There has been considerable research which investigates whether the underlying linguistic competence of L2 learners is constrained by principles and parameters of UG, parallel to the situation in L1 acquisition. In terms of the Scope Principle (henceforth SP), a principle of UG, which is associated with the scope interaction between a quantified expression and a wh-phrase, some experimental studies in EFL settings were conducted to investigate whether or not interlanguage grammars can be characterized by the principle. These experiments were carried out through the Truth Value Judgment Task (henceforth TVJT) alone, showing contrasting and confusing results, especially between Japanese learners and Korean learners. That is, while Japanese EFL learners observed the SP, Korean EFL learners did not despite the fact that both Japanese L1 grammar and Korean L1 grammar disallow the distributive interpretation, especially in the ambiguous sentence like what does everyone have? Therefore, the present study aims to confirm whether the same results are obtained provided that the identical experiment using the TVJT is repeated in other EFL learners. Noticeably, this study employed an additional, complementary task (Question and Answer Task, QAT) in addition to the TVJT as an attempt to increase the accuracy of the task and reflect learners’ actual knowledge of the target features. In QAT, the subjects were asked to write the answers to the target questions involving quantifiers and wh-questions in English. Results from the TVJT appeared, on the face of it, to provide support for the claim that the Korean EFL learners are under control of the Scope Principle. However, findings from QAT revealed that they are not constrained by the principle. Thus, it would be reasonable to conclude that the results of the present experiment do not fully support the claim that the Korean EFL learners’ interlanguage grammar has access to the UG-driven Scope Principle. Instead, it can be argued that Korean learners' interlanguage grammar may be affected by their L1 grammar, which gives rise to the claim that the explicit instruction on the interpretation of those sentences is required as part of overcoming this problem.

This study aims to investigate how Korean EFL college students' argumentative essays are similar to or different from those of native English speakers (NES) in the use of reference, with the consideration of Korean students' level of Engli sh proficiency. It employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine referential use for estab lishing textual cohesion of wri tten discourse. The participants were 30 native English speakers and 61 Korean EFL college students, with 31 high proficiency students and 30 low proficiency students. Detai led examination on the use of referential devices revealed important findings. For example, the syntactic role of the reference influenced the relative difficulty for the Korean EFL students. When referring to nominal items, whereas the Korean EFL students did as well as the NES in referential choices in subject positions, they underused references in other syntactic roles, such as object and possessive positions. They also made different referential choices in one of the major functions of demonstratives. That is, whereas the NES mostly used demonstrative this when referring to extended text in the preced ing discourse, both levels of the Korean EFL students preferred pronoun it for such function. The present study holds important pedagogical implications with regard to L2 writing pedagogy.

The present study was designed to investigate Korean EFL college learners' language development across writing proficiency levels in the ir written productions. For the evaluation of their language development, 18 subsets of the syntactic complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) were used. 86 uni vers ity students participated in the study and wrote narrat ive essays about an assigned topic by using the Criterion®. The writing samples were scored by e-rater® and divided into three different proficiency levels to compare language development among groups. Then their essays were analyzed by us ing L2 Sy ntactical Complexity Analyzel: The findings reveal significant differences in 15 out of 18 measures of CAF and language learners' linguistic developmental patterns across their writing proficiency levels. The results indicate that there are di stinctive features regarding CAF among the three groups. With respect to fluency and accuracy, levels I and 2 showed a similar language developmental pattern, and level 3 was much higher than those groups. In terms of syntactic compl exity, levels 2 and 3 presented a similar developmental pattern, and level 1 was much lower than those groups in general. This study shows the predictive potential of CAF across writing proticiency levels of language learners.

