Earticle

Most task-based research examined the effects of task complexity on various aspects of L2 production, and this study aims to perform an in-depth analysis of task complexity effects on error patterns observed in L2 writing in terms of morphological, lexical, syntactic, and mechanical errors. 39 learners of English carried out one written task with three levels of task complexity, operationalized as the number of elements. Results of a series of repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that greater task complexity led to significant increases in the amount of all four error types and the numbers of morphological, lexical, and local syntactic errors per T-unit. It was also found that learners are more likely to make errors in terms of plurality, word choice, and article use when they need to mention more elements when carrying out complex tasks.

This study examines whether L1-Korean L2 learners of English are sensitive to morphological agreement violations in sentence processing and whether task type affects their sensitivity. One experiment evaluates online grammaticality judgment accuracy and uses reading times to assess sensitivity to ungrammaticality. A second experiment evaluates offline grammaticality judgment accuracy. Forty-six English native speakers and 28 advanced L2 learners of English completed the online task, and 13 native speakers and 11 advanced L2 learners completed the offline task. The L2 learners showed a lack of sensitivity to the agreement violations in the online task but native-like sensitivity in the offline task. These findings suggest that non-linguistic factors such as task differences play an important role in modulating L2 learners’ sensitivity to agreement errors. The findings also provide evidence that supports the computational deficit approach as an explanation for L2 learners’ insensitivity to morphological violations.

Predicting and providing an account for the difficulty of English relative clause comprehension for L2 learners has been attempted within frameworks such as noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977), and filler-gap hypothesis (e.g. O’Grady, Lee & Choo, 2003). The current study probes whether the frameworks can effectively account for native Korean learners’ errors and comprehension of English RCs. The result shows that multiple factors should be considered, rather than a single framework, in order to explain the difficulty of English relative clauses for Korean L2 learners. This research examined 25 intermediate Korean learners of English using a picture selection task. The result and error analysis suggest that several factors such as the number of intervening nodes demonstrated by the filler-gap hypothesis, canonical word order of English, length of relative clauses, and relative marker used in the relative clauses influence the English learners’ comprehension. The findings may assist developing an efficient pedagogical tool for teaching English relative clauses.

This paper investigated Korean heritage learners" acquisition of Korean as a second language. In particular, written narratives of 16 Korean heritage learners were analyzed in order to identify errors and strategies observed in Korean heritage learners" second language writing. The findings of the study indicated that learners" errors were not significantly related to their proficiency levels in the target language. Likewise, no significant differences were observed in errors due to their proficiency levels. However, some differences were noted in several grammatical categories. In case- or tense-related areas, learners with higher proficiency levels were not much more accurate than those with lower proficiency levels. However, in terms of the use of inflectional markers, learners with higher proficiency levels exhibited higher accuracy than lower level learners. With regard to their use of strategies, literal translation, code-switching, and approximation were most frequently observed in their writings. The paper concludes with some implications for teaching Korean as a foreign language.

Ahn, Jae Hyun. 2015. L1 Korean L2 English Learners' Overpassivization Errors with Unaccusative Verbs. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 40-4, 633-660. Second language learners have had difficulties with verb acquisition, especially unaccusative intransitive verbs and it is because unaccusative verbs have featured properties which are distinguished from unergative verbs. From the second language learners’ perspective, it is very difficult for them to differentiate these two classes of verb and use them correctly. The primary purpose of this research is to study the overpassivization errors of unaccusative verbs by L1 Korean L2 English learners using Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace, 2000) which is based on Unaccusative Hierarchy (Sorace, 1993a, b, 1995). Four unaccusative verbs in four different subtypes in the hierarchy were selected and 108 subjects in total from the 9th and 11th grade took a grammaticality judgment test. This study found that 1) the participants made fewer errors with the unaccusative verbs as the rank of the verbs in the hierarchy went up, 2) the four verbs which were categorized as the same subtype depending on their unaccusativity showed significant differences, and 3) there was no statistically significant difference in the test results between the 9th and 11th graders. The reasons for these findings were also investigated and recommended teaching methods are suggested at the end of this paper. (Korea University)

