The purpose of this study is to investigate error patterns in EFL college students’ English writing as well as their change over time, based on the teacher’s feedback. In order to accomplish this purpose, two research questions were constructed; first, what are the characteristics of Korean EFL students’ writing based on the maturity of English sentence by the T-unit analysis? Second, what types of error patterns are produced in Korean EFL students’ writing? Also, how do the error patterns change based on the teacher’s feedback over time? The participants were four Korean EFL college students, and they were asked to pre-write, draft, revise and edit until they completed their final draft. The results of pre- and post-writing test were also analyzed. The major findings are as follows: 1) The mean number of T-unit among participants was 42.25 units, and the mean number of words per T-unit was 10.95 words. 2) The most frequently committed errors were found out as lexical and morphological errors. Moreover, the rate of lexical and sentence structure errors has been dropped, whereas the rate of punctuation errors has increased as the teacher’s feedback progressed over time. Pedagogical and practical suggestions are also made on the effective teaching of English writing in Korean classroom settings.

Ko, Bo-Ai. 2018. “Thematic Patterns in Formal Email Writing of Korean EFL College Learners”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 26(1). 31~59. This study explores the Theme types and the thematic progression in the formal email writings of Korean EFL college learners, based on the Theme-Rheme analytical framework of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Data was collected from 99 college students, enrolled in an English Writing Composition course during the second semester of 2017 via a cyber university in Korea. Their main writing activity involved email writings in the form of requesting primarily based on the Genre Approach. Text analysis was conducted with the comparison of the high- scoring group (15), the medium-scoring group (15) and the low-scoring group (15), based on assessment of the course assignment. Employing the coding step of identifying the Theme and Rheme of each T-unit, the text analysis sought to figure out which Theme types were used for each T-unit and which thematic progression patterns were used for overall text flow and cohesion. The key finding was that there were certain discourse-specific thematic patterns of formal email writing. Among the range of thematic features, this study will highlight marked Themes, interpersonal Themes and thematic choices of nominalization for the purpose of formal email writing texts.

Automated error detection and feedback systems are becoming an important component of online writing practice services for ESL/EFL (English as a second/foreign language) learners. The main purposes of the study are to: (a) collect samples of essays written by ESL learners with different native language (or L1) backgrounds that are error-coded by an early version of an automated error-detection system (CritiqueTM) and trained human coders; and (b) identify some unique patterns of writing errors for different first language (L1) groups. Data analyzed in this study included 18, 439 TOEFL◯R CBT essays error-coded by CritiqueTM and a much smaller, combined sample of 480 TOEFL◯R CBT/TOEFL iBT◯R essays error-coded by trained human coders. A comparison of error rates across five different language groups showed some unique patterns: (a) the Arabic and Spanish groups were the highest on both spelling and punctuation errors; (b) the Korean and Japanese groups had the highest article error frequency; and (c) the Chinese group had the highest number of errors related to verb conjugations or adjective and noun inflections. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of understanding the nature of L1-related writing errors and enhancing the automated error detection and feedback systems.

This study investigates how EFL learner error patterns and frequencies differ in writing depending on students' language proficiency levels. A total of 152 Korean EFL students' essays were examined. The writing samples were first scored holistically on an impressionistic basis; then, based on the scores, the samples were grouped into low- and high-proficiency groups. The study identified 13 errors based on prevalence and significance. The study calculated the frequency of each error type committed by each group and compared the results using t-tests. A survey of English teachers was also conducted (N=32) to rate the gravity of each error and to compare the error gravity produced by each group. The result showed that low-proficiency group produced errors much more frequently, and the errors were more serious ones with high error gravity. The errors committed by the high-proficiency group were usually complex ones and occurred in more complicated contexts. The study also found that the errors with less gravity occurred more frequently in both groups and that they tended to be more persistent. The study indicated that although the students were aware of significance of errors, correcting the errors was beyond their current English capability.

이 연구의 목적은 모방하기 전략을 활용한 한국어 학습자의 쓰기 양상을 살펴보는 데 있다. 이를 위해 중급 단계 한국어 학습자에게 비교와 대조의 구조 유형의 쓰기 과정 중 쓰기 전 단계에서 구조에 맞는 모델 텍스트를 제시한 후 학습자 스스로 제시된 글의 구조를 파악하고 그것을 새로운 글쓰기에 어떻게 재구성하여 활용하는지 살펴보았다. 모델 텍스트는 쓰기에 부담감을 가지는 한국어 학습자들이 쓰기 활동에 적극적으로 참여할 수 있도록 도와주는 비계를 역할을 하여 학습자 스스로 쓰기 활동을 주도적으로 이끌어 갈 수 있도록 하는데 도움을 준다. 또한 텍스트 구조는 글 쓰는 이의 사고를 논리적으로 연결하여 학습자가 질 높은 텍스트를 완성하는 데 만들어 내는 데 영향을 준다. 이 연구에서는 모델 텍스트의 활용을 통해 먼저 완성된 학습자의 글을 비교와 대조의 마름모형 텍스트 구조를 확인하고, 제공된 정보를 잘 배열하고 조직화하여 응집성을 확보한 계단식 구조로 완성된 텍스트 내용을 확인하였다. 그리고 글에 활용된 구조 표지어를 확인 해 보았다. 이를 통하여 학문 목적 한국어 학습자의 쓰기 지도와 쓰기 능력 향상에 필요한 모방 전략의 가능성을 탐색할 수 있었다.

This paper aims to explore the problematic nature of the use of adverbial connectors employed in NNS and NS academic essays by using two different corpora from Korean university students and from English native speakers in the UK. Combining corpus-based and discourse analytic approaches, the study focuses on the frequency and distributions of adverbial connectors, thus investigating in what ways this can affect the rhetorical features in terms of the text cohesion and structure. The results indicate that the Korean sample students shared the problem of other L2 writers with the overuse of overall connectors, but they showed a strong preference for using colloquial and spoken forms of adverbial connectors. On semantic relations, the overuse problem occurred in the listing, in particular, reinforcing types of the adverbial connectors. The noteworthy difference is that the mechanical repetitions of listing and contrasting ideas, and connecting them in a cause-effect sequence was identified more frequently in the Korean student texts than in the native student ones. However, counter-argument is more preferred in the argumentative context of the native student texts with more overt use of contrastive connecting items. Finally, most of the misused connectors were identified to simply repeat the ideas in the same viewpoint, which may have led to a failure in developing logical sequences in argumentative discourse. Another misuse type of connectors may derive from sociopragmatic transfer from L1 to L2. The findings thus may give some pedagogical implications for teaching alternative strategies to raise culture-specific register awareness and understand the different semantic types of adverbial connectors.