• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.376-389
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of implementing semantic mapping reading strategy in the science class on high school students' science text reading ability. 3^rd grade students of science core high school in a small and medium-sized city participated in this study for a semester. Texts with socio-scientific issues and chemistry subjects were used to implement semantic mapping reading strategy in the science class. To investigate the changes in students' science text reading ability, experimental group students participated in the pre-reading and post-science reading ability tests and the results were analyzed. The results of this study showed that the mean of the science reading ability test score of experimental group was significantly higher than that of the comparison group. We found that drawing a semantic mapping before solving a reading task made it easier for students to find information and infer meaning from text. It can be seen that students also recognize that the semantic mapping is helpful in understanding the text because it is easy to understand the relationship between concepts by visualizing the content of the text, and can connect their background knowledge with the text content.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.37-60
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• 2019

In this study, the effects of reading strategy, which is a combination of reading methods on high school students' reading ability were investigated using action research methodology in order to provide practical support in educational fields. Also, the effects of reading strategies on adolescents' reading attitudes and the correlation between text comprehension and change of reading attitudes were investigated. This study is unique for its adoption of reading method combinations as reading strategies to enhance the effectiveness of reading in terms of text comprehension. Also, this study is meaningful in dealing with the cognitive abilities of high school students.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.67 no.5
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• pp.362-377
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of semantic mapping as a science text reading strategy on high school students' inferential understanding. For this purpose, eight science text reading classes were conducted a reading strategy using semantic mapping for 46 students in two science-focused classes in the third grade of a high school. To investigate the effects of semantic mapping reading strategy on students' inferential comprehension, students' pre- and post-reading ability tests results were analyzed. In order to find out the change in inferential comprehension, the level of the inferential comprehension was analyzed using the analysis framework for developed in this study. For the classification of inferential comprehension, the levels of the inferential comprehension were converted into scores. The results of the analysis of changes in students' inferential comprehension showed that semantic mapping reading strategy classes influenced the changes in high school students' inference, especially bridge inference and elaborative inference among sub-elements of inferential comprehension.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.293-305
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• 2016

