The aim of this study is to identify the differences of complex beginnings in two different writing genres, argumentative essays and Introduction section of research proposals, written by advanced Korean EFL learners in an ESP writing class. To do this, 35 first draft of argumentative essays and 35 first draft of research proposals by 35 students were analyzed in terms of quality and quantity of the two writing genres. Of a total of 862 sentences in 13,945 words of the 35 first drafts of argumentative writing, 47.3% (408 sentences) of them included adverbials in sentence-initial (SI) position. In case of a total of 411 sentences in 8,577 words of the 35 first drafts of Introduction section of a research proposal, adverbials were found 46.7% of the sentences in SI position. Of the adverbials in SI positions, 5.6% and 5.1% respectively were complex beginnings composed of two adverbials. In order to identify complex beginnings composed of two adverbials in SI position, frequency and preference of conjunctive adverbials suggested in taxonomy types by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985) were investigated. In addition, five types of complex beginnings such as stepwise orientations, compound orientation, grounded orientations, complex orientations and composite orientations suggested by Smits (2002) were distinguished. The findings will shed light on the use of adverbials by Korean EFL learners to develop coherent and cohesive relationship among sentences and maintain them throughout the contexts in two different genres.
