earticle

영어

Based on Information Structure, this paper is to investigate how to teach passive voice to students in Korea focusing on the difference in meaning between active and passive voice sentences. Still, most of Korean EFL students in every English class are practicing how to change an active voice sentence to a passive voice without the notion of the meaning difference. For this study, the participants are 48 university students and they are divided into three groups according to their TOEIC score. They are given 8 questions about the difference of meaning between an active sentence and a passive one and 15 questions about the form of passive sentences. After finishing answering those questions, they also participate in a survey on whether they ever heard of the difference in meaning between passive and active voices. The result shows that there is no relation between how well students understand the meaning of a passive sentence and their TOEIC score. Furthermore, even students with low level of English ability can fully understand the meaning of a passive if they have a chance to learn. Therefore, in order for students to better understand the real meaning of a passive voice sentence and its practical usage, it is imperative that teachers themselves be equipped with the knowledge of Information Structure because teaching passive voices should be based on information structure and the change needs to be shown in every textbook at high schools.