Korean EFL learners' referential ability and their L2 proficiency in oral narrative discourse

Abstract

Referencing plays an essential role in achieving discourse competence. Making appropriate referential choices in diverse contexts reflects language learners' pragmatic competence that takes the listeners into account as well as linguistic competence which marks the connectivity and coherence among sentences. However, there is little research that looks at the Korean EFL students' reference management. The present study aims to assess Korean EFL learners' discourse competence by analyzing their reference management in oral narrative discourse production. In addition, the potential relationship between their overall English proficiency and reference management at discourse level was examined in order to investigate whether general language ability tested on KPSAT is related to discourse competence. Our findings indicate that Korean high school EFL learners generally lacked full control over making appropriate referential choices, especially with those that involve articles. Moreover, their English KPSAT scores did not necessarily correspond to their referential skills reflected in producing extended oral discourse in English.