Since the Korean pronoun system does not specify gender indication, Korean speakers of English tend to have difficulties when they use English pronouns. This paper explores how absence of obligatory gender marking in Korean affects gender errors in the production of English. Gender pronoun errors made by Korean learners of English were analyzed using recordings of English conversations of seven Korean subjects. Findings of this study revealed that Korean English learners struggled with the use of gender pronouns due to differences in gender pronoun systems between Korean and English. Both gender-neutrality and pro-drop practices do not require Korean speakers to pay close attention to gender factors when using pronouns in their native language, resulting in native language interference. Considering that the Korean language lacks specific gender orientation in its usage of pronouns whereas English requires clear gender specification, findings of this study imply that native language gender concept can influence second language use.

Despite previous research on the use of the first-person pronoun in academic writing, it has rarely been studied in L2 writing and learner corpus research. In this study, the pronoun I was analyzed and compared between native speaking (NS) and Korean nonnative speaking (NNS) corpora of English argumentative writing samples. To identify differences in its discourse functions, three categories (essay commentator, experience provider and opinion provider) were formulated. The findings show that the normalized frequency of the pronoun was higher in the learner corpus. However, the pronoun occurred less frequently within individual essays but was found in more essays. Unlike the NS corpus, the opinion provider occurs more frequently than the experience provider in the learner corpus. For the opinion provider, Korean students usually selected the verb think. The present study suggests the need to develop students’ awareness of the discursive usage of the pronoun and expand their repertoire of metadiscursive devices.

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.