Receptive and Productive Recall Vocabulary Size and Depth in South Korea

This article reports on an investigation of receptive and productive recall vocabulary size and depth in South Korea. The study was designed to provide information pertinent to the ongoing issue of receptive versus productive vocabulary size, and secondarily to consider the implications of the results for English-mediated education. Both size and depth tests were administered to 36 English majors in their second year of studies. Information about vocabulary, skill and sub-skill learning in middle and high school was also collected. The size tests found overall vocabulary size to be somewhat low in terms of succeeding in English-mediated courses. Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes were found to be similar for high frequency words, but as word frequency decreased receptive vocabulary became larger than productive. The language learning data suggested that this finding may have been influenced by instructional practices. The depth tests of form, meaning and use revealed that vocabulary known in translation was not always used accurately when writing sentences, and was associated with strong receptive oral form knowledge, somewhat high productive oral form knowledge and quite strong meaning knowledge.