Korean Learners' Development of English Passive Constructions

This study investigates how Korean speakers develop their interlanguage of English passive constructions with a reference to the learners' grammar proficiency levels. Sixty two college students of different levels of English participated in this study. They were asked to complete a sentence-completion task. Their production was classified into accurate passives, malformed passives, pseudo-passives, unaccusatives, and actives according to the use of transitive, ergative and unergative verbs. They then were further analyzed depending on the subjects' levels of grammar by three main factors: L1 transfer, the English voice system, and universal cognitive factors. The results showed that the subjects of the lower group produced more pseudo-passives, malformed passives, and overpassivization than those of the higher group, and even subjects of higher group still made passives for ergative verbs. It was also shown that L1 and universal factors had more influence on the lower group than on the higher group. Based on the analyses of the subjects' responses, the development of the English passive system by Korean learners is shown and some implications are suggested for effective teaching of English.