A causal relationship between lexical ability and reading comprehension in Korean by native Japanese speakers

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  • 日本語母語話者による韓国語習得における語彙能力と読解の因果関係
  • ニホンゴ ボゴワシャ ニ ヨル カンコクゴ シュウトク ニ オケル ゴイノウリョク ト ドッカイ ノ インガ カンケイ

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Abstract

Although the Korean language is similar to Japanese in the perspective of syntactic structure, lexical items greatly differ from each other with dissimilar scripts used for each language, kana and kanji for Japanese and hangeul for Korean. The lexical differences between the languages impose difficulty for native Japanese speakers reading Korean texts. Therefore, by testing native Japanese speakers learning Korean, the present study investigated the causal relation of lexical knowledge to reading comprehension in Korean. Both a vocabulary test, created by Saito and Tamaoka (in press), and a reading comprehension test, questions taken from the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) and the Korean Language Proficiency Test, were given to measure both lexical knowledge and reading comprehension respectively. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) it was revealed that the Korean lexical knowledge measured by three word class categories (i.e., noun, adjective, and verbs) significantly contributed to reading comprehension (β=0.99, p<.001). Likewise, the lexical knowledge of two word type categories (i.e., Korean-originated words and Chinese-originated words) also significantly contributed to reading comprehension (β=0.98, p<.001). Consequently, during the early stages of Korean learning, lexical knowledge is an important factor of success for Japanese speakers to be able to comprehend Korean texts.

Journal

  • ことばの科学

    ことばの科学 28 111-123, 2014-12-05

    名古屋大学言語文化研究会

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