earticle

영어

The goal of this study is to investigate if there are any different aspects in learning English relative clauses among different levels of Korean EFL students. English relative clauses are often classified in four types on the basis of the grammatical role of the antecedent, the relative pronoun, and the trace of movement. It has been noted that learners show a certain developmental pattern regarding these types of relative clauses. This pattern has been discussed by several hypotheses such as Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis, Parallel Function Hypothesis, Perceptual Difficulty Hypothesis, and Linear or Structural Distance Hypothesis. Previous studies on Korean EFL learners’ acquisition of relative clauses (Suh, 2003; Hwang, 2003) have tried to figure out which hypothesis is more explanatorily adequate, without much considering any differences among groups of different proficiency levels. In this study we pick up three levels of EFL students and give them two kinds of grammar tests. The statistics show that there is no significant difference in regard to the order of acquisition among three, and that the Accessibility Hierarchy Hypothesis works best in explaining the order of acquisition. We conclude that relative clauses need to be presented to Korean EFL students in the order suggested in the Accessibility Hypotheses.