다문화가정 자녀의 어휘력 고찰

A Study on Vocabulary of Children from Multicultural Families

This paper aims to compare vocabulary of children from multicultural families to that of children born to Korean parents. It has been assumed in many previous researches that children of multicultural families have poor vocabulary, and their meager Korean vocabulary results in negative academic performance in their schools. However, there has been no systematic and concrete research for actual proof about their meager vocabulary. Therefore, in this research, vocabulary of both groups were inspected by questionnaire. As a result of this survey, Korean vocabulary of children from multicultural families is limited. The difference in vocabulary between the two groups is getting smaller as time goes. That is, when comparing the second graders there was not much difference in the vocabulary of the two groups. A possible reason for these results is that the interaction between the peer groups and the educational stimulus given in classrooms made the children's vocabulary develop. It also shows that children have a weak adverb vocabulary. In both groups, vocabulary usually used in written Korean is worse than in spoken Korean. However, in the case of children from Korean parents, the difference between vocabulary used in spoken and written Korean is not that big. On the other hand, in the case of children from multiculutral families, the difference between vocabulary used in spoken and written Korean is big. If children from Korean parents have been brought up in a relatively better literacy environment, it would explain these results. Accordingly, academic support must be given to children from multicultural families at younger ages.