대학생의 영작문에 나타난 시제와 가정법 사용 오류에 관한 연구

A study of errors in the use of tense and subjunctive in college students’ English compositions

This study aims to examine errors in college students’ English compositions, focusing on the use of tense and subjunctive in order to provide teachers or text developers with basic materials of teaching grammar and writing. Thirty students participated in both the controlled and the free writing sessions in which students translated 32 Korean sentences into English and described their activities in the past, present, and future forms of tense. In addition, they filled out a questionnaire about their attitude toward English writing and knowledge on tense and subjunctive. The authors counted the number of correct expressions of tense and subjunctive in their writings to determine each subject’s score and two native speakers graded each writing by the TWE (TOEFL) standards. Results showed that in the controlled writing the students used 44.07% of tense and subjunctive forms correctly. The majority of the errors were attributed to the intralingual ones. In the free writing, the accuracy rate was higher, 90.92%, which might be related to the students’ avoidance of uncertain expressions. The students showed a strong interest in English but lacked confidence in their writing. Further studies on the students’ writing would be desirable.