A Text-based genre analysis of Korean academic texts for teaching Korean academic writing to foreign learners

Abstract

This is an attempt to analyse Korean academic texts to formulate efficient approaches for teaching Korean academic writing with a consideration on the current circumstances of teaching Korean as a foreign language in Korea. As the number of foreign learners who are learning the Korean language for academic purposes has significantly increased, it becomes necessary to investigate specific features of Korean academic texts and apply the features to the real context of teaching Korean writing, to satisfy the current Korean language learners’ academic needs. Thus, this dissertation has analysed 16 Korean abstracts from postgraduate dissertations written by 16 native speakers of Korean to explore specific features of Korean academic texts. Through the analysis, the researcher discovered that Korean abstracts as examples of Korean academic genres don’t follow the four-part pattern, kisung- chon-kyul, asserted by Eggington (1987). In contrast, they have a three-part pattern (1) purpose (2) summary of structure (3) conclusion, or a four-part pattern adding ‘background of the study’ to the three-part pattern. Moreover, the results have shown that Korean academic texts are rather direct and explicit when making a comparison between the structures of Korean abstracts and a CARS model which was suggested by Swales (1990b). After the analysis, a teaching model of Korean academic writing that was developed and applied in the real context of teaching Korean, is also discussed. Consequently, it is essential for Korean language learners to have a clear awareness about the way of using the different conventional patterns of organization to write successful academic texts in Korean. For this reason, Korean language teachers and researchers should pay more attention to the text-based genre analyses on Korean academic texts for efficient teaching of Korean academic writing to the learners.