Actual Use of that-clauses in EFL Writing

Abstract

In this study, we focus on that-clauses in an attempt to compare the kinds of grammatical information presented in the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English with the actual use in EFL student essays. First, we analyze the overall patterns of use for that-clause types in the student essays. Next, we work on native/EFL student similarities and differences in the lexical associations of that-clauses. In addition, we take a closer look at two structural variants for that-clauses, considering the extent to which that is deleted and the grammatical factors influencing deletion in the student essays. A corpus of academic writing was compiled from the essays of students attending a Korean university. The corpus consisted of 311 essays written by 38 students, totaling 104,727 words. The overall extent of the use of that-clause in the student essays is notably different from those of native academic prose. In particular, the patterns of use in the student essays are strikingly different from those found in native academic prose. The single most common verb controlling that-clauses is think in the student essays while show, suggest, and say are most frequent verbs controlling that-clauses in native academic prose. Furthermore, both native academic prose and the student essays also showed different patterns for the factors influencing that omission. A very large percentage (58%) of the that-omissions occur in the student essays, which clearly brings out the EFL learners’ tendency to opt for the more informal structural variants for that-clauses.