TOPIK 읽기 영역 지문의 난이도와 균질성에 관한 통사론적 접근

Syntactic approach on reading texts regarding difficulty levels and coherence in TOPIK

This paper aims to investigate whether the reading texts in TOPIK have been correctly selected according to the different levels and whether the level of reading texts have sustained coherence within the same test levels. For this purpose, the 13th to 15th TOPIKs' reading texts were taken and analysed into syntactically-tagged corpus from which syntactic complexity of matrix clauses and embedded clauses were extracted. The syntactically-tagged corpus were classified into 9 different texts, according to the different levels and the times the tests were taken. After comparing those texts from various points of view, it was concluded that intermediate level texts were more difficult than those of advanced level. In addition, only the advanced level texts were coherent from 13th to 15th TOPIK. Following these results, it is suggested that the intermediate reading texts be made easier and the advanced texts made more difficult by modifying embedded clauses in the reading texts. Accumulation of text corpus can help towards solving these types of problems in selecting texts for TOPIK. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)