Use of the Pronouns‘ I ’and‘ We ’by Korean EFL Students of Differential Writing Skill Levels

The current paper investigates first person pronouns (I, my, me, we, our, and us) used by Korean college students of differential skill levels in their academic writing, focusing on in which linguistic context and for what purpose they actually use them. Twenty-eight opinionated essays from the two groups (the beginning level and the intermediate level) were analyzed, and a survey was conducted with 28 participants. The findings are as follows: the students used the first person pronouns in various ways, from the least authorial role to the most powerful authorial role. They were not reluctant to represent themselves in texts. ‘I’ was the most common author reference in both groups, and in many cases, ‘I’ revealed in the form of the most powerful authorial presence. This usage of ‘I’ seemed to be closely related to the genre of the essay. Beginning students used more first person plural forms than the intermediate did, especially with the determiner ‘our.’ ‘Our’ was overused and even misused in many cases. When they used first person plural forms, they usually employed inclusive ‘we.’