Comparing Lexical Diversity and Lexical Sophistication in Korean EFL Writing: Topic and Text Length
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참고문헌
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초록
The study explores the effects of topic on lexical diversity and lexical sophistication in Korean university students’ English writing with and without text length control. Topic effect was initially examined under two sets of writing contexts: the same topic and different topics and later again under the same condition with the only difference being in text length (shortened into 200-word writing). Lexical diversity and lexical sophistication were measured using VocabProfile that produces type-token ratio (TTR) and lexical frequency profile (LFP). Lexical diversity was measured by TTR, and lexical sophistication was measured by academic word list (AWL) and off the list words (OLW) from the four lexical frequency lists generated by VocabProfile. Statistical analysis revealed that topic had a large impact on lexical diversity and lexical sophistication. Also, text length effect was not pronounced in this traditional TTR and LFP analysis. Rather, the number of word types (i.e., the number of different words) appeared as a more influential factor to determine TTR and LFP values. This finding indicates that topic plays an important role in EFL writing. Further study is needed to confirm these study results using other lexical analysis programs. Findings and implications are discussed.
Abstract
The study explores the effects of topic on lexical diversity and lexical sophistication in Korean university students’ English writing with and without text length control. Topic effect was initially examined under two sets of writing contexts: the same topic and different topics and later again under the same condition with the only difference being in text length (shortened into 200-word writing). Lexical diversity and lexical sophistication were measured using VocabProfile that produces type-token ratio (TTR) and lexical frequency profile (LFP). Lexical diversity was measured by TTR, and lexical sophistication was measured by academic word list (AWL) and off the list words (OLW) from the four lexical frequency lists generated by VocabProfile. Statistical analysis revealed that topic had a large impact on lexical diversity and lexical sophistication. Also, text length effect was not pronounced in this traditional TTR and LFP analysis. Rather, the number of word types (i.e., the number of different words) appeared as a more influential factor to determine TTR and LFP values. This finding indicates that topic plays an important role in EFL writing. Further study is needed to confirm these study results using other lexical analysis programs. Findings and implications are discussed.
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