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Soook Kwon

Pohang University of Science and Technology · Arts and Humanities

About the Lab

Professor Soook Kwon's research lab specializes in second language acquisition, with a focus on L2 syntactic development, reading strategy instruction, and L1 transfer in L2 writing and discourse. The lab investigates how learners' first language (particularly Korean) influences their use of complex sentence structures such as adverbial and relative clauses, as well as their avoidance of phrasal verbs. A key research direction involves examining the impact of explicit reading strategy instruction on metacognitive awareness and academic reading performance among EFL learners, particularly in university-level content areas. The lab also explores innovative pedagogical approaches, such as flipped classroom models, to enhance learner engagement and autonomy in EFL contexts.

L2 acquisitionreading strategiessyntactic transferEFL learningflipped classroom

Research Overview

Papers
52
Total Citations
93
Papers (5y)
22
Primary Field
Arts and Humanities

Research Output Trend

Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.

Publications per year (5y)
22total
2017
2018
2019
2021
2023
Citations per year (5y)
5total
20172018201920212023

Selected Papers

15
1
Article|12 citations·2008
A Corpus-based Analysis of the Ordering of Main and Adverbial Clauses in Korean Learners of English
권수옥

This paper reports the result of a corpus analysis of the ordering distribution of English main and adverbial clauses used by Korean learners of English. In English, adverbial clauses can both precede and follow the main clause, but in Korean, they must precede the main clause. To investigate whether L1 (Korean) distributional pattern of main and adverbial clauses influences the use of L2 (English) adverbial clauses, three semantically different adverbial clauses (e.g., conditional, temporal, an

2
Article|11 citations·2009
Explicit Instruction Does Affect the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies for EFL Readers
권수옥

This study examines whether explicit reading strategy instruction has a significant effect in invoking foreign language learners' metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies when reading for academic purposes in English. Using MARSI (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002), an instrument designed to measure the metacognitive reading strategies as an assessment tool, 60 Korean EFL university students completed a pre-survey before instruction and a post-survey after instruction. The results

3
Article|6 citations·2009
읽기책략 사용과 메타인지적(metacognitive) 의식: 영어전공자와 공학전공자를 중심으로
권수옥

The present study examines whether significant differences exist between two groups of foreign language learners with different fields of study (i.e., English majors vs. Engineering majors) in invoking their metacognitive awareness and perceived use of reading strategies when reading for academic purposes in English. Using an instrument designed to measure the metacognitive reading strategies, 50 English majoring and 58 Engineering majoring university students completed a survey. Results showed

4
Article|5 citations·2005
Subject Gaps are Really Easier than Object Gaps: A Sentence Processing Study
권수옥

This study investigates subject/object asymmetry in the processing of relative clauses in Korean. One way to account for the difference is the linear distance account, suggesting that object relatives (Orels) have more difficulty to process (Hawkins, 1989; Tarallo & Myhill, 1983). Another account is in terms of the depth-of-embedding of the gap (Hamilton, 1995; O'Grady, 1999). It indicates that Orels are more deeply embedded than subject relatives (Srels) structurally, causing more difficulty in

5
Article|5 citations·2006
Avoidance of Phrasal Verbs by Korean EFL Learners
권수옥

Soo-Ok Kweon. 2006. Avoidance of Phrasal Verbs by Korean EFL Learners. Studies in Modern Grammar 45, 175-197. This paper investigates the avoidance of phrasal verbs by Korean learners of English. Two groups of Korean EFL learners (advanced and intermediate) participated in two tests (multiple choice test and translation test) with two types of phrasal verbs (figurative and literal). Fifteen native speakers of English served as a control group. Korean EFL learners exhibited different phrasal verb

6
Article|4 citations·2017
플립 러닝이 문학작품을 이용한 영어교육에 미치는 효과
권수옥

Flipping the classroom has got attention as an innovative teaching method that emphasizes student-centered learning in various fields of subject across different levels of education. This study shows the effects of flipped learning using literature to engineering majors at a university. Students in a flipped learning (FL) class watched a video material related to the content of the novel as a flipped learning process and prepared for particular roles for various class discussion activities befor

