Korean College Students' Knowledge on English Argument Structure Constructions Depending on English Proficiency

Abstract

Lee, Jin-Hwa and Kim, Seung-Su. 2016. Korean College Students' Knowledge on English Argument Structure Constructions Depending on English Proficiency. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 16-2, 121-142. This study explored whether constructional knowledge is available to L2 learners as in L1 acquisition and whether it is related to L2 proficiency. A total of 84 Korean college students with two English proficiency levels participated in a sorting task and a translation task. Their knowledge on English argument structure constructions (ASCs) was examined in two aspects: recognition of English ASCs in general and relative difficulty of four English ASCs. The results showed that Korean EFL learners' processing of English ASCs was constrained by their English proficiency. The lower level learners presented heavily verb-centered processing, while the advanced group showed more construction-based processing. This study also revealed the relative difficulty of English ASCs for Korean EFL learners: The transitive was the easiest and the resultative was the most difficult, with the caused-motion and the ditransitive in between. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are discussed.