Different Roles of English Demonstratives by Korean University Students in Two Genres

This study aims to identify to what extent Korean EFL learners’ use of English demonstratives varies in different genres of essays. Both argumentative and narrative essays from the Yonsei English Learner Corpus were analyzed based on grammatical and phoric-level functions. It also compared whether these functions differ depending on writing proficiency levels. The frequency analyses revealed some variations between the genres. First, the pronouns occurred significantly more in argumentative writing, while the determiners appeared slightly more in narrative writing. In particular, the pronominal this was more frequent in argumentative writing, while the determiner that was rather frequent in narrative writing. Second, the anaphoric function did not distinguish the two genres, but the exophoric function differentiated them significantly. Namely, the anaphoric function was similarly frequent in both genres, except for the predominant use of the anaphoric this in argumentative writing; however, the exophoric function was more preferred in narrative writing, especially for the exophoric this. The deictic function was only found in argumentative writing. As for proficiency, those seems to present a linear progression from the low-to-high in argumentative writing, which was evidenced in various functions. The findings help to understand Korean university students’ demonstrative development and use in English writing.