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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 22, No. 0, pp.1236-1252
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2022
Received 09 Sep 2022 Revised 11 Nov 2022 Accepted 30 Nov 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.22..202211.1236

Phonological Decoding for L2 Vocabulary Learning and Its relations to Learners’ Proficiency Levels

Chaehee Park
Professor, Division of Foreign Languages. Sun Moon University, Tel: 041-530-2423 chpark@sunmoon.ac.kr


© 2022 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study tests whether or not phonological decoding process contributes to vocabulary learning in the framework of task involvement load, and how learners’ proficiency levels are related to the effectiveness of the task involving phonological decoding process. Three tasks with different amount of load were created and were given to 62 Korean EFL university students (21 for reading comprehension task, 22 for reading comprehension plus phonological decoding process, and 19 for reading comprehension plus gap-filling task). The participants’ performance was tested three times (pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test). First, it was found that there were significant differences only between the reading group and the fill-in group in the immediate test, but no differences among the three groups in the delayed-test although the phonology group retained initially-learned words best. Second, the results also revealed that there were significant differences between the phonology group and the reading group among the low-level students, indicating that decoding process was conducive to both initial word learning and successful retention of vocabulary knowledge particularly among the low-level learners. It is suggested that phonological decoding process needs to be considered as one of the components of involvement loads for low-level students, and that English instructors create various task materials both entailing students’ phonological process for the low-levels and inducing much amount of involvement load for the high-levels.

Keywords:

vocabulary learning task, involvement load hypothesis, phonological decoding, second language learning, Korean learners of English

Acknowledgments

Data were presented at the conference of the Jungang English language and literature association of Korea in 2022.

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