This study compares the variation of Korean college students’ability and preference of amplifier use in a given context with those of native speakers. 86 Korean college students were divided into three groups according to their English proficiency, and 17 native speakers participated in the experiment as a comparative group. All four groups were examined for their awareness and ability of the colloquial usage of 32 frequently cited amplifiers in a given context. The results reveal that Korean English students in advanced group acquired maximize use ability in even EFL environment without special attention, while the lower two groups showed significant misusage of maximizers. On the other hand, for boosters, all three groups show significantly different used ability from that of native speakers. This study also reports that when forming collocations with amplifiers, learners in the beginning level were mostly unaware of semantic relation that took on a new dimension for them. On the other hand, learners in the intermediate group and the advanced group were able to apply lexical meaning on the collocation phrase reasonably well. These findings suggest that learners become more sensitive to the colloquial usage of amplifiers as English instructors relate specific explanation of amplifier usage to their students. Through a progressive, pedagogical effort and students' frequent exposure to amplifier collocations, learners should be able to comprehend them extensively and try to produce a variety of amplifiers adequately within authentic contexts.
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