영재반 학생들의 영어 어휘력에 관한 비교연구

A comparative study of English-focused gifted students’ English vocabulary

  The purpose of this study is to measure and analyze English-focused gifted students’ vocabulary to establish an authentic guideline for English classes of gifted programs. Since 2002 when the Laws of Promotion of Gifted Education was issued in Korea, gifted programs have been run all over the nation. Some academic studies have been conducted regarding gifted programs of Science and Mathematics. This is pilot research on Korean/English bilingual gifted students with linguistic intelligence. This study focuses on measuring English vocabulary proficiency of English-focused gifted students(N=11) by comparing it to that of graduate students (N=31) majoring in English at a university. The four fields of vocabulary proficiency for comparison are: 1) headwords of Academic Word List, 2) receptive skills, 3) productive skills, and 4) cultural awareness. The data analysis shows that the vocabulary proficiency of gifted students is not statistically different to that of graduate students majoring in English in academic words, receptive skills, and productive skills. Gifted students, however, are obviously poor at cultural awareness, compared to graduate students. These research results will be the basis for creating and developing EAP(English for Academic Purposes) programs for gifted students at the secondary levels.