Objective: This study aims to measure cognitive load levels by analyzing the EEG of Koreans and foreigners, when they read a Korean text with care selected by level from the grammar and vocabulary aspects, and compare the cognitive load levels through quantitative values. The study results can be utilized as basic data for more scientific approach, when Korean texts or books are developed, and an evaluation method is built, when the foreigners encounter them for learning or an assignment. Background: Based on 2014, the number of the foreign students studying in Korea was 84,801, and they increase annually. Most of them are from Asian region, and they come to Korea to enter a university or a graduate school in Korea. Because those foreign students aim to learn within Universities in Korea, they receive Korean education from their preparation for study in Korea. To enter a university in Korea, they must acquire grade 4 or higher level in the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), or they need to complete a certain educational program at each university's affiliated language institution. In such a program, the learners of the Korean language receive Korean education based on texts, except speaking domain, and the comprehension of texts can determine their academic achievements in studying after they enter their desired schools (Jeon, 2004). However, many foreigners, who finish a language course for the short-term, and need to start university study, cannot properly catch up with university classes requiring expertise with the vocabulary and grammar levels learned during the language course. Therefore, reading education, centered on a strategy to understand university textbooks regarded as top level reading texts to the foreigners, is necessary (Kim and Shin, 2015). This study carried out an experiment from a perspective that quantitative data on the readers of the main player of reading education and teaching materials need to be secured to back up the need for reading education for university study learners, and scientifically approach educational design. Namely, this study grasped the difficulty level of reading through the measurement of cognitive loads indicated in the reading activity of each text by dividing the difficulty of a teaching material (book) into eight levels, and the main player of reading into Koreans and foreigners. Method: To identify cognitive loads indicated upon reading Korean texts with care by Koreans and foreigners, this study recruited 16 participants (eight Koreans and eight foreigners). The foreigners were limited to the language course students studying the intermediate level Korean course at university-affiliated language institutions within Seoul Metropolitan Area. To identify cognitive load, as they read a text by level selected from the Korean books (difficulty: eight levels) published by King Sejong Institute (Sejonghakdang.org), the EEG sensor was attached to the frontal love (Fz) and occipital lobe (Oz). After the experiment, this study carried out a questionnaire survey to measure subjective evaluation, and identified the comprehension and difficulty on grammar and words. To find out the effects on schema that may affect text comprehension, this study controlled the Korean texts, and measured EEG and subjective satisfaction. Results: To identify brain's cognitive load, beta band was extracted. As a result, interactions (Fz: p =0.48; Oz: p =0.00) were revealed according to Koreans and foreigners, and difficulty of the text. The cognitive loads of Koreans, the readers whose mother tongue is Korean, were lower in reading Korean texts than those of the foreigners, and the foreigners' cognitive loads became higher gradually according to the difficulty of the texts. From the text four, which is intermediate level in difficulty, remarkable differences started to appear in comparison of the Koreans and foreigners in the beginner's level text. In the subjective evaluation, interactions were revealed according to the Koreans and foreigners and text difficulty (p =0.00), and satisfaction was lower, as the difficulty of the text became higher. Conclusion: When there was background knowledge in reading, namely schema was formed, the comprehension and satisfaction of the texts were higher, although higher levels of vocabulary and grammar were included in the texts than those of the readers. In the case of a text in which the difficulty of grammar was felt high in the subjective evaluation, foreigners' cognitive loads were also high, which shows the result of the loads' going up higher in proportion to the increase of difficulty. This means that the grammar factor functions as a stress factor to the foreigners' reading comprehension. Application: This study quantitatively evaluated the cognitive loads of Koreans and foreigners through EEG, based on readers and the text difficulty, when they read Korean texts. The results of this study can be used for making Korean teaching materials or Korean education content and topic selection for foreigners. If research scope is expanded to reading process using an eye-tracker, the reading education program and evaluation method for foreigners can be developed on the basis of quantitative values.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.185-207
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• 2009

This study investigated the extent of informational text genre appeared in English textbooks at grades six, seven, and nine. Employing content analysis to analyze the literary forms, the researcher identified genre in each reading selection of each English textbook and classified it into six categories - fiction, information, biography, poetry, play, or fantasy. Especially, informational genre was classified further into two subcategories - non-narrative and narrative - in order to investigate the extent of non-narrative informational text only. The text genre was examined by analyzing (a) the number of reading selections representing each genre and (b) the number of words in reading selections devoted to each genre. The most frequent type of genre at grade 6 and 7 was fiction with 94% and 71% respectively, whereas at grade 9 it was devoted to information (51%), followed by fiction (37%). The largest number of words was devoted to fiction with 96% at the sixth grade and 70% at the seventh grade; on the other hand, for grade 9, it was devoted to information (46%), followed by fiction (39%). Although there was variance across different publishers, the informational text genre gained more significance as the grade level increased. In particular, the percentage of reading selections and words devoted to the non-narrative or expository informational genre was overall 4% at grade 6, 17% at grade 7, and 44% at grade 9. The findings demonstrated the need to pay more attention to informational literacy especially in the early grades for the development of balanced genre knowledge.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1-25
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• 2011

