Ahn, Sunyoung & Kim, Youngkyu. 2017. The effects of comprehensible output
on learning Korean grammar and vocabulary according to output modes.
Language Information 25. 57-92. This study aimed to address the following
questions: (1) whether participating in both output and input activities promotes
learning Korean grammar and vocabulary more effectively than receiving input
only; (2) whether the effects of comprehensible output on learning Korean
grammar and vocabulary vary in accordance with oral and written output modes;
and (3) whether the linguistic aspects that second language learners focus on
are different when they are speaking versus when they are writing. Twenty Korean
as a second language adult learners participated in the experiment. Only the
experimental group (n = 10) performed dictogloss tasks that required producing
spoken and written outputs while the control (n = 10) did not. A follow-up
recall questionnaire was given to the experimental group in order to investigate
their conscious focus according to the output mode. The results revealed that
producing output activity contributed to learning grammar and vocabulary, but
there was no statistically significant difference between the effects of oral and
written output. Also, the result of the recall questionnaire showed that learners
focused more on syntactic processing than on semantic processing when they
produced output regardless of its mode. The findings of this study suggest that
producing comprehensible output facilitates acquiring target language form by
inducing learners to focus on syntactic analysis beyond semantic analysis and
that the effect of comprehensible output should be identical both in producing
oral and written language.
Key words: comprehensible output, output modes, dictogloss task, learning
Korean as a second language, conscious focus