Previous studies on English spelling have investigated the types of spelling errors and their frequencies, and studies on why learners made those errors have been called for. This study aimed to identify factors leading to errors in the English-spelling of Korean elementary school students. The factors were investigated by using the following methods: A total of 130 students from O Elementary School were given three types of word-writing tasks: dictation of single words, dictation of short sentences, and writing words as many as the students can based on pictures depicting familiar scenes. The errors in their writing samples were classified into five types. The students were interviewed about why they made those errors. The results showed that the errors were influenced by the factors: the students’ first language, background knowledge, pronunciation, and morphological reasons. The results suggest that if teachers understood these factors, they would be able to explore better teaching methods for reducing errors in English spelling, and that future research could apply these factors for further investigations.

This study investigated a new writing task that utilizes drawing to elicit students’ language and original thinking. Two forms of pictures were designed and administered to 118 children. One form was conventional and consisted of completed pictures, requiring students to simply describe the pictures in writing. The other form, which was new, comprised incomplete pictures, requiring students to first draw and then describe them in writing. The descriptions were scored for originality (to represent creative thinking) and vocabulary and text length (to reflect linguistic domains). The originality scores were higher for students who were given the unfinished pictures regardless of their writing proficiency. Vocabulary diversity and text length fluency depended on the level of writing proficiency: for poor writers, these abilities were facilitated when they were given completed pictures, while for good writers, the form variation made no difference. This study highlights that to stimulate original thinking, an unfinished picture form is useful because it affords students opportunities to express unique ideas regardless of poor or good writers.

Because English grammar consists of a long list of features, it is impractical to include all of them in a single grammar test. It would be useful to identify among all those features the best indicators of students’ grammatical knowledge and ability so that we could focus on what were the most representative knowledge and skills and simplify grammar assessment. This study is a preliminary, small-scale attempt to do just that. It surveyed 72 high school teachers and 129 Grade 12 students on their opinions of which features of grammar best represented grammatical knowledge and ability. They were asked to choose five indicators, including the best one, and provide reasons for thinking so. The relative pronoun was selected most frequently as the best indicator of grammatical knowledge and ability, followed by subject-verb agreement, the subjunctive, to-infinitives, and participles. This paper does not claim these five features to definitively represent the best indicators; further research should be conducted.

Ellipsis has been analyzed, if at all, as a type of cohesion markers by earlier studies. The underestimation of its importance and the lack of attention it has received has resulted in only few empirical studies analyzing the ellipsis as a primary object of inquiry. At the same time, there are conflicting findings on whether the relationship between ellipsis use and discourse quality is substantially positive or insignificant. Aware of these gaps, this study focuses on ellipsis and its subtypes to examine whether ellipses enhance the quality of writing. The study participants were 315 Korean high school students who wrote stories in English. Their writing samples were analyzed for ellipsis use and writing quality. The findings revealed that ellipsis occurrences in writing had a substantial relationship with the overall writing quality. This result was substantiated by a separate examination of the good vs. poor writer groups: Good writers used a significantly greater number of ellipses than did poor writers. Structural and nominal ellipses were the most prominent types of ellipses while clausal and verbal ellipsis occurred rarely. This pattern was held true for both good and poor writer groups. The current study promotes the status of ellipsis as a definitely contributing factor to good writing.

Mijin Kang and Jungok Bae. 2017. Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement: The Case of Immersion-Based EFL Elementary School Students. Studies in Modern Grammar 95, 81-101. The present study investigates several syntactic structures in which subject-verb agreement errors occur. The study analyzed free writing samples written by 104 elementary school students enrolled in a partial English immersion school. In the writing samples, errors in the subject-verb agreement were found in the following categories: (a) subject + verb; (b) coordinated subjects + verb; (c) subject + coordinated verbs; and (d) expletive ‘there’ + ‘be’ verb. Errors in the ‘subject + verb’ structure with no modifying phrases in-between were the most prominent. The second most frequent errors were found in the ‘subject + coordinated verbs’ structure. The results provide useful implications for English teachers dealing with the persistent errors in the subject-verb agreement.

The English to-infinitive structure has over a dozen different functions, presenting a difficult area for EFL students. The present study shows a relatively dynamic profile of the use of ten to-infinitives functions appearing in EFL children's story writing as the children progress in grade levels and English proficiency—an area that has never been investigated previously. To-infinitives that function as an ‘object’ or ‘purpose’ were most prominent. The students used a higher number of to-infinitives as they progressed from the third to sixth grades. The increase between the four adjacent grade levels did not reach a level of significance, but the increase between middle (third and fourth) and upper (fifth and sixth) levels was significant. The difference was striking when the entire group was re-sorted into lower vs. higher proficiency groups: the increase in the use of to-infinitives was better explained by English proficiency improvement than by grade level progression. This in-depth analysis into the sub-functions adds to the existing knowledge about to-infinitives, which might otherwise remain oversimplified.