영어권 한국어 학습자의 오류

Errors of English Speaking Learners of Korean: Inanimate Subjects with Transitive Verbs

Although inanimate subjects with transitive verbs are a well-recognized feature of syntactic differences between English and Korean, little research has been undertaken in relation to Korean language learning. Interference from Korean makes Koreans produce sentences such as ‘In this milk, 1% fat is contained’ instead of ‘This milk contains 1% fat’. This means that the opposite phenomenon is highly likely that English speaking learners of Korean produce inanimate subject constructions which are quite often ungrammatical or unacceptable. Examination of the writings produced by learners revealed that this type of error was produced. For better understanding of this phenomenon, contrastive analysis of the inanimate subject construction of Korean and English was carried out. The findings from the analysis were then used to correct the error-containing sentences collected from existing error research which focused only on local errors not on global errors such as those involving the use of the inanimate subject. The correction of inanimate subject errors improved the sentences much more than the original correction of the local errors. The findings of this research shows that avoidance of the inanimate subject construction is a major characteristic of the Korean language which should be taught to learners of Korean.