Past Tense Acquisition by Less Successful Learners in the Korean EFL Classroom Setting
Hye-ryeong Hahn · 2005
The present study investigates the mode of past tense acquisition by Korean EFL learners who remain at a basic level after a long period of exposure to classroom English. Findings in second/foreign language (L2) acquisition have shown that L2 learners develop past tense system along a general route, similar to that of L1 children. In order to see if EFL learners showing a very slow rate of acquisition are also under basically the same universal constraints, written narratives by low-level university students were tested against two major models of past tense acquisition—the Aspect Hypothesis and the Perceptual Salience Hypothesis. The results showed that these learners’ past morphology development was not affected by the influence of lexical aspect predicted by the Aspect Hypothesis. Meanwhile, the learners’ use of past morphology was only partially affected by phonological salience, lending a partial support to the Perceptual Salience Hypothesis. The findings suggest that there are a large group of learners whose L2 acquisition is guided by principles other than the universal constraints attested in the majority of the second language literature. Possible pedagogical implications were suggested. Second language acquisition is one of the fields that have achieved a remarkable growth during the last few decades. It has contributed to the change of attitude toward language learning and the role of the learner, leading to the current pedagogical approaches that emphasize interaction, learner initiative, and overall fluency rather than accuracy. However, the reality is that English teachers still find so many students who rarely progress after a long period of exposure to classroom instruction, with neither fluency nor accuracy. While these less-successful learners or “underachievers” account for no small portion of the total learner population, especially in the EFL setting, most of the studies have focused on learners who pass through a regular developmental route at a reasonable rate (Dulay &