The present experimental study explores developmental characteristics of Korean EFL learners’ English negatives and yes-no interrogatives. Adopting the functional category acquisition framework within the UG theory, this study investigated 12 elementary and secondary school students’ interlanguage grammar by elicited production. The results showed that the learners’ interlanguage grammar developed gradually from VP to IP and CP structures in English negatives. However, their interlanguage grammar did not show gradual developmental tendency in yes-no interrogatives. The acquisition rate of negatives generally increased with the learners’ level whereas there existed individual variation in the acquisition rate and developmental aspect of yes-no interrogatives. This result suggests that CP structures instantiated by yes-no interrogatives seem to be acquired from the initial stage by some learners.

The present study investigates the effect of pronunciation training on Korean adult learners’ perception and production of English vowels, /i/, /I/, /u/, and /Ω/. The study examines 1) the effect of pronunciation training on perception and production and 2) the maintenance of the effect over a one-month period. The subjects were 10 Korean graduate students who took a 4-week long English pronunciation training course. They were tested before and after pronunciation training and tested again one month after the training. In each test, both perception and production of the vowels were tested to see if the subjects were able to distinguish tense and lax vowels. In the perception part, subjects listened for words and checked the vowel (either tense or lax) sound they heard. For the production part, subjects read the selected words which contained the target vowels. The results show that pronunciation training has an effect, which supports the teachability of phonology in adulthood; however, the maintenance of the effect demonstrated a difference between perception and production, in which the effect was maintained in production but not in perception. Based on the results of the study, implications are discussed.

This paper investigates Korean EFL learners’ perceived phonetic dissimilarity of English liquids /l/ and /r/ to test the Korean learners’ relative acquisition difficulty of the two English liquids. Contrary to the prediction of the contrastive analysis hypothesis, a hypothesis from Flege’s (1995) Speech Learning Model asserts that the greater the perceived phonetic dissimilarity between an L2 speech sound and the closest L1 sound, the more likely learners will be to discern the difference between the L1 and L2 sounds. Fifteen Korean EFL learners were asked to judge how well English /l/ and /r/ in various phonological environments represent the Korean liquid, using a scale ranging from 0 (“not like”) to 6 (“exactly the same”). The results of the judgment task showed that Korean L2 learners perceived English /l/ to be more similar to Korean /l/ than English /r/ in syllable-initial, consonant cluster, and intervocalic positions, but not in syllable-final position. The results of the present study are expected to provide a basis for future research which investigates Korean learners’ perception and production of English /l/ and /r/.

El propósito de este estudio es analizar los 1,471 errores recopilados en las clases de conversación española de una universidad y señalar cómo el análisis del error desempeña un papel relevante en el proceso de la enseñanza/aprendizaje de español. Después del análisis a todos los errores, se clasificaron cuatro categorías según su origen: errores simples (morfológicos), errores por la interferencia, errores gramaticales y errores lógicos. A su vez, cada categoría incluyó subdivisiones, según el contenido gramatical, y por último se seleccionaron veintiún tipos de errores a los que se les dio un porcentaje. Algunos de los resultados obtenidos en este análisis son: primero, cerca del 63 ó 75% (según los niveles) de los errores derivan de confusiones gramaticales y apenas un 9 ó 12% se atribuyen a interferencias de la lengua materna y del inglés; segundo, en algunos casos o tipos, los estudiantes de nivel alto cometen más errores que los de nivel bajo y esto se puede explicar a partir de una estrategia de ‘evitación’, empleada por los últimos; tercero, con respecto a los estudiantes del nivel bajo, muchos de los errores no satisfacen el mínimo de los requisitos estructurales; así que para ellos, antes de la corrección del error, se debe ofrecer mucha atención a los modelos de la oración española.

This study explores the effects of reading material types in sustained silent reading on Korean EFL learners, focusing on their reading speed and comprehension. Reading materials are divided into four types: longer texts with Korean vocabulary glosses, longer texts without the glosses, short texts, and a mixture of the three text types. For this research, an seven-month-long sustained silent reading program was developed for high school students. The participants were divided into four groups according to the types of reading texts they were to read. The reading rates and reading comprehension were measured before and after the program was implemented. The results were as follows: First, the gain in reading rates was most noticeable in the group reading longer texts with the vocabulary glosses. Second, there was a statistically significant difference in reading comprehension before and after the program was implemented. The group which read a mixture of the three reading text types showed the most remarkable gain in comprehension. The findings of this study suggest the need for further research on the relationship between reading comprehension and reading rates, and how to incorporate sustained silent reading into the reading curriculum.

