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

Abstract

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 childrens English novels and the role of teachers in supporting their students while reading these novels