The Effect of Instructional Order on the L2 Acquisition of the Korean Imperfective Aspect

It has been widely observed that in the L2 acquisition of aspect, progressive/imperfective marking is acquired earlier with activity verbs than with achievement verbs (the Aspect Hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). This pattern has been seen repeatedly in Japanese -te i(e.g., Shirai & Kurono, 1998), and in -ko issand -a issin L2 Korean (e.g., Lee & Kim, 2007). However, Ishida (2004) found her L2 Japanese learners used -te imore accurately as a resultative marker than as a progressive marker, contr -te ilong before the progressive -te iwas introduced, which suggests that instructional variables have a strong effect on acquisition. This study tests whether or not the instructional order influences the acquisition of the Korean imperfective aspect. In L2 Korean acquisition, Lee and Kim (2007) and Ryu et al.(2008), found that the progressive -ko isswas acquired earlier than the resultative -ko iss-/-a iss-. We examined the pedagogical conditions of Japanese learners in Ryu et al. (2008) and those of English learners reported in Lee and Kim (2007) by analyzing the textbooks used and found that both groups of learners were introduced to the progressive -ko issfirst (first-year Korean), with the resultative -a issbeing introduced later (second-year Korean). Since this instructional order was used in both situations, it is not improbable that the progressive was acquired earlier than the resultative simply because the progressive was introduced earlier than the resultative. Thus, further study on the relationship between acquisition order and instruction order was required.