The purpose of this study was to select instructional Chinese characters to
improve Korean vocabularies of foreign learners and to develop Chinese
Character teaching materials for Korean Language Teaching.
Foreign learners who learn Korean language...
The purpose of this study was to select instructional Chinese characters to
improve Korean vocabularies of foreign learners and to develop Chinese
Character teaching materials for Korean Language Teaching.
Foreign learners who learn Korean language in Korea are increasing
continuously. With the raid increase of foreign residents in Korea because of
marriage, study and business for last several years, Korea came to be a
multi-cultural era. Accordingly, Korean language should be taught to those
foreign residents, and Chinese characters should be taught together to improve
the effects of the education. It is because more than 60% of Korean vocabulary
is made up of Chinese characters. Furthermore, Chinese characters have excellent
coinage power so that they can help the learners to improve their vocabularies.
Although there have been many studies on the necessity of the education of
Chinese characters for the foreign learners, it has rarely been in place in actual
education. There are few Chinese character teaching materials for this purpose.
The biggest difficulty that the foreign learners have when they learn Korean is the understanding the meaning of the vocabulary. Therefore they need to resolve
the problem by studying Chinese characters. For this, Chinese characters for
Korean language education should be selected and the corresponding teaching
materials should be developed.
In Chapter Ⅱ, the current situation of Chinese characters education in Korean
Language Institutes attached to Universities was reviewed. Four kinds of teaching
materials used in Chinese Character Classes of Korean Language Institute among
newly published ones were analyzed and strengths and weaknesses were
identified.
In Chapter Ⅲ, the examples of Chinese characters selected for Korean
education were reviewed, the selection criteria were set and a list of Chinese
characters was selected according to the set criteria. First of all, beginner and
intermediate vocabulary characters were abstracted from ‘Vocabularies for Korean
Learning’(Cho Nam Ho, The National Institute of the Korean Language) ‘Korean
Competency Test Vocabulary List’(Kim Jung Seob, Korea Institute for Curriculum
and Evaluation), and then compared with ‘1,800 Basic Chinese Characters for
Education’(Kim Sang Hong, Ministry of Education), ‘The Frequency of the Use
of Chinese Characters in Korean Language Life’(Heo Cheol) and ‘The Frequency
of the Use of Chinese Characters in Elementary School Textbooks’(Min Hyun
Sik). From the process, 1,336 characters were selected for the education of
foreign learners, and they were classified in 4 stages according to coinage power
and the frequency of use.
In Chapter Ⅳ, seven directions to compose Chinese character teaching
materials were proposed, the content in each stage was summarized and actual
Chinese character teaching materials were composed based on the results. The
followings are the teaching materials composition directions. First, we need to
consider the subjects of the study. Second, we need to set the amount of the
study and the system considering the level of each stage. Third, we need to
focus the reading training. Fourth, learning should be comprehended for Chinese character’s radical and principle. Fifth, we need to include the learning of
Chinese character idiom. Sixth, we need to diversify the learning methods so
that the learners can concentrate on the study with interest. Seventh, learning
should be checked through evaluation.
In this study, we reviewed the List of Chinese Characters selected for the
Education of Korean Language. It is hoped that this list and teaching materials
development direction can be used as basic materials when Chinese character
teaching materials for Korean language education for multi-cultural era are
developed in the future.