Grammatical morpheme accuracy order in Korean adult learners of English

This study investigated the accuracy order of ten English grammatical morphemes by 40 native Korean-speaking students learning English as a second language. This study was aimed at answering the following three questions; (a) Is there any relationship between the accuracy order of English morphemes by Korean speakers who learn English as a second language and the orders suggested by previous studies? (b) do the morphemes that the Korean language does not have, such as the articles and the 3rd person singular present tense create more difficulties for Korean speakers than others do? (c) is there any variability among individuals on accuracy orders?; This study employed a cross-sectional research design with 40 Korean ESL learners who have been in the U.S. fewer than five years, who have received formal instruction in English grammar for more than six years in Korea and who were full-time students enrolled in institutions in the U.S.; A translation test and an interview test were developed by the author to collect written and the oral data. The data were collected and scored by the percentage of the use of the ten morphemes for both tests. An accuracy order of the ten morphemes was established based on the mean ranks of the two tests. The result showed that an accuracy order exists among Korean speakers. Though the order of the translation test and the order of the interview test were significantly correlated, differences were observed. The interview test has more errors and more variability in the accuracy order than the translation test. The interview test established a more clear order than the translation test. Comparisons with previous studies confirmed that variant orders exist between children and the adults. The articles and the 3rd person singular present tense were ranked the last two morphemes in this study and interpreted as the two most difficult morphemes for Korean speakers. The individual similarity of the accuracy order in oral performance was far greater than that in written performance.