영어 어휘력 및 문법지식과 영어 성적의 상관관계

Abstract

With the College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT) playing such an important role in the process of their college entrance, students are viewing their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar to be the most essential factor of their English proficiency. There is also widespread recognition concerning the washback effect of CSAT in highschool classrooms of Korea. This study aims to identify highs chool students' perception of the subject of English and English study, to measure the vocabulary and the grammar knowledge of students and to find out the correlation among the test scores of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge and CSAT scores and students' high school grades. To do these, the researcher conducted a survey of students' English study attitudes, processed the test results and grades of students, and used 'SPSS' to analyze the data. With the study results, the researcher found out that students consider the subject of English as very difficult to study, that they regard knowledge of vocabulary to be more important aspect of their English competence than their understanding of English grammar. Even though they concentrate their time and effort more on studying vocabulary, students think of English grammar as the most challenging part of their English study. There was an obvious case of washback effect CSAT has on students in English classrooms of Korea, as students most expected their classroom activity of English class to be focused on adapting themselves to the types of questions in CSAT. 'SPSS' analysis results show that the level of students' vocabulary has greater correlation with their highschool grades and CSAT scores. So that can lead to the assumption that students' vocabulary contributes to the considerable part of their English proficiency and teachers can help students develop better English competence by The scores of students grammatical knowledge test did not show as strong correlation with other test scores and grades as the scores of vocabulary test did. But they have strong enough correlation not to be ignored, though. In conclusion, it is highly recommended that teachers should present students with lexical items in more communicative context.