This study examined the use of conjunctions in Korean high school EFL learners’ writings in two discourse modes–description and argument. A corpus of seventy-six descriptive essays and eighty argumentative essays was developed, in which the essays were rated based on their cohesiveness and divided into three groups by their grades. Conjunctions were analyzed based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework: additive, adversative, causal, and temporal conjunctions. The results revealed different trends of using conjunctions in the two different discourse modes. The descriptive writings with high scores on cohesion tend to exhibit more conjunctions when compared to lower-quality writings, and the argumentative writings with high scores showed fewer conjunctions. The high-quality writings in descriptive mode showed highly frequent uses of additives and adversatives, while those in argumentative mode displayed a lower frequency of additives and a more frequent use of adversative however. Small numbers of causal and temporal conjunctions were used in both discourse modes, and they were particularly limited in descriptive writings regardless of the cohesiveness of writings. This implies that more explicit instructions on causal and temporal conjunctions for each mode are needed in the writing classes. In addition, the scores on cohesion were significantly lower for the descriptive essays than for the argumentative essays, and a much narrower range of conjunctions was employed in descriptive writing. These results suggest a more balanced focus on various discourse modes of writing and the introduction of conjunctions that are appropriate for each mode, since the ability to use conjunctions in one mode does not seem to be automatically transferred to another mode in high school EFL learners’ writings.

This paper examines how Korean college EFL students use contrastive conjunctions in their argumentative writing in comparison with native speaker college students’ use of them. The data consists of a Korean college students’ writing corpus, which was divided into a lower proficiency group and a higher proficiency group, and an American and British university students’ writing corpus. The findings reveal that the first two most frequently occurring forms are but and however in all four groups,although the usage patterns such as positioning differ between the NS and the NNS groups. The third most frequent form is on the other hand in both NNS groups and yet in both NS groups, which shows an interesting difference in that the NNS groups hardly use yet in their writing. Both NNS groups also show frequent misuses of conjunctive adverbials such as in contrast, on the contrary, and on the other hand. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications and suggestions.

절대를 향한 엘리엇의 희구는 1927년 그가 영국국교회교도로 개종하 기 훨씬 전부터 존재해 왔다. 엘리엇이 철학자에서 시인-비평가로 ‘돌아 선 것,’ 시의 몰개성 이론을 주창한 것, 그리고 의식 대(對) 무의식을 뛰어넘는 ‘비(非)의식’ 논쟁을 펼친 것 등은 모두 이처럼 절대에 대한 갈망의 결과이다. 그리고 이 갈망은 본질적으로 낭만적이며, 이상주의적이 고, 궁극적으로는 시인 단테가 의미한 바와 같이 종교적이다. 재의 수요일 은 종교적 구원에 대해 긍정적인 암시로 인해 이전의 시와는 구분 된다. 그러나, 평자들이 주장한 바처럼 절대를 노래한 시가 아니라, 이 시의 1인칭대명사 ‘I’와 접속사가 충실하게 기록하듯이 회의주의와 종교 사이에서 여전히 고민하는 정신에 관한 시이다.