This case study explored how formal reading instruction and perceived self-efficacy in English contribute to Korean EFL learners' reading strategy development and reading pract ices. The data were collected from indi vidual interviews with four Korean college students. The fmdings revealed that English reading instruction was teacher-centered and the students spent a lot of time learning and practicing test-taking skills to achieve higher scores in English tests such as CSAT and TOEIC. On the whole, the students revealed negative attitudes such as having low confi dence as English readers and fee ling afraid while reading in English. At the same time, however, they had a strong instrumental motivation for reading in English, achieving a higher score on the high stake exams. Regarding reading strategy instruction and development, very few English teachers seemed to introduce and implement reading strategy instruction in the class. Despite this, the students struggled to develop their own reading strategies according to the type of English reading comprehension instruction that they received. Pedagogical implications and action based recommendations for English educators are suggested.

본 硏究는 최근에 많은 海外韓國語敎育現場에서 비교적 活潑하게 이루어지 고 있는 漢字및 漢字語敎育에 注目하고, 그에 대한 敎育方案에 대해서 論議한 것이다. 이를 위해 현재 筆者가 몸담고 있는 베네치아大學에서 開設된 ‘韓國漢字語授業’을 土臺로 하여 理論的인 側面보다는 具體的이고 實際的인 側面에서 살펴보았다. 授業의 構成과 內容은 물론이고 그 運營에 있어서는, 베네치아대학 학생들의 敎育的背景과 特徵을 최대한 反映하고자 하였다. 그 중의 하나는 한자어 수업 에 參加하는 學生들 중에는 한자 및 한자어를 처음 接하는 학생들은 물론이고 이 미 한자 및 한자어에 대한 知識이 어느 정도 쌓여 있는 학생들이 있다는 것이다. 前者에 해당되는 학생들은 ‘非漢字文化圈’으로, 後者에 해당되는 학생들은 ‘準漢字文化圈’으로 指稱하였다. 그러나 이러한 狀況이 特別히 베네치아대학에 限定 된 것이라고는 볼 수 없다. 그것은 현재 海外의 大學, 특히 유럽 대학의 한국어 관련 敎育課程을 살펴보면 베네치아대학과 비슷한 상황이 많기 때문이다. 具體的인 敎育方案과 관련해서는 현재 해외에서 이루어지는 漢字및 漢字語敎育이 韓國語敎育의 一環으로 이루어진다는 점을 考慮하여, 一般的인 言語敎育의 分類를 參考하여 ‘한자어 읽기’, ‘한자어 쓰기’, ‘한자어 말하기/듣기’ 부분으 로 나누어 論議를 進行하였다.

The present study was designed to examine the nature of hesitation phenomena in the speech of Korean college EFL learners participating in oral proficiency interviews. Looking beyond the implications of hesitations in language learners' talk as signaling their disfluency and incompetence, this study presents a qualitative analysis to provide insights into the positive aspect of hesitations as a learning opportunity. A detailed qualitative analysis of the learners' talk reveals that hesitation phenomena was abundant in the learners' talk and the underlying mechanisms for the hesitations were more than the learners' incompetence of the target language. Hesitations found in the present study were the places where the learners forestalled, detected, and repaired problems in their target language output. Hesitations were facilitative devices that the learners utilized to make trial and error for further development of their second language. This paper concludes that the hesitation phenomena in learner interactions can be seen as potential opportunities for learning where learners struggle with the target language and learn through those difficulties.

If the purpose of an assessment is diagnosing examinees’ knowledge states to improve their learning, more fine-grained information than the overall level of their ability is necessary. Recent advances in diagnostic assessment triggered the development of cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs), such as the deterministic inputs, noisy “And” gate (DINA) model. Although CDMs for language assessments have been applied to reading or listening test data, a CDM may produce more practical results if the construct to measure has specific and well-defined skill attributes as in a grammar assessment. For this study, a grammar test consisting of 40 multiple-choice items was administered to 3,000 Korean learners of English as a foreign language. From the test items, a Q-matrix, which is an essential tool for CDMs, was constructed based on six grammar skills. As a result, skill profiles were obtained for all examinees. This diagnostic information can be used for tailored instruction. Issues with regard to applications of CDMs to language assessments are also discussed.

