한국인의 영어 복합절 산출 시주절과 부사절의 위치 변화

Abstract

The Order of Main and Adverbial Clauses of English Complex Sentences Produced by Korean-English Learners: Focusing on When, If and Because Clauses Kim, Yunhee Department of English Language and Literature Graduate School Jeju National University Supervised by Prof. Yun, Hongoak This experimental study was conducted to examine the positional changes of adverbial clauses when EFL Korean learners produced English complex sentences while focusing on the sentences of 'when', 'if' and 'because' conjunctions. 60 university students, living in the Jeju island, who were 20 or above years old participated in this study. The English sentences produced by the participants were analyzed; in particular, the positional changes of adverbial clauses in English complex sentences (i.e., whether the adverbial clauses appeared before or after main clauses). During the experiment, the students were asked to watch short videos and write English complex sentences about the videos by using 'when', 'if' and 'because' conjunctions. I analyzed the sentences from three perspectives:First, do adverbial clauses always precede main clauses when EFL Korean learners use 'when', 'if' and 'because' conjunctions? Second, do the positional changes of main and adverbial clauses differ by each type of conjunctions? Finally, do the positional changes of main and adverbial clauses differ depending on the level of English proficiency? The results obtained from the experiment revealed that the positional changes of main and adverbial clauses differed among the sentences of 'when', 'if' and 'because' conjunctions. The complex sentences using 'Because' yielded the largest proportions of adverbial clauses following main clauses, whereas the sentences using 'If' yielded the smallest proportions of adverbial clauses following main clauses. These results suggested that the EFL Korean learners did not always place adverbial clauses ahead of main clauses. More importantly, some patterns were similar to the English patterns observed by native English speakers and some patterns seemed to reflect the influences by the Korean native speakers' tendency. As for the matter of the level of English proficiency, the proportions to positioning adverbial-main clauses were about 50% observed in the advanced group and around 45% observed in the intermediate/lower group. There was main effect of the level of English proficiency. In short, these results indicate that in order to acquire 'when', 'if' and 'because' adverbial clauses, diverse perspectives are required. In particular, these findings suggest that the language-universal thinking system as well as the langage-specific influences from mother language would play significant roles in the use of the second language. It is expected that the results from this experiment with linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives may present some guidelines to the English education in Korea.