7
Article|3 citations·2016
Thinking for Speaking in Motion Event Descriptions by Korean-English Bilinguals
권수옥

This study investigated how Talmy’s typological framework and Slobin’s (1996) ‘thinking for speaking’ hypothesis affect Korean-English bilinguals’ verbal expression of the motion events in L1 and L2. Based on the cross-linguistic differences in conflation of motion between English and Korean, this study determines whether and how monolingual English speakers and bilinguals (Korean L1, English L2) who reside in the USA differ in the lexicalization of motion events in L1 and L2. The bilingual spea

8
Article|3 citations·2015
Lexical Sensitivity in Processing Syntactic Ambiguity by Korean Learners of English
권수옥

This study investigates whether Korean leaners of L2 English are sensitive to lexicalsemantic information while processing temporarily ambiguous sentences in which the antecedents for the RCs were complex NPs linked by either the genitive preposition of or the thematic preposition with, (i.e., whether L2 learners can distinguish between these two prepositions in terms of the different thematic role assignments associated with them). A questionnaire task and a self-paced reading experiment were u

9
Article|2 citations·2009
Resolving PP Attachment Ambiguity in Lexically-Biased Constructions in L2 Sentence Processing
권수옥

This study investigates the processing of sentences that contain locally ambiguous prepositional phrases (PP) in the VP-NP-PP construction, in which the PP can ambiguously be attached to either the VP or the NP. The subcategorization information of verbs was manipulated by using ditransitive verbs (two complements-DT), and transitive verbs (one complement-TR). While phrase-structure processing model predicts VP-attachment preference in both DT and TR constructions, lexical processing model predi

10
Article|1 citations·2015
Syntactic Priming and Lexical Effects in Producing English Dative Constructions by Korean Speakers
권수옥

This study uses a sentence recall task to investigate syntactic priming effects in English prepositional object dative (PO) or double-object dative (DO) structures by Korean speakers of L2 English. The purposes were (1) to determine whether syntactic priming occurs during L2 production, and if it does, then to determine how it affects the subsequent utterance of target structures; and (2) to determine whether syntactic priming during production is lexically specific or independent. Thirty-two se

11
Article|1 citations·2017
L1/L2 Influence in the Interpretation of Pronouns
권수옥

This paper examines the putative universality of the Overt Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti, 1984) postulated for pro-drop languages by observing the interpretational status of overt and null pronouns in the context of quantified antecedents that contrasts between Korean (pro-drop language) and English (non pro-drop language). In pro-drop languages, an overt pronoun cannot have a bound variable interpretation when the antecedent is a quantified NP (e.g., everyone, someone). Twenty three Kor

12
Article|1 citations·2010
Exploring Reading-Writing Connections Based on Source Texts in an L2 Context
권수옥

The current study examines reading and writing connections based on source texts in an EFL context and reveals that students’ cumulative reading experience enhances writing proficiency. Ten university students who were taking a reading course were asked to write essays on assigned topics related to the themes of the four novels they read in the class both before (pre-reading writing) and after reading (post-reading writing) each novel. Students’ writings were graded on vocabulary, content, gramm

13
Article|1 citations·2015
Processing Strategies of Relative Clause Attachment in Korean as a Second Language
권수옥

This study investigates whether L2 learners employ similar processing strategies as native speakers when disambiguating attachment of a relative clause (RC) in Korean as a second language (KSL). Different processing strategies were tested with temporarily ambiguous sentences containing RCs when the head NP is a complex NP (NP1 of NP2), in which either NP1 (low attachment, LA) or NP2 (high attachment, HA) can be an antecedent. The RCs were controlled for length (short vs. long) and position-sente

15
Article|0 citations·2018
A Sentence Processing Study on the Subject/Object Asymmetries of Relative Clauses in Korean
권수옥
Open Access System for Information Sharing (Pohang University of Science and Technology)
Artificial IntelligenceComputer Science

Research Areas

Language and LinguisticsDevelopmental and Educational PsychologyArtificial IntelligenceExperimental and Cognitive PsychologyInformation SystemsLiterature and Literary Theory

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