The present paper addresses Korean EFL learners’ acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions from a processing point of view. Korean learners’ interlanguage psych-verb constructions and unaccusative constructions are marked by underpassivization and overpassivization, respectively. While both kinds of errors are observed in Korean learners’ data, the processing account of language acquisition predicts that learners will commit underpassivization errors more frequently than overpassivization errors because passivization requires more processing. In order to see if the acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions is affected by the processing complexity of passivization, the present study compared learners’ performance on psych-verb and unaccusative constructions. Ninety six university students performed a timed grammaticality judgment task on the two types of constructions. The comparison of the learner performances between psych-verb and unaccusative constructions revealed that the learners were more accurate with psych-verb constructions than with unaccusative constructions. The learners’ accuracy with psych-verb constructions increased faster than unaccusative constructions, with the increase of the overall proficiency. The findings suggest that while processibility might be a major issue for low-level learners, there are other factors such as L1 transfer that exert a pervasive influence on the acquisition of psych-verb and unaccusative constructions.

The English language does not possess a 3rd person singular epicene pronoun normally used in a sex-indefinite or gender-neutral context, so the masculine 3rd person singular “he” has taken the role for over centuries. However, many researchers have indicated that generic he is not exclusively sex-neutral in that it evokes masculine imagery. For this reason, in English speaking countries, singular they has successfully evolved as an alternative to generic he. Nevertheless, in the Korean EFL setting, where the importance of English education has been emphasized, the actual use and perception of the English epicene pronoun has rarely been considered. In this context, this study investigated Korean EFL learners’ use and perception of the 3rd person epicene pronoun in sex-neutral contexts. The research observed that generic he was the learners’ most preferred choice of pronoun though it indeed evoked masculine images, whereas singular they was neither widely accepted, nor often used. The present study also determined to what extent the use and perception of epicene pronouns were related to and affected by linguistic and biographical variables. It was also demonstrated that simplicity in epicene pronoun use could have assumed priority over nonsexist expression among some Korean EFL learners. The present study has implications in that it contributes to epicene pronoun education in Korean EFL settings, and to build awareness in Korean EFL learners regarding the issue of sex bias in language.

Previous task-based focus on form studies have shown that second language (L2) learners are strongly interested in lexis, which allows minimal attention for morphosyntax. A possible reason may be a lack of sufficient lexical knowledge crucial for completing a meaning-oriented task. In other words, from an L2 information processing perspective, learners may have limited attentional capacity to focus on the multiple aspects of a language, so they choose to focus on words as they express their meaning. But this leaves little attention for less salient and meaningful grammatical forms. Thus, this study investigated if providing learners with lexical assistance during a synchronous text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) task would reduce their attention to lexis and divert that attention to morphosyntax. Twenty Korean learners of English performed a picture-based narrative task in dyads through online text chatting. While engaging in this task, one group of learners (n=10) was able to refer to a list of English words for the task, while the other group (n=10) was not. The findings showed no statistically significant differences between and within the groups. Possible explanations are discussed with suggestions for teaching and future research.

The aim of this paper was to examine the knowledge of Korean students about English relative clauses in both contextualized and decontextualized situations. To this end, a study was conducted in which fifty college students of EFL participated as subjects, and data were collected by means of three methods: elicited imitation task, composition and conversation. The findings of the study indicated that subjects’ performance on comprehension and production tasks was affected by grammatical positions on which relativization occurs in relative clause. It was also shown that their performance was influenced by position of head noun in matrix clause that relative clause modifies. Based on the results of the study, two sets of ordering (i.e., the accuracy order of comprehension and the frequency order of production) in which a variety of types of relative clauses were understood and used in contextualized and decontextualized situations were offered to describe and explain the Korean learners’ performance on L2 relative clauses.