The Effects of the Sentence-writing Task on English Vocabulary Learning of Korean High School Students

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of the sentence-writing task on English vocabulary learning of Korean high school students. The effectiveness of the sentence-writing task can be explained based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) in that the tasks inducing higher involvement load yield better results in vocabulary learning. A number of studies have been conducted to confirm the Involvement Load Hypothesis

yet, there has been no consistency in their results. The inconsistency mainly appeared in the comparison between the sentence-writing task and the gap-filling task. Some studies have shown the results that there was no significant difference between the effects of the sentence-writing task inducing higher involvement load and those of the gap-filling task inducing lower involvement load. Thus, in the present study, the effects of the sentence-writing task on vocabulary learning were re-examined in comparison with the gap-filling task. In addition, since there have been no studies that addressed the effects of autobiographical elaboration (relating the meaning of a certain word to ones own experience) on vocabulary learning, the current study compared the effects of the autobiographical sentence-writing task and those of the imaginary sentence-writing task. Additionally, considering that there has been a lack of attention to the differences between the sentences written by the learners who achieved higher vocabulary retention and the sentences written by those who showed less vocabulary gains, the current study compared the quality of the sentences written by the learners whose vocabulary test scores were different. In the present study, 40 high proficiency learners and 40 low proficiency learners in one high school located in Gyeonggi province were selected as the participants and randomly assigned either of the sentence-writing task or the gap-filling task. As for the sentence-writing task, the task was divided into the autobiographical sentence-writing task and the imaginary sentence-writing task. In order to assist the students in brainstorming the content of the sentences, some short guidelines were provided in Korean. For example, in the case of the word surly, a guideline such as Write about your own experience where you saw a surly person. Please describe how the person behaved in the surly way and towards whom. was provided in Korean. A set of two-way ANOVAs conducted between the sentence-writing group and the gap-filling group demonstrated the results consistent with the Involvement Load Hypothesis. That is, the sentence-writing task was found to be more effective in vocabulary learning than the gap-filling task, regardless of the learners proficiency levels. This result seems to be attributed to the content guidelines provided for the sentence-writing group, which may have enabled the learners to extend the length of their sentences. However, no significant difference was found between the effects of the autobiographical sentence-writing task and those of the imaginary sentence-writing task. This implies that whether the sentence is written based on learners past experience does not affect vocabulary learning. Lastly, the sentences written by the high and the low post-test score groups were analyzed using Coh-Metrix 3.0. and compared through T-tests. The T-test results revealed significant differences between the two score groups in the length of context, lexical diversity, and the frequencies of adverbs, causal connectives, and negation markers. This finding sheds some light on the possibility that these properties of the sentences may affect vocabulary learning. Based on the results, the pedagogical implications were discussed in the conclusion chapter.