중학생들의 영어 구두점 사용에 관한 연구

A Study on Middle School Students' Use of English Punctuation

The purpose of this study is to investigate middle school students' use of English punctuation. For this purpose, a survey questionnaire was designed and six English punctuations were chosen to design a test consisting of the items of 29 periods, 26 commas, 4 colons, 4 semicolons, 5 dashes, and 4 question marks. The data was collected from 214 middle school students, either in 2nd or 3rd year. The results were as follows: first, about 50% of the students have had experiences to learn English punctuation marks; second, the greater part of the 50% learned English punctuations at school; and finally, most students could explain the usage of the period, the comma, and the question marks, while having difficulty using the colon, the semicolon, and the dash. This implies that although most students know the usage of English punctuations, they do not use the punctuations properly in the context. Various research is needed for a better understanding of English punctuation and for obtaining practical ideas of how to teach it.