Syntactic priming effect is a tendency in which the syntactic structure used in the previous utterance tends to be carried over in the following utterance. The effects have been considered to help envisage the abstract process in mind into a more concrete idea and offered prospects for understanding the speakers' grammatical structure. The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether this effect appears in Korean learners of Chinese, and whether the implicit learning effect emerges regardless of their proficiency(length of learning). Participants consist of two groups: less proficient learners with shorter length of learning (N=31) and more proficient learners with longer length of learning( (N=31). For the implicit learning effects, each participant took part in the experiment three times with an interval of fifteen days. The results showed that the syntactic priming effects have been observed. Also, the more salient implicit learning effects were observed in the group with longer length of learning(longer LOL) while the shorter LOL group has shown weaker effects. The results shed light on the universal tendency of syntactic persistence and gave implications that less-proficient learners who lack the cognitive prerequisite on L2 syntactic structures have some limitations on both the priming and implicit learning effects. The findings were complementary with the results of Park (2011).

• Boon-Joo Park(Catholic Univ. of Daegu)