한국인 학습자와 영어 원어민의 구어 및 문어 코퍼스에나타난 개별 어휘 및 다어휘 표현 비교･분석

Abstract

The present study aimed to compare English non-native speaker corpora vs. English native speaker corpora for the analysis of spoken and written English. Programs BNC-COCA 25000 RANGE and COCA_MWU20 ColloGram were used to analyze frequency and lexical variety of single words and multi-word units (MWUs) in each of the four corpora: Korean EFL learners’ spoken corpus and written corpus, BNC Spoken Sampler and BNC Written Sampler. The analysis of the four corpora demonstrated: First, the Korean learners' use of single word items and MWUs in the spoken and written English did not show a noticeable difference compared to the native speakers' use of the same lexical items. Second, more than 90% of the single words consisted of items from the first 5,000 words whereas 70% of the MWUs were made up of those from the first 2,500 MWUs. Third, similar to previous studies, there was the repeated use of single words and MWUs in spoken English while a wider range of expressions were used in written English. Fourth, the results of the analysis indicated that the Korean learners were exposed to different opportunities for English vocabulary learning compared to native speakers, which may lead to Korean learners’ inefficient learning of vocabulary. Implications are further discussed for improved vocabulary learning.