코퍼스 기반 원어민 화자와 한국인 화자의 학술 논문에 나타난 언어적 비교 분석

Abstract

It would be far from an easy goal for Korean learners to become able to speak or write like native speakers in an EFL environment. As educational methods have developed and diversified, more and more academic articles have been published in this field. It is important to express one’s thoughts and the results of one’s research logically. Therefore, in order to help Korean learners write academic articles more efficiently and naturally, in this study I have compared, based on corpus linguistics, various linguistic characteristics in academic articles written by English-native speakers and Korean authors. The purpose of this study was to examine and identify the differences and similarities between English-native speakers and Koreans in terms of academic writing, and to discuss how to apply these findings to English education. For this study, among many other disciplines, academic articles on English literature, English linguistics and English education were collected and analyzed. The results of this study are as follows. First, in an analysis of vocabulary in regard to content words, nouns appeared similarly in the two corpora, but native English speaking authors used a more diverse range of verbs and adjectives than Korean authors did. Then, in regard to function words, compared with the British National Corpus(BNC), these same results showed that articles and prepositions usually appeared at the same rate in the two corpora. Second, among function words, pronouns were separately analyzed. The personal pronoun, ‘we’ in academic articles by native English speakers appeared twice as often as in articles written in English by Koreans. And in terms of the demonstrative pronouns ‘these’ and ‘those’, native English-speaking authors used ‘these’ more than Korean authors did. Third, modal verbs, which play a significant role in communication, were examined. On the whole, modal verbs were used a little more often in academic articles of English-native authors, and, specifically, English-native authors used the past form of modal verbs such as ‘could’, ‘would’, and ‘might’ much more than Korean authors did. Finally, ‘should’ and must’, which represent obligation, were used even more often by Korean authors than by native English speaking authors. Fourth, lexical bundles such as 'in terms of the' and 'on the other hand' were examined. These were analyzed based on their frequency, structure, and function. Concerning frequency, in the case of academic articles by native English speaking authors, lexical bundles appeared in papers on English linguistics more than in other fields, and in the case of journal articles by Korean authors, lexical bundles appeared in English education articles more than in other fields. ‘At the same time’ appeared most frequently in academic articles of native English speaking authors and ‘on the other hand’ appeared most frequently in the journal articles of Korean authors. Regarding structure, noun and prepositional phrases which include the preposition ‘of’, appeared most often, and prepositional phrases including other prepositions also appeared frequently. And last, as for function, by and large, referential bundles were frequently used in the two corpora. In terms of sub-category, the native English speaking authors used quantifying bundles a lot more often than Korean authors did. Framing, a sub-category that functions as a text organizer, was the most frequently used function in the two corpora. Fifth, conjunctions and conjunctive adverbials needed for writing cohesion were investigated. Regarding ‘however’, there were not many differences between the two corpora, but in terms of position, the native English speaking authors used ‘however’ similarly in both initial and medial positions. On the other hand, Korean authors used ‘however’ far more often in a initial position than in a medial position. In the case of ‘therefore’ and ‘thus’, there were also not many differences regarding frequency. But in terms of position, the great majority of native English speaking authors used ‘therefore’ in a medial position, while Korean authors used ‘therefore’ in an initial position. Sixth, key words in the two corpora were examined, using the BNC as a reference. The results showed that words such as ‘student’, ‘teacher’, ‘learner’, ‘as’, ‘of’, ‘in’ were used commonly by both groups. On the other hand, in academic articles by native English speaking authors, key words included ‘dialect’, ‘variation’, ‘texts’, and ‘frequency’, while for Korean authors, ‘feedback’, ‘proficiency’, ‘native’, ‘syntactic’, ‘constructions’, ‘clauses’, and ‘adjunct’ appeared often. The results of key words present in each corpus also showed that ‘we’, ‘these’, ‘our’, and ‘would’ appeared frequently in academic articles of native English speaking authors and that ‘the’, ‘Korean’, ‘feedback’, ‘EFL’, ‘proficiency’, and ‘his’ were common in those of Korean authors. Based on these findings, this study suggests that more opportunities to learn authentic English through diverse genres need to be given to English learners in order to overcome the differences between native English speakers and Koreans in using English. And also, if educators recognize these differences and teach their students properly, these findings will be helpful for training English learners to write academic articles as well as various other forms of writing.