Analyzing Korean ESL Writers' Vocabulary Usage Patterns in Cultural Comparison Writing

I. INTRODUCTION

 Writing activity generally requires multiple levels of language performance from the grammar or vocabulary knowledge to the organization of thoughts, ideas, and views on topics.
Writing samples can be good sources for people to investigate the ESL writers' thought patterns.
The main purpose of the current research is to analyze the Korean ESL writers' vocabulary usage patterns in cultural comparison writing
samples and to identify the characteristic of the writing.

II. ESL/EFL WRITERS' TEXTS
The strings of vocabulary at least need to be arranged in an appropriate order of grammar so that the sentence can adequately deliver the meaning.
Knowing how to use right grammar and appropriately place vocabulary in their writings is the most important part for ESL/EFL writers.
The writing sample analysis is necessary, because the findings of the analysis can serve as direct sources and bases for the researchers to
develop writing instruction and curriculum.

III. METHODOLOGY
 Data Collection
? Reasons to choose the writing sample data are as below.
1. The original data were purposefully collected to investigate ESL writers' vocabulary usage in their writing, which shares the same purpose of the current study.
2. The topic of the writing sample fits the purpose of the current study, which analyzes the vocabulary patterns of the cultural comparison.
 

Participants
? ESL writers wrote an expository essay in which he or she characterized the
American lifestyles and/or manners linked to the cultural differences, compared to the Korean culture. 

III. METHODOLOGY
 Methods of Analysis
? The writing samples were investigated in 3 ways to see how the ESL writers view Korean and American cultures.
1. The word frequency of the writing samples was created because the frequency list can illustrate the distributional overview of words in writing samples.
2. Key words were extracted from the writing samples.
3. Mutual Information (MI) scores were calculated to select meaningful word collocations in the writing samples.

IV. RESULTS
 Word Frequency and Key Words
? The high frequent content words include: people, Korea, have, Korean, we, culture, American, America, Americans, one, Koreans, very, which is understandable considering cultural differences between Korea and America.
? The ESL writers appropriately responded to what the writing prompt directed by using the same words that were used in the writing prompt.

Pronouns
? One of the outstanding word usages is the existence of certain pronouns in the key words: they, I, we.
? Compared to the status of the pronoun I as one of the words, the verbs that the ESL writers used in the writings are not rich, which shows the Korean ESL writers may have had limited vocabulary knowledge when expressing their opinions and thoughts. 

Methodology

IV. RESULTS
Gender-biased Words
? The contexts of the noun phrase Korean women, seem to share certain similarity in terms of characterizing Korean women
1. The noun phrase “Korean women” are in the negative context.
2. Korean women is the pomps and vanity of this wicked world.

V. CONCLUSION
Discussion
? ESL writers' writing samples through the corpus-based text analysis method.
? The ESL used the pronoun they almost equally frequently for both cases of referring to Korean people and American people.
? The ESL writers used the pronoun they when the writers describe something negative aspects of the Korean culture, on the other hand, pronoun we is used in positive aspects.
? The writers exclusively rely on the verb think to express their opinions or thoughts, which shows that the ESL writers have limited vocabulary knowledge in expressing their thoughts and experiences in such a writing genre.
? The analysis of unusually high frequency and keyness score of the word women revealed that the ESL writers used the word when referring to Korean women.

V. CONCLUSION
Implications for Teaching ESL Writing
? ESL writers' writing texts are affected by the essay prompts, especially for the word usage
? It is found that ESL writers texts contain words that are underused and overused words compared to the native speakers' writing texts.
?when the ESL writers tried to use the words productively in writing, the words did not seem to come easy to the ESL writers.
? ESL writers word usage also revealed that the Korean writers may be subject to gender-biased examples. (The word Korean women is used a lot more than Korean men) 

V. CONCLUSION
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
? There was limited access to data for the analysis.
? The writers may have used more examples of Korean culture than American culture in their written comparisons because of lack of cultural         experience of America.
? the ESL writers may be gender-biased in selecting examples in the cultural expository essay.

VI. Sum-up (Opinion)
Based on the research, ESL writer has repetitive patterns when it comes to writing by using certain pronoun, noun in a sentence.
ESL writers tend to write based on their own cultural mindset. ? Understanding English as English itself, not even thinking of converting it into Korea way of thing is the right way to create decent writings.
ESL writers have simple patterns to express their own opinions by using such as verb think, by reading English newspaper, especially
opinion column, we can widen a range of expression to show what kind of opinion we want to show in writings.