Factors Influencing Korean L2 Learners’ Errors in English Relative Clauses

Abstract

Predicting and providing an account for the difficulty of English relative clause comprehension for L2 learners has been attempted within frameworks such as noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977), and filler-gap hypothesis (e.g. O`Grady, Lee & Choo, 2003). The current study probes whether the frameworks can effectively account for native Korean learners` errors and comprehension of English RCs. The result shows that multiple factors should be considered, rather than a single framework, in order to explain the difficulty of English relative clauses for Korean L2 learners. This research examined 25 intermediate Korean learners of English using a picture selection task. The result and error analysis suggest that several factors such as the number of intervening nodes demonstrated by the filler-gap hypothesis, canonical word order of English, length of relative clauses, and relative marker used in the relative clauses influence the English learners` comprehension. The findings may assist developing an efficient pedagogical tool for teaching English relative clauses.