The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of input-based activities and output-based activities major-related vocabulary acquisition of 1th grade nursing students. The study method was a non-equivalent control group pretest-posttest design. The sujects were recruited with 1th grade nursing students from one nursing colleges. They were assigned to the Input-based Activities group (n=20), Output-based Activities group(n=20) or Lecture class group(n=20) using a computerized blocked randomization. The activities was run for 80 minutes per session, once a week, and 4 sessions for a total of 4 sessions. The pre- and post-surveys conducted the same pre- and post-tests to measure the receptive vocabulary knowledge and productive vocabulary knowledge. Data was analyzed using frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA, χ²-test, t-test, Fisher s exact test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, independent t-test and paired t-test. Results showed that there was a significant difference in lecture class, input-based, and output-based activity group(F=111.10, p=.000). There was a significant difference between the receptive knowledge(t=5.877, p=.000) and the productive knowledge(t=1.417, p=.006) after input and output-based activities. The results of this study confirmed that input-based and output-based activities had a positive effect on improving the acquisition of medical terminology knowledge of 1th grade nursing college students.