earticle

영어

The present study conducted a comparative analysis of use of evaluative adjectives in the essays of Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English. It discussed the characteristics of different types of evaluative adjectives, e.g., frequency, semantic categories, and collocational value of evaluative adjectives. The result of the frequency analysis demonstrates Korean EFL learners’ significant overuse of the limited types of the target items. The analysis of evaluative adjectives by semantic categories shows the similar tendency. For example, the repeated use of a small number of assessment adjectives resulted in the high frequency of adjectives in the assessment category. The present study also demonstrates the collocational associations between the selected evaluative adjectives and intensifiers in the corpus. The descriptive results of the analysis of collocational information indicate that learners employed a less formal/spoken style in the written corpus. As Blagoeva (2004) noted, the differences between the Korean EFL learners and native speakers of English in the characteristics of evaluative expressions might not directly obstruct communication but it is an indication that there is still much to be done in the development of second/foreign language skills.