Developing Linguistic Awareness of Korean EFL University Students about the Semantic and Pragmatic Features of will and be going to

Modals are the difficult grammatical features ESL/EFL students have to cope with. Students have been taught at school that the modal verb and the phrasal modal have the same meaning and they can be used interchangeably. This paper tries to demonstrate some of the systematic patterns in the use and meaning of modal verb and phrasal modal verb. The special focus is given to describing and capturing the differences between "will" and "be going to". First, this paper reviews the idea about semantic and pragmatic use of "will" and "be going to" in terms of Predictability or Imminence, Preplanned Intention or Contingency, and Formality. Next, to investigate the effect of teaching the differences between "will" and "be going to" in developing linguistic awareness of Korean EFL university students, instruction about the meaning and use of "will" and "be going" was implemented and data were collected and analyzed. The data showed that instruction about the meaning and use of "will" and "be going" was effective in developing linguistic awareness of Korean EFL university students. English language learners should practice using "will" and "be going to" in meaningful context in order to enhance their communicative competence. Their uses as a carrier of performative meaning should be taught systematically in English language classrooms. With more careful attention to the semantic and pragmatic features of the expressions of "will" and "be going", language teachers will be able to help English language learners make the choices for the meaning they wish to express.