Developmental patterns of Korean EFL learners' English argument structure constructions

The present study aims to explore developmental patterns of constructional knowledge of Korean EFL learners. The study asked 120 Korean learners of English to carry out a sentence sorting and a translation task, and investigated how the participants at three different proficiency levels use their constructional knowledge to comprehend English sentences. The results from the sorting task showed that the learners in the beginner group relied more heavily on verb-centered sorting than the learners in the intermediate group. The results from the translation task revealed that the L2 learners ability to comprehend complex constructions is highly correlated with their proficiency in the target language. The study suggests that L2 learners' constructional knowledge is acquired incrementally as their exposure to the target language extends, supporting one of the main premises of the usage-based approach to language and language acquisition. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.