The purpose of this research is to compare and analyze the structure and linguistic characteristics of Statement of Purpose written by Chinese Korean learners, who make up a great portion of foreign students studying in Korea, and native Korean speake...
The purpose of this research is to compare and analyze the structure and linguistic characteristics of Statement of Purpose written by Chinese Korean learners, who make up a great portion of foreign students studying in Korea, and native Korean speakers in order to provide tactics that will help Chinese students to write SOP effectively when they apply to Korean graduate schools. With a focus on the writing of SOP by native Korean speaker graduate students, this research has its purpose in contrasting and analyzing the linguistic characteristics of those written by native Korean speakers and by Chinese Korean learners and in giving suggestions.
This research is divided into a pre-analysis section and an actual analysis section. As a pre-analysis this research analyzes fifty SOP submitted to graduate schools of universities and four Korean textbooks that contain SOP to serve as the basis of this research on writing SOP in
Korean. With the pre-analysis as a basis, I gathered and analyzed fifteen samples for each from a pool of SOP written by Korean native speaker graduate students who were accepted to liberal arts, social sciences, art, music and athletic training majors and by Chinese Korean learners applying to graduate schools for a master’s degree.
As a tool of research, I used Lee(2007)’s writing methods and developed a study plan model by examining SOP written by native Korean speakers. As a tool for the analysis procedure, I will use Bhatia(1993)’s method of analyzing genre, the most basic frame of analysis, by modifying the third step, analysis procedure, of the sixth step, which is language analysis.
As the method of analysis, after analyzing the structure of the SOP and contrasting the linguistic characteristics, this research looks into the frequency of sentences per category. Regarding the analysis of the structure, this research describes the difference between the SOP written by native Korean speakers and those by Chinese Korean learners with a focus on the structural pattern and the analysis of each of the structural parts. Further, this research analyzes and describes the difference between the linguistic characteristics as well by focusing on hackneyed expressions, verb tenses and vocabulary.
First, as a result of my analysis shows, the SOP written by native Korean speakers tend to follow the pattern of ‘reason for application – Study plans – plans for after graduation – ect’ while those by Chinese Korean learners usually followed the pattern of ‘reason for application – Study plans – plans for after graduation.’ Second, regarding the analysis of the frequency per structural portions I focused on the difference between the structures of the SOP written by native Korean speakers and those by Chinese Korean learners. Whereas native Korean speakers emphasized the reason for application (B), Chinese Korean learners tended to emphasize the study plan and goals (C). While the structural expression of native Korean speakers was diverse, that of the Chinese Korean learners was not. Moreover, in the analysis of the number of words and sentences, Chinese Korean learners tended to use fewer words per sentence when compared to native Korean speakers. This means that Chinese Korean learners write comparably simpler sentences.
Next, the analysis of linguistic characteristics is divided into a section analyzing expressions, another section analyzing verb tense, and another analyzing vocabulary.
First, regarding the analysis of expressions, native Korean speakers used a greater number of sentences and words whereas Chinese Korean learners used a noticeably fewer number of sentences and words. Moreover, analyses show that Chinese Korean learners frequently used the tactic of using self-degrading expressions in their study plans.
Second, regarding the analysis of verb tense, native Korean speakers used six out of 23 categories of the structures in the future tense and used the present tense as the most frequently used tense, using it in ten out of 23 categories. Chinese Korean learners also used the present tense the most, using eleven out of 23 categories in the present tense. As another major verb tense, they used the present progressive tense often but their use of future tense was less frequent than their Korean counterparts.
Third, the analysis of vocabulary was divided into two sections, each analyzing different kinds of words: basic vocabulary and specialized vocabulary. When I counted the frequency of the two kinds, native Korean speakers frequently used basic vocabulary while Chinese Korean speakers’ use was noticeably less frequent. This was the same with specialized vocabulary. In the analysis of faulty usage of vocabulary, native Korean speakers made simple grammatical errors while Chinese Korean learners made errors in line with the kinds of mistakes often made by beginning or intermediate level learners often make such as direct translation of expressions in their mother tongue, errors regarding faulty pronunciations, errors regarding postpositional particles, errors regarding verb conjugation, etc. As it is evident, SOP written by Chinese Korean learners had more errors than those by native Korean speakers and the frequency of the use of words and sentence expressions was strikingly low in those by Chinese Korean learners.
This research has its importance in that it is the first attempt at analyzing one specific genre, study plans, by contrasting and analyzing those by native Korean speakers and Chinese Korean learners in the field of Korean education as well as in that it took into consideration the two countries’ cultural background in contrasting and analyzing the study plans. However, its limitation lie in the fact that there was a scarcity in the amount of objects of analysis. Future research requires analyses in abundance at institutional levels. Educational institutions need to offer classes taking into consideration the needs of learners. Furthermore, because research on measures to teach writing effectively and on writing textbooks is insufficient, scholars need to undergo research actively. With the basic material presented in this research, scholars need to actively come up with new teaching methods or undergo research to develop better writing textbooks. Moreover, university organizations should gather large numbers of SOP and undergo research that generalizes the tendencies within. Discovering the strategies of how to write ‘Korean SOP’ will be of great help to people who are learning Korean.
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