This study investigates error patterns in the use of Korean case particles by English-speaking learners across three proficiency levels, using data from a learner corpus. In Korean, case particles are morphologically realized as -i/ka for the nominative case and -ul/lul for the accusative case. In contrast, English lacks overt case marking, except in certain personal pronouns. While Korean case particles can be omitted, such omissions are determined by specific discourse/semantics-related conditions. Thus, English-speaking learners must not only acquire the structural properties of Korean noun phrases but also internalize the conditioning factors required for case particle use. This study adopts the Feature Reassembly Approach (Lardiere, 2009), which emphasizes the complexity of the learning process involved in acquiring relevant features. This study has two primary aims: (i) to identify learning challenges faced by English-speaking learners based on crosslinguistic differences, and (ii) to determine whether learners exhibit distinct error patterns depending on their proficiency level. Using error-annotated data from the Korean Learner Corpus (KLC), the study examines four types of error patterns. The findings show that omission and replacement errors are the most common across all proficiency levels including the advanced level. In particular, omission errors are associated with various conditioning factors, and the lack of further development at the advanced level may suggest that it takes considerable time to completely acquire them.

This study examined English L2 spellings among Korean L1 learners of English. Two groups of 3rdgraders, Korean L1 English learners (N=36) and native English speakers (N=30), performed a pseudoword spelling task ,in which they listened to an audio recording of pseudowords and dictated what they heard. The task material targeting phonological difference consists of two types of pseudowords: the consonants that exist in both English and in Korean (congruent type) and the consonants that do not exist in Korean but exist English (incongruent type).Data were tested with an experiment with a 2x2 factorial design with “group” and “word type” as independent variables. The results support the prediction that Korean L1 learners of English would have difficulty in spelling pseudowords containing phonemes which do not exist in Korean but are present in English phonology. Pedagogical implications regarding English L2 spellings are addressed.

To investigate L2 adolescent learners’ use of machine translation (MT), an MT error correction (EC) test was developed, based on the analysis of MT errors arising from translating the learners’ L1 of middle school EFL textbooks. Learners were also asked to report on their use of MT EC strategies on the EC task. Results indicated that mistranslated sentence and verb tense are the most difficult types of MT errors to correct. Furthermore, to resolve MT errors, guessing from context and literal translations were the two most frequently employed EC strategies. When multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the contribution of EC strategies to the learners’ ability to correct errors, the mid proficiency learners’ reliance on literal translations and the low proficiency learners’ use of multiple EC strategies were positively associated with improved corrections of MT errors. The results of the study are discussed in light of how L2 learners need to develop competence for using MT in L2 writing.

This study examines the morphological errors made by L1 Korean speakers with L2 English causative verbs?change of state verbs and psych verbs?in the argument structure alternation (i.e., causative/inchoative alternation) to identify possible influence from their L1. Driven by Montrul’s (2001) findings, where L1 Turkish-L2 English learners transferred their L1 morphological patterns with psych verbs but did not do so with change of state verbs, we aim to partially replicate the experimental design of Montrul (2001) to examine whether her results of Turkish speakers are repeated with Korean speakers in our study given the resemblance between Turkish and Korean. A picture-based acceptability judgment task was implemented to see whether Korean speakers are biased towards certain morphological verb forms, possibly constrained by their L1 patterns. The results align with those of Montrul (2001) as traces of L1 influence were discovered with psych verbs while only marginal of them were observed with change of state verbs. Indeed, in case of change of state verbs, Korean speakers’ strong preferences for morphologically marked verb forms in intransitive contexts (e.g., The door got opened) suggest that L2-developmental factors (viz., overpassivization) may have played a greater role in their morphological errors.

