English L1-Korean L2 learners’ cognitive knowledge and difficulty of grammatical error items

摘要

This study examines the level of difficulty of the high frequency error items as perceived by English L1 learners of Korean as foreign or second language (KFL/KSL) by looking into the level of their cognitive knowledge and how they rate the question items that involve high frequency error. The study conducts a survey on the students’ cognitive knowledge and the perceived difficulty on high frequency grammatical error items. The analysis shows that there are general correlations in some grammatical items between the high frequency error items and the level of cognitive knowledge of the items, and between the level of their knowledge and the perceived difficulty. However, the high frequency grammatical error items did not always represent the level of students’ cognitive knowledge or the level of perceived difficulty of the items. The study confirms the likely high difficulty grammatical items that were supported by error rates, the self-perceived ratings and the question items involved.