Learners' Awareness of Comma Usage and Its Effect on Two Types of Writing Tasks

초록

Kwon, Eun-Young, and Park, Eun Sung. 2015. Learners' Awareness of Comma Usage and Its Impact on Two Types of Writing Tasks. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 15-4, 713-738. This study examines Korean college students’ awareness of English comma usage and how this awareness subsequently affects their use of commas in two types of writing tasks—a fill-in-the-blank task and a free-writing task. Four different comma usages were investigated in this study: (1) commas with nonrestrictive elements; (2) commas with coordinating conjunctions linking independent clauses; (3) commas after introductory elements; and (4) commas with items in a series. The results showed that the participants regarded the second usage (i.e., connecting two clauses) as the primary function of the comma which most participants were able to use accurately in the fill-in-the-blank task (91.8%), but not in the free-writing task (14.4%). It was also found that commas were most accurately employed for the third usage (i.e., commas after introductory elements) in both types of writing tasks even though none of the participants demonstrated awareness for this particular usage. The current results suggest that the students' awareness of comma usage is not always directly related to their performance and that their performance is often influenced by the nature of the writing task employed.

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