• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.121-150
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• 2009

This paper deals with contrastive analysis and interlanguage with respect to adjective ordering. It aimed to investigate how similar and different the orders of descriptive adjectives are in English and Korean, and how Korean EFL learners perceive the sequences of English descriptive adjectives. Data were collected from native English speakers and native Korean speakers and Korean EFL learners. The contrastive analysis showed that the order of English adjectives was size, opinion, condition, age, color, shape, material, and origin, whereas the Korean order was condition, age, opinion, color, size, shape, material, and origin. The relative order of the interlanguage was shown to be age, size, opinion, shape, condition, color, origin, and material, with the exceptions of the order of condition preceding age and that of size being the same position as condition. The interlanguage data manifested different aspects of ordering when compared with English and Korean: Some adjective combinations were similar to both English and Korean; Some were different from English or Korean; Some were different from both English and Korean. These ordering patterns are discussed in terms of such principles as the nouniness principle, the subjectivity/objectivity principle, the iconic principle, etc. On the basis of these results, some helpful suggestions are made.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Corpus Research
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.57-72
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• 2020

This study seeks to add to the current understanding of learners' use of modality in argumentative writing. A learner corpus of argumentative essays on four topics was created and compared to native English speaker data from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE). The relationship between learners' use of modal devices (MDs) and the devices' appearance in the school's curriculum was also examined. The results showed that learners relied on a very narrow range of MDs compared to those in previous studies. The frequency of use of MDs varied based on the topic and did not seem to be driven by cultural factors as has been previously suggested. Learners used more hedges than boosters on all topics, contradicting most previous studies. Curriculum was determined to have a direct correlation with MD use, and other important factors may include perception of topic and overreliance on certain MDs over others (the One-to-One principal). This research implies that learners' perception of topic should be explored further as a variable affecting MD use. Curricula should be designed based on frequency of MD use by English native speakers, and learners should receive instruction that teaches the norms of MD use in academic writing. The methodology used in the study to determine correlations between MD use and the curriculum has a wide range of potential applications in the field of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis.