초등영어 어휘 수준에 적합한 영어 아동문학 작품 탐색: 코퍼스 기반 연구

• Published in: Language Research Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 43 - 68
• Main Authors: 성민창(Min-Chang Sung), 김은형(EunHyoung Kim), 김기택(Kitaek Kim)
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: Seoul 서울대학교 언어교육원 01.08.2023; Seoul National University
• Subjects: Children & youth; Childrens literature; Corpus analysis; Corpus linguistics; Elementary school students; English language; Loanwords; Novels; Proper nouns; South Korea; elementary English education; comprehensible input; the 2015 revised Korean national curriculum of English; English-language novels for children; token and type frequency
• ISSN: 0254-4474; 2586-7113
• DOI: 10.30961/lr.2023.59.1.43

This study aimed to determine the number of word types that Korean elementary school students should know in order to comprehend English-language novels for children. We selected 14 novels that are educationally appropriate for Korean elementary school students and analyzed the word types and tokens in a corpus of the novels. The study assumed that the students knew the 800 elementary-level basic word types in the Korean national curriculum and other comprehensible word types (e.g., loanwords, proper nouns, numbers). We then analyzed the number of word tokens that would be comprehensible to the students. The results showed that 2,613, 3,211, and 4,729 word types covered 90%, 95%, and 98% of the total token frequency, respectively. Of these, 151, 749, and 2,267 word types were found to be incomprehensible to the target students. Based on these results, we discuss suitable lexical sizes for comprehending children's English novels and the role of teachers in supporting their students while reading these novels.