This research examines the L2 output of young Korean ESL learners with respect to early child English grammar. From the comparison of the frequency of clause elements between L1 and L2 clause elements with respect to semantic theta roles, both language data showed that the ""agent-action-object"" structure was most prevalent. The dominant clause structures of Korean ESL language data were the SVO and the SVA structure. The frequencies of the V, the VO, and the SV structure in EFL language data were higher than those of Korean ESL utterances. The syntactic development of the Korean ESL language data was formed around the SVO and the SOA structure, whereas the EFL language data did not reveal any specific order of the development. Much more English language input should be provided to the students in natural ways for their acquisition and we should take into consideration the language difficulty and the natural development of English clause structure at the same time when developing EFL textbooks.

It is commonly observed that Korean students tend to use the English conjunction so more often than any other English conjunction when expressing cause or reason in English. On the other hand, because is the conjunction of choice among native English speakers. This paper attempts to explain why Korean English learners have the tendency to use so over other conjunctions, and to analyze some of the similarities and differences in the use of Korean and English causal connectors. The findings of the study provide an empirical basis for the development of course design and teaching materials, especially for the development of courses in English writing for academic purposes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of using and authoring web-based vocabulary learning tasks on Korean EFL learners' vocabulary acquisition. The subjects of the study were seventy-seven EFL college students in Korea. They were divided into three groups: a traditional control group, and two experimental groups using and authoring the web-based vocabulary tasks, respectively. The major results of the study were as follows: first, the two experimental groups performed significantly better on the vocabulary recognition and use posttest than the control group did. This result indicates that both the use of the web-based tasks and the participation of students in authoring the web-based tasks are more effective in vocabulary acquisition than the use of traditional vocabulary learning methods. Second, both the experimental groups performed significantly better on the delayed posttest than the control group did. This result provides evidence that using and authoring web-based vocabulary tasks are effective in helping students retain newly acquired words in the long-term memory. Third, the learners' responses of the two experimental groups prove to be positive with respect to the use of the web-based task authoring tools in vocabulary learning. Based on these results, some pedagogical suggestions should be made on the effective use of the web-based task authoring tools in Korean English classroom settings.

This paper examines Korean learners’ difficulties with English unaccusative verb acquisition. 41 high school students, comprising the low proficiency group and 50 university students, constituting the high proficiency group, participated in judging two kinds of grammaticality tests (context-given and context-free). The first results revealed that at their English proficiency levels, context did not make any difference in judging the grammaticality of unaccusative verb. The second results showed that both groups of learners had more difficulty in acquiring melt-type (unaccusative verbs with transitive counterparts) than die-type (unaccusative verbs without transitive counterparts), and had the most difficulty unlearning NP-be+Ven structure of melt-type, followed by NP-V-NP structure of die-type and NP-be+Ven structure of die-type. It is suggested that the results of this study can be applied to learning and teaching unaccusative verbs in English classrooms and that future research focus on the possibility of advanced learners’ accepting nativelike NP-V order of unaccusative verbs.

When we closely look into Korean particle usage of Korean learners, we can find many misuses in Japanese language learners even if Japanese language has similar word order and particles structure as well as English Korean language learners whose language is different to Korean in language order and no particles structure. The purpose of this study is to find out the actual condition, how the Korean particles education for Korean language learner is being processed to make clear how various type of misuses in particles usage of Korean language learner are resulted from the Korean language education locale, the correlation between manifold particles misuse and korean language learning contents in language learning locale. To bring these actual Korean particles education condition, firstly we are going to examine the frequent Korean particles misuse of Korean language learners, and then compare the Korean education locale for particles. These comparison will be helpful to suggest the efficient method of Korean particles education to prevent misuse in Korean particles of learners and make good material for the meaningful learner centered education for Korean particles.