The purpose of this study is to identify the type and cause of the error by comparing
the usage pattern of definite articles the by Korean English learners with native
speakers. To this end, a pilot test was conducted on undergraduate and graduate
stu...
The purpose of this study is to identify the type and cause of the error by comparing
the usage pattern of definite articles the by Korean English learners with native
speakers. To this end, a pilot test was conducted on undergraduate and graduate
students to analyze the choice of articles in front of 'of + noun phrases', 'abstract nouns',
and 'material nouns', and compared Korean and native-speaking writing with about
10,000 words. As a result of the analysis, Korean learners generally showed a higher
tendency to overuse than omission of definite articles, and especially used 'the' more in
'of + noun phrases' and 'abstract nouns'. This pattern is interpreted to be caused by the
failure to internalize the concept of definiteness because there is no article system in
Korean. This study proposes a mixed teaching method that combines explicit rule
learning and implicit discourse-based learning for effective article education, placing
learners' errors within the framework of SLA research of underuse and overuse.