This research primarily aimed to investigate proficient and less proficient EFL readers' awareness and experiences about learning to read and reading in English. The secondary purpose was to explore the participants' reading strategies, and to discover how the genres of English texts influence their reading processing behaviors. The participants consisted of four college students in engineering aged 21-25 years. Three data sources were employed: questionnaires, interviews, and think-alouds. The findings revealed that: (1) the proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be good readers, while the less proficient EFL readers judged themselves to be fair readers; (2) unknown vocabulary was perceived to be the major impediment to reading comprehension; the think-aloud data, however, demonstrated that unknown vocabulary did not significantly interfere with their reading comprehension; (3) regardless of the genre of the text, the participants employed similar reading strategies; (4) the participants were more likely to tolerate ambiguity and predict the content when reading the narrative text than the expository text; (5) there was no set of strategies that distinguished proficient EFL readers from less proficient EFL readers; and (6) when identifying problems, the proficient EFL readers used fix-up strategies more effectively and were better able to provide satisfactory solutions than their counterparts. Pedagogical implications for EFL reading instruction are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.54-63
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• 1999

The Landscape drawing is used as main media in landscape design process like the language in daily life for human. Designers input many intentions and meaningful words in design process through landscape drawing. The common purpose of landscape drawing is to represent reality effectively, even though it has variable visual forms and materiality. The representation in landscape drawing in metaphorical as well as visual and functional. But current tendency is inclined to use landscape drawing in a functional aspect for visual representation and the landscape drawing is utilized straight-forwardly rather than metaphorically for clear communication. Such recognition on landscape drawing results from the difficulty to accept the symbolic aspect of the drawing. The difficulty makes the utilization and the interpretation of landscape drawing stay at conventional level in following visible factors. For the sake of solving the difficulty this study considers landscape drawing as the text that contains readable objects and symbolic words. This study presents layer-methods for reading a landscape drawing as a text; situational and contextural reading, iconological reading and reading the subject of drawing.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1-22
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• 2009

This case study aimed to explore proficient EFL readers' perceptions and experiences about reading tasks and how those perceptions and experiences influence their reading processing behaviors, and to examine how the cultural background of a text affects their reading strategies and comprehension. Three college students who were non-English majors participated in this study. Three data sources were employed: questionnaires, interviews, and think-alouds. The results showed that: (1) the participants emphasized comprehension as the goal of reading and considered themselves good EFL readers; (2) their reading purposes were closely associated with personal pursuits; (3) they preferred to read materials that deal with areas of interest but did not try to take a risk in terms of level of difficulty and/or length; (4) they implemented a multistrategic approach to reading in that the majority of their strategy use was in conjunction with their concern about meaning construction; (5) they were able to develop useful understandings of unknown vocabulary; and (6) their clear awareness of the cultural background presupposed in the text helped them invoke prior knowledge and reduce unknown vocabulary hindrances which contributed to comprehension. Pedagogical implications for EFL reading instruction are provided.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.281-286
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• 2023

Diagnosing reading disorders involves complex procedures to evaluate complex cognitive processes. For an accurate diagnosis, a series of tests and evaluations by human experts are required. In this study, we propose a quantitative tool to diagnose reading disorders based on natural reading behaviors using minimal human input. The eye movements of the third- and fourth-grade students were recorded while they read a text at their own pace. Seven machine learning models were used to evaluate the gaze patterns of the words in the presented text and classify the students as normal or having a reading disorder. The accuracy of the machine learning-based diagnosis was measured using the diagnosis by human experts as the ground truth. The highest accuracy of 0.8 was achieved by the support vector machine and random forest classifiers. This result demonstrated that machine learning-based automated diagnosis could substitute for the traditional diagnosis of reading disorders and enable large-scale screening for students at an early age.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.15-28
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• 2009

This study focused on the comprehension of texts written either in Korean script (Hangul) or Chinese script (Hanja). For this purpose, we measured the reading time and the correct response in text comprehension tasks with 104 Korean-Chinese children who were either 10 or 19 years old. There was a main effect of script : The reading time of Hanja texts was shorter than that of Hangul or Hangul Hanja mixed texts. But the older subjects who spent the same reading time in both Hangul and Hanja texts showed the longer reading time in Hangul Hanja mixed texts revealing the interaction between age and script. The correct response rate on the comprehension task was the highest in Hangul text. The results were discussed in relation to the independent dual language processing systems in Korean-Chinese.