Sino-Korean vocabularies by learning Sino-Korean words (word family) with similar meanings.
In conclusion, this study has the following significances: to provide the Sino-Korean vocabulary list according to the word formation ability and the positional frequency of Chinese characters and to suggest methods to utilize the Sino-Korean vocabulary list for teaching to develop a textbook to expand Sino-Korean vocabularies using the word formation ability and Sino-Korean word formation principles of Chinese characters for non-Chinese cultural learners and to verify its effectiveness through an experimental study.
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