This study investigates the use of cohesive devices in the corpus of Korean college students’ compositions. In particular, it attempts to provide a comprehensive analysis of the lexico-grammatical contexts in which cohesive referential devices are employed in argumentative essays. For this purpose, a Korean EFL corpus and a native speaker corpus were analyzed based on Gray’s (2010) coding scheme. The coding scheme included variables such as the place and unit of the antecedent, the grammatical role and place of demonstratives, and their preceding or following structures. The results of the analysis showed that Korean EFL learners and native writers were similar in that they tended to use demonstrative pronouns as a subject and demonstrative determiners as objects/complements. Besides this general tendency, non-prototypical uses of the determiners were observed. The learners’ corpus manifested an overuse of an extended antecedent which could reduce the clarity of meaning. The most frequent verb following demonstrative pronouns was the copula (i.e., be) in both corpora. Finally, the learners tended to use a much smaller number of abstract/shell nouns than their native speaker counterparts.

This paper examines variation found in the usage of English relatives by Korean users and learners of English. Two types of data are analyzed using Varbrul analysis: academic articles written by English major professors and compositions by college students majoring and minoring in English. The results of analyses can be summarized as follows: 1) Korean users and learners of English adopt wh-variants more frequently than Americans for use but less commonly than Britons, 2) Advanced English users generally show the usage pattern of English relatives similar to that of native English speakers conditioned by very similar linguistic constraints, 3) Korean English learners with intermediate proficiency level revealed somewhat different patterns of English relative use from those of native English speakers and advanced Korean English users, 4) Prescriptive grammar taught in middle and high schools is analyzed as exerting significant influence on the pattern of English relative use by Korean users and learners of English. (157)

Jeong-Won Won and Ik-Hwan Kim. 2001. A Study on the Improvement of English Writing Ability Using the Internet. Studies in Modern Grammar 23, 165-188. The Multli-User Dimensions Object-Oriented(MOO) is a synchronous interacting program unlike other asynchronous programs such as e-mail, mailing lists, or Usenet. This study is an attempt to suggest ways of improving students` writing ability by exploring the Schmooze University, on of MOO sites for ESL or EFL English learners. Schmooze University offers language learners opportunities to communicate with native speakers and other English learners from all over the world. Through this system they are able to exchange on online their ideas about each other`s culture, customs, and about learning a language. This authentic, task-based learning environment creates a more attention-attracting and interesting learning situation for those learners of the English language.