Errors and accuracy in the production of the English progressive by Korean elementary and middle school students

Abstract

This study examines Korean EFL learners’ systematic production of errors and accurate responses. A total of one hundred and one participants (aged between 11 and 13) completed a picture elicitation task designed for the English progressive. The method of Error Analysis was employed to analyze the written production. The findings indicated that Korean learners produced intralingual errors most frequently. The most common errors involved the use of bare verbs without tense and aspectual marking (e.g., Dance, She dance). The next most frequent errors involved the use of be followed by a bare verb (e.g., She is dance). Omission of be alone was rare in the current study (e.g., She dancing). The middle school student group performed better than the elementary group (50% accuracy versus 8.82%). The difference can be attributed to the input frequency and classroom practices. Pedagogical implications of the results are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of English teaching and the necessity of explicit and implicit error corrections and grammatical instructions.