earticle

영어

This paper examines the question of whether the order of the left peripheral elements causes difficulties in EFL adult learners’ using WH-structures. Furthermore, it suggests a method to solve the problem by applying A'-chain (which is a chain linking an s-selection to a criterial position) based on the Criterial Hypothesis (Rizzi (1997, 2004a, 2004b)). To justify the suggestion, the survey targeted 81 EFL adult learners. The results indicate that the subjects have difficulties in using grammatical structures which include wh-elements, focus- elements, and topic-elements in the leftmost edge of the sentence. It has been identified that the fundamental reason for making the difficulties is due to the different way to operate the left peripheral elements between Korean and English. To tackle this challenge, this paper suggests that EFL adult learners should recognize the order of operating the left peripheral elements (Top-WH-(Top)-Foc) and apply the order of them to build the wh-structures in terms of the concept that the standard of the operation is wh-movement which is always preceding the focus and topic movement.