Abstract
This study examines the distribution of the present perfect (the PP) in written essays of Korean university students. A part of the Yonsei English Learner Corpus (Lee & Chung, 2012) was analyzed focusing on the interaction of L2 proficiency and text types with the use of the PP. The main findings are as follows: 1) The learners’ use of the PP was not as frequent as NS usage, but was comparable to that of NS and NNS university students reported in previous studies. 2) The error patterns revealed that the confusion between the PP and the simple past was a common source of errors both for the high and low levels. Mismatches between temporal adverbials and the PP also led to ungrammatical sentences. 3) The association between the PP and lexical aspects was not evidenced in our data, contrary to the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis. Considering the difficulty of grasping fluid pragmatic meanings of the PP and the time constraint in L2 classroom, a more realistic goal is suggested for the instruction of the PP.
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