A Corpus-based Analysis of Connectors in Korean Students’ Essay Writing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Corpus linguistic methodology has opened up a new era for SLA research and language pedagogy. In particular, learner corpus based research can provide important information for language teaching by enabling a systematic analysis of errors in learner language. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on learner language, with specific reference to the use of connectors in English argumentative writing. This study examined the frequency and positions of connectors in Korean students’ L2 writing in comparison with a different L1 learner group and native corpus. The findings revealed that while the Korean students generally overused connectors like other L1 learners in previous studies, they showed a significantly high frequency of connectors in the semantic category of enumeration and addition, and prominently favored initial positions. This indicates that the students resorted to connectors as convenient text organizers rather than developing their ideas internally in a coherent way. Also, it showed their lack of knowledge about genre-specific characteristics of connector usage. L2 writing teachers can integrate the results into the development of teaching materials and adjust their teaching focus to address students’ frequent problemswith connector usage.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract
• I. Introduction
• II. Literature Review
• III. Method
• IV. Results and Discussion
• V. Conclusion
• References