This study investigated the effects of dual coding elucidation on raising learners’ awareness of L2 lexical errors and correct usage. Participants included 135 Korean EFL middle school students assigned to either a single-coding or dual-coding group. The single-coding group studied the incorrect and correct usage of target lexical items under a verbal-code-only condition. The dual-coding group studied the incorrect and correct usage under a verbal-plus-visual-code condition. Participants completed posttests at two intervals: immediately after studying the materials and four weeks later. Analyses revealed that dual coding elucidation had significant positive effects on facilitating learners’ awareness of lexical errors and correct usage; these effects remained over time. The results also indicated no significant correlations between learning style and the effectiveness of visuals. Qualitative data demonstrated that students perceived visuals as being helpful in improving accurate lexical use and their engagement in learning vocabulary. The article concludes by discussing the facilitative role of visual encoding in L2 lexical knowledge development, thus expanding on the dual coding theory.

이 논문에서는 한국어 교정교육 수업 시에 활용할 수 있는 여러 가지 유형의 실제적인 수업 방안을 제안하고자 한다. 이를 위해 한국어 학습 오류 중고빈도 오류에 속하는 주격-목적격 조사의 대체 오류에 초점을 맞추어 기존의 영어 교정교육과 한국어 교육의 일반 수업방안에 대한 연구들을 활용하여 한국어 교정교육에 맞는 여러 유형의 실제적 교정수업 방안을 제시한다. 또한 특정 언어적 요소에 초점이 맞춰진 대체 연습 등을 언어를 사용하는학습활동으로 확대 연장할 수 있는 방법을 제시하고 논의하여 학습자들에게정확성과 유창성을 증진시키고 교정수업이 유용하고 효과적인 학습이 되도록 해야 함을 논한다.

Ahn, Jae Hyun. 2015. L1 Korean L2 English Learners' Overpassivization Errors with Unaccusative Verbs. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 40-4, 633-660. Second language learners have had difficulties with verb acquisition, especially unaccusative intransitive verbs and it is because unaccusative verbs have featured properties which are distinguished from unergative verbs. From the second language learners’ perspective, it is very difficult for them to differentiate these two classes of verb and use them correctly. The primary purpose of this research is to study the overpassivization errors of unaccusative verbs by L1 Korean L2 English learners using Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace, 2000) which is based on Unaccusative Hierarchy (Sorace, 1993a, b, 1995). Four unaccusative verbs in four different subtypes in the hierarchy were selected and 108 subjects in total from the 9th and 11th grade took a grammaticality judgment test. This study found that 1) the participants made fewer errors with the unaccusative verbs as the rank of the verbs in the hierarchy went up, 2) the four verbs which were categorized as the same subtype depending on their unaccusativity showed significant differences, and 3) there was no statistically significant difference in the test results between the 9th and 11th graders. The reasons for these findings were also investigated and recommended teaching methods are suggested at the end of this paper. (Korea University)

This paper revisited the claim that errors observed in L2 acquisition of alternating unaccusative verbs are constrained by the morphological patterns of learners' L1. Two bi-directional studies were conducted on L2 acquisition of English by Korean-speaking learners and L2 acquisition of Korean by English-speaking learners, using an acceptability judgement task and a forced-choice task, respectively. In both studies, the learners' choice of morphology could not be attributed to either L1 or L2. Instead, the learners of the two studies showed the same morphological pattern, that is, overt marking of the inchoative and zero-marking of the causative. These findings suggest that errors with unaccusative verbs are not L1-specific but developmental and L2 universal. It is proposed that this rather universal interlanguage pattern is caused by derivational, semantic, and morphosyntactic similarities between inchoatives and passives, which lead to L2 learners' confusion and consequently overgeneralization of overtly marked forms to the inchoative.

This article provides a synthetic review of current research on English L2 learners’ acquisition of verb inflection, focusing specifically on four topic areas: tense and aspect, subject-verb agreement, lexical and auxiliary verbs, and individual differences. The primary goal is to address the question of what to consider when analyzing ungrammatical forms produced by learners. An additional goal is to gain further insights into such questions as what challenges interlanguage researchers are likely to face in the analysis of the sources of inaccurate forms and what kinds of errors can be regarded as (non-)systematic. This review results in several observations that merit further investigation. First, in the acquisition of tense-aspect morphemes, some general tendencies have been recognized, of which most notable is the fact that L2 learners’ ability to use tense-aspect morphology tends to develop gradually while form acquisition normally precedes function acquisition. Second, L2 acquisition of subject-verb agreement has been a central issue in the debate over the role and representation of the innate language faculty. Third, regarding L2 learners’ ability to discern lexical and auxiliary verbs, a prevalent UG-based argument is that the mental grammars of L2 learners are organised in the same way as those of L1 speakers and that they differ only in the nature of their lexemes for surface morphology. Finally, since verb inflectional morphology explicitly demonstrates language learners’ grammatical competence, variations in its acquisition constitute the core of inquiry into age- and L1-related factors.

