A Study on Trends and Future Tasks of the Quantitative Analysis-based Korean Language Education Researches.

This study aims to examine trends and future tasks of the Korean language education researches which use quantitative research methods and quantitative analysis in particular. In this study quantitative research methods are understood as statistical analysis-based research methods. In the quantitative analysis-based researches numerical materials are collected (characteristic aspect of the materials) and the materials are processed using statistical methods (processing aspect of the materials). The following points are examined. Firstly, a problem of subclassification of the quantitative method-based Korean language education researches is dealt with. Secondly, the two aspects, i.e. the collection of numerical materials in the Korean language education researches and the statistical processing of them are presented and a typical order of their statistical processing is examined. Thirdly, a problem of the quantitative indicator playing an important role in the collection of quantified materials is examined. The problem refers to what kind of quantitative indicators are used in corpus studies, and what kind of studies can be used in order to implement new quantitative indicators. Lastly, the study is concluded with a question on how the quantitative studies should deal with criticism on the quantitative analysis-based studies stating that the studies conducted in an artificial environment with restricted variables have difficulties in properly explaining complicated teaching-learning conditions. In order to examine recent trends in the quantitative analysis-based Korean language education studies this study examined research methods used in articles from three academic journals on Korean language education published in the last five years (from 2010 to September 2015). The examination revealed that 185 papers used quantitative analysis. Among them studies utilizing descriptive statistics were most common. In case of studies utilizing inferential statistics, comparative studies verifying differences between groups or variables, correlative studies showing relations between variables, effect relationship studies showing effect relations between variables and classification studies classifying variables or groups were distinguished.