William S. Wells
Brigham Young University



KFL – Korean as a Foreign Language for native
English speakers.
Hanqca – Sino-Korean Characters, or individual
Chinese characters as may be used in a text of Korean
Language to express words of Chinese origin.
Sino-Korean Vocabulary – 1) vocabulary historically
Chinese in origin borrowed into Korean, 2) as well as
new words coined by Koreans using Chinese roots or
morphemes.




Sino-Korean vocabulary comprises 60 – 70 percent of
all Korean words.
These words can be and often are expressed in
written form using hanqca, especially to
disambiguate homophones, despite the fact that the
words are amply expressed using the native Korean
script hankul.
The study and use of hanqca has historically played a
significant role in the education of the Korean literate
class.
Korean middle and high school students today are
required to learn 1800 hanqca.
 What
does this mean for the
place of hanqca instruction in
the KFL classroom?
 That is, does it belong?


Hanqca is purely an orthographic phenomenon and
has little to no practical pedagogical function in a
KFL classroom.
With hanqca being almost completely dropped from
newly published Korean texts, hanqca instruction,
especially at the beginning level, is needless and
anachronistic in a modern language classroom where
emphasis should be first and foremost on oral
performance.



Hanqca instruction is a long cherished method for
studying the roots of Sino-Korean loan words.
It is an effective tool for language learning that helps
students acquire loans quickly.
Because it is an aid to vocabulary acquisition it
should be incorporated into the KFL classroom, even
at the beginning level.



If incorporated into a KFL curriculum does hanqca
instruction increase students’ acquisition of SinoKorean vocabulary?
If not, we may argue for the exclusion of hanqca
from KFL programs except as merely an interesting
historical or orthographic phenomenon.
If such instruction does improve Sino-Korean
vocabulary acquisition, however, it is worth serious
consideration as an essential pedagogical tool of KFL
from beginning levels.


Over a period of two semesters all students
taking BYU’s KOREA 301 were offered a
semester long two-credit hour course in hanqca
instruction.
The course was not mandatory and students
signed up on a volunteer basis.


Those participating in hanqca instruction were
taken as a test sample while non-participants
served as a control sample.
In all, 45 students were tested—the control
group comprising 32 students with the
remaining 13 student-volunteers comprising
the test group.


During this period all KOREA 301 students
were administered Sino-Korean vocabulary
tests during the first and last week of the
course.
The pre- and post-tests were identical in format
but contained different test words. The tests
consisted of six sections of 20 questions each. In
each section half the questions included hanqca
in parenthesis next to the word being tested
while half included no hanqca.

Control group




Pre-test: 53% correct
Post-test: 59% correct
Increase: 11.3%
Test group



Pre-test: 48%
Post-test: 69%
Increase: 43.8%



Can the difference in test scores be attributed to the
test group’s two extra class hours per week?
What about extra Korean class hours by the control
group?
What about Word List vocabulary?



Does the method of hanqca instruction make a
difference?
If introduced at the beginning level, what
amount extent is appropriate?
Does the learner’s level determine what
instruction paradigm is most effect, or does one
paradigm work for all levels?