The main purpose of this paper is to offer a typological observation ofpossible errors in the pronunciation of Mongolian sounds by Koreanlearners of Mongolian. It is examined that pronunciation errors are mainlyattributed to different phonemic inventories and phonological featuresbetween the Korean language (native language) and the Mongolianlanguage (target language). According to contrastive analysis, Mongolianvoiced and palatalized stops are the most difficult sounds for Koreanlearners to acquire because there is no corresponding segments in Korean. With regard to laryngeal features, Korean obstruents are contrastivedepending on the markedness of Glottal Width (GW) whereas Mongolianobstruents are marked with either Glottal Width (GW) or Glottal Tension(GT). Thus, Mongolian laryngeal system is more complicated than Koreanone. This may induce Korean learners to have difficulty in learningMongolian obstruents. In addition to the segmental differences betweenthe two languages, suprasegmental factors, such as syllable types andvowel length, can prevent Korean learners from acquiring the pronunciationof Mongolian sounds. For example, Mongolian allows a consonant clusterin coda position, which may lead Korean learners to insert epentheicvowels in between adjacent consonants. In Mongolian, vowel length is adistinctive feature to distinguish long vowels from short ones. However,the distinction between long and short vowels is insignificant in Korean. This paper also addresses that the Grammar-Translation method and Audio-lingual method that are popular in teaching foreign languages donot help Korean learners learn how to pronounce Mongolian phonemes. An alternative teaching method, the Silent Way seems to have benefitedmost by associating sounds with certain symbols, which allows Koreanlearners to facilitate an insight into Mongolian phonemes.

The purposes of this study are to examine what type of errors students make more between form-based and meaning-based errors, as well as to investigate in which error categories Korean learners frequently make errors and mistakes. In three studies, 264 essays from 42 subjects who were at a Korean university were collected. This study adopted error correction symbols by Harmer (2007) to analyze error categories simply and easily. The results indicated that form-based errors (91%) were generally reported much more than meaning-based errors (9%) by both the teacher``s and students`` review. In contrast, although students had different situations in three studies (e.g., a case study, two sample studies), the results were not much different: learners frequently made errors with the article and grammar categories. In English as foreign language (EFL) environments, interactions via peer-review feedback have been considered as profitable tools; however, teacher-review feedback is still required to facilitate students`` second/foreign language (L2) development. These findings suggest that students will develop the quality as well as the accuracy of their writing when they recognize the most frequent error categories in their L2 writing.

Li, Aijing & Choe, Mun-Hong. (2017). Developmental Errors in Chinese L1 Speakers’ Use of the L2 English Past Tense and Perfective Aspect. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 25(1), 29-53. This study investigated intermediate-level Chinese EFL learners’ ability to use three tense-aspect categories in English: simple past, present perfect, and past perfect. Participants (N = 142) were asked to complete three types of controlled tasks: multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and translation, and then to provide an explanation for their answers through group discussions. The findings indicate that although the learners were well acquainted with the tense-aspect forms, they were not able to use them appropriately; past perfect was the most difficult category for both low-intermediate and upper-intermediate learners; they tended to overuse the simple past form when describing events that occurred in the past but their influence has lasted to the present; they often used the present perfect form in sentences containing definite temporal adverbials; and finally, they applied the perfective aspect to the verbs whose lexical aspects import punctuality. These lead to the conclusion that Chinese EFL learners are disposed to rely on L1 translation, tense-aspect consistency in adjacent discourse, and local lexical cues such as temporal adverbials in order to facilitate their understanding of the intricate usage of the English tense-aspect system.