A Pragmatic Analysis of English Passives in Second Language Acquisition.

Autor/in	Jung, Woo-hyun
Titel	A Pragmatic Analysis of English Passives in Second Language Acquisition.
Quelle	(1996), (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	College Students; Discourse Analysis; English (Second Language); Error Analysis (Language); Error Patterns; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Interlanguage; Language Research; Learning Processes; Linguistic Theory; Majors (Students); Pragmatics; Second Language Learning; Sociocultural Patterns; Transfer of Training; Writing (Composition) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Collegestudent; Diskursanalyse; English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Error analysis; Language; Fehleranalyse; Fehlertyp; Ausland; Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Zielsprache; Sprachforschung; Learning process; Lernprozess; Linguistische Theorie; Pragmalinguistik; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Soziokulturelle Theorie; Training; Transfer; Ausbildung; Schreibübung
Abstract	A study investigated Koreans' use and misuse of the English passive, from a pragmatic perspective, with attention to the possible source of errors. Subjects were 200 college students at two universities in Korea who were English majors or minors or taking English as an elective course, divided equally between sophomores and juniors. The subjects wrote argumentative essays in English about one of two scientific topics selected to elicit passive usage. Essays were analyzed for pragmatic errors in use of the passive, either discourse functional errors (violation of role prominence or violation of defocusing) or emotional functional errors related to the Korean prevalence of the emotional function of the passive. Results indicate that more emotional than functional discourse errors occurred, suggesting negative transfer, and that despite the relative similarity of the discourse functions in Korean and English, Korean learners did make discourse functional errors, possibly due to erroneous assumptions about the English passive and active voices and possibly due to the sociocultural factor of prestige. There also appeared to exist a hierarchy of acceptability of pragmatic errors. Contains 9 references. The essay writing assignment is appended. (MSE)
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC