• 영어어문교육
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• 제7권1호
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• pp.35-48
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• 2001

One of the areas of second language acquisition that enjoyed popularity in recent years is interlanguage pragmatics. The main reason for this popularity lies in the critical role of pragmatic competence in appropriate use of a target language. The aim of this paper was to examine L2 learners' pragmatic behavior in their speech act performance and determine main sources causing pragmatic difficulty. Four major sources of pragmatic errors were identified: linguistic proficiency, L1 transfer, waffling and teaching activities. Each source was discussed with empirical evidence in some detail, and teaching suggestions were provided for developing learners' pragmatic competence in EFL classrooms.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.173-187
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• 2003

This paper proposes a semantic description of the English nominal relatives with a knowledge representation framework of Conceptual Graphs(CGs), which is a computer-oriented form of interlanguage from the Conceptual Structures Theory. This paper focuses on the difference between definite and universally quantified meaning of nominal relatives, on the compound relative clauses, and also on the difference between nominal relative clauses and interrogative clauses.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제13권3호
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• pp.77-97
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• 2007

To compare data on the speech act of requests from two different methods, a study was conducted in which both native and non-native speakers of English participated as subjects, and data were collected by means of actual e-mail writing and DCT (discourse completion test). The analysis of requests from the two different data-gathering methods showed that despite some similarities, considerable differences existed between e-mail and DCT requests in several important aspects of requests such as amount of talk, directness level, downgraders and supportive moves which play an important role in making a given request sound less imposing and more polite. Also it was shown that requests of non-native speakers differed considerably from requests of native speakers in terms of the four aspects of requests across type of data-gathering methods. Based on the findings, some suggestions were made for both further research and L2 classrooms.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제6호
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• pp.219-239
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• 2000

There has been a growing enthusiasm in Korea for the early education of English as a foreign language (EFL). The present study examined the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis in terms of the Universal Grammar (UG), in three different types of learning contexts - first language (L1), second language (SL), and foreign language (FL) learning contexts. While previous research findings in L1 and SL learning contexts suggest that UG principles and parameters are accessible to language learners only for the early years of lifetime, this article argues that their results - and even the methods - cannot be applied to EFL settings and that independent studies on the EFL context are, required. It also proposes the recent UG notion of functional categories as the most appropriate subject in the discussion of Korean EFL learners' access to UG. Findings on foreign language contexts, including the author's own, strongly indicate that UG is not sensitive to learners' starting ages in FL settings. If young children in FL contexts cannot develop their interlanguage grammar based on UG, the existing teaching methods for young children should be revised.

• 한국영어학회지:영어학
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.33-60
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• 2004

This study was an attempt to present an appropriate way of interpreting L2 learners' linguistic behavior within Universal Grammar (UG) framework. Based on the Korean EFL adult learners' performance on the Subjacency violation sentences, the study suggested that the EFL learners are able to acquire subtle knowledge of target grammar and their linguistic behavior should be interpreted with the most recent version of UG theory, the Minimalist Program (MP) notion. The MP notion seems more plausible to accommodate incomplete L2 grammar while acknowledging UG-constrained interlanguage which the previous version, Principles and Parameters (P&P) approach, could not explain very well. The study observed no age-effects among the Korean EFL learners in their linguistic competence measured by the performance on the UG-constraint violation sentences. Having suggested that the MP notion can be a more reasonable tool to explain the EFL learners' linguistic behavior, the study introduced comprehensive hypotheses such as Constructionist Model (CM) and the Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM).

• 영어어문교육
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.69-89
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• 2006

This study investigated whether and how semantic nature of intransitive verbs can be related to the L2 overpassivization errors. A total of 126 Korean high school students participated in a grammaticality judgment test on English sentences in which seven semantically different types of intransitive verbs were passivized. The results showed that there was an effect of semantic type on the students' judgment on overpassivization errors. Overall, it was shown that the students experienced the lowest degree of difficulty with the Controlled Process-Motional type verbs while experiencing the high degree of difficulty with the Change of State, Existence of State, Continuation of Pre-existing State, and Uncontrolled Process types. Two interlanguage patterns were also identified: the students at higher proficiency level and those at lower-proficiency level showed distinctive patterns on the task. It was argued that the simple dichotomy of unaccusative-unergative distinction does not suffice for the explanation of the complex phenomenon of L2 overpassivization.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.31-68
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• 2006

The present research investigates the acquisition of the English locative alternation by Korean EFL learners, which poses a learnability paradox, taking Pinker's framework of learnability theory as its basis. It addresses two questions (1) how lexical knowledge is represented initially and at different levels of interlanguage development and (2) what kinds of difficulty Korean learners find in the acquisition of English locative verbs and their constructions. Three groups of learners at different proficiency levels with a control group of English native speakers are examined by two instruments: elicited production task and grammaticality judgment task. According to different levels of proficiency, the learners exhibit gradual sensitivity to a change-of-state meaning and obtain complete perception of the meanings of locative verbs (manner-of-motion and change-of-state) and their constructions. Overgeneralization errors are observed in their performance. The errors are due to misinterpretations of particular lexical items in conjunction with the universal linking rules. More fundamental cause of difficulty is accounted for by partial use of learning mechanisms, caused by insufficient L2 input.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.19-40
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• 2006

This paper deals with a part-specific analysis of grammatical errors in the production of the English passive in writing. The purpose of the study is dual: to explore common error types in forming the passive; and to provide plausible sources of the errors, with special attention to the role of the native language. To this end, this study obtained a large amount of data from Korean EFL university students using an essay writing task. The results show that in forming the passive sentence, errors were made in various ways and that the most common problem was the formation of the be-auxiliary, in particular, the proper use of tense and S-V agreement. Another important finding was that the global errors found in this study were not necessarily those with the greatest frequency. Also corroborated was the general claim that many factors work together to account for errors. In many cases, interlingual and intralingual factors were shown to interact with each other to explain the passive errors made by Korean students. On the basis of the results, suggestions are made for effective and well-formed use of the passive sentence.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.1-18
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• 2006

This study investigates the types of interactional modifications employed by Japanese and Korean university students during text-based chats. In particular, this study focuses on the role of a network-based medium on the use of interactional modifications, which have been claimed to facilitate interlanguage development. The results show that students use a variety of features of interactional modifications. The most used strategies were the use of paralinguistic features, framing, overt indication of understanding/agreement, and clarification checks, which reveals inconsistent results with findings from research on the negotiation of meaning in face-to-face interaction. Results suggest that the computer-mediated communication (CMC) environment requires the above mentioned strategies and students are able to adapt to this new context by employing alternative strategies. The majority of negotiations were generated by content and lexical items either to resolve communication problems or to better manage interactions, and very few negotiations occurred in terms of grammar. The findings suggest that text-based synchronous chats can be an effective tool for promoting interactive competence, but their effectiveness on grammatical development is uncertain.

• 영어어문교육
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• 제15권4호
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• pp.199-216
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• 2009

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.