EFL Learners Avoidance of English Tag Questions

The purpose of this study is to examine the use of English Tag Question (ETQ) by Korean learners of English and to find out the factors that influence their use of ETQ. For the purpose of the study, two tests of form production and meaning comprehension of ETQ were administered to 75 college-level students. The results of the form production test showed that though higher level learners excelled the lower level learners in terms of the percentage of the correct responses on ETQ. Their use of ETQ seemed to be affected by the presence of auxiliary verbs, negation and idiosyncratic expressions. On the function comprehension test, both groups showed a similar tendency of using ETQ to limited functions of seeking agreement and inviting confirmation. The results suggested that the grammatical complexity and diverse functions of the ETQ contributed to learners avoidance of ETQ. Learners need to be presented with contextualized input to recognize the connection of form and meaning of tag questions in English.