English Vocabulary Acquisition Strategies: the Beliefs and Experiences of Korean Pre-service and In-service English Teachers

Acquiring a substantical amount of English vocabulary is a highly demanding task for English learners. Especially for EFL learners like Korean English learners it is much more demending. This book, thus, investigates how a small group of Korean English learners address vocabulary learning and teaching. The findings show that both in-service and pre-service EFL teachers think conscious vocabulary learning is more efficient for Korean EFL learners because they have to acquire a certain amount of English vocabulary to support further acquisition and that consciously studied vocabulary items should be put to use. The pre-service EFL teachers disagree with the use of translation and English-Korean bilingual dictionaries, whereas the in-service EFL teachers think providing translated definitions of unfamiliar English vocabulary items is the simplest and most effective way of presenting the meanings of these items. The findings should be help shed some light on approaches to English vocabulary learning and teaching and curriculum for English teacher education programs.