부산대학교 도서관

The purpose of this study is to find out what kinds of verbs learners found most difficult to use precisely among factive and non-factive verbs and to suggest teaching strategies that will help them to use those confusing verbs correctly. A factive verb is the verb that presupposes the truth of an embedded clause and a non-factive verb takes as its complement a proposition which is concerned with the belief rather than the truth. In this study, nine confusing verbs were selected among two kinds of verbs. To distinguish between factive and non-factive verbs, semantically similar verbs, ‘point out’ and ‘say’, were selected and another pair, ‘show’ and ‘suggest’, was chosen. To distinguish among non-factive verbs, semantically comparable verbs, ‘claim’, ‘insist’ and ‘argue’, were chosen and another pair, ‘doubt’ and ‘suspect’, was selected. The research questions are as follows. First, among factive and non-factive verbs which frequently confuse students, what kind of verbs do they find more difficult to use correctly? Second, what are the teaching strategies to help students use those confusing verbs precisely? To achieve the purpose of this study, the quantitative research was carried out. In the research, 172 university students answered the questions, consisting of two parts, the first part asking their English education background and the second part asking them to select a more plausible choice between two confusing ones. The subjects’ responses to the questionnaire were processed by Winsteps, which is normally used for Rasch modeling of dichotomous data (Linacre, 2009). The findings of the study are the following: 1) Between factive and non-factive verbs, participants were better at distinguishing factive verbs ‘show’ and ‘point out’. They might be aware of a semantic element [know] or [believe+FACT], which appears commonly in both verbs. 2) Between non-factive verbs, ‘claim’ and ‘insist’, subjects found ‘insist’ easier to use correctly. It could be due to a Korean translation of the verb ‘insist’, ‘우기다’, which is quite similar to its lexical elements. Also, it seems that participants were not aware of a [NON-EVIDENT] lexical element included in the verb ‘claim’. 3) Between non-factive verbs, ‘suspect’ and ‘doubt’, participants considered ‘doubt’ easier to use precisely. It might also be related to a Korean translation of these words, ‘의심하다’, which reflects well the true meaning of the verb ‘doubt’, but fails to show the true meaning of the verb ‘suspect’. These findings provide the following implications: 1) When teaching non-factive verbs, ‘suggest’ and ‘say’, it should be emphasized that they cannot take as its complements the propositions which prove to be true but those which are based on one’s belief. Especially, when we compare between ‘suggest’ and ‘show’, which has a [SUPPORT] element, it might be helpful to highlight a [NOT CERTAIN] element in the verb ‘suggest’. 2) When teaching about the verb ‘claim’, the focus should be on its [NON-EVIDENT] element, which means that ‘claim’ comes with the statement not proved yet. With this semantic element reflected, it is recommended to teach the verb ‘claim’ as ‘아마 ~일거라고 모른다고 주장하다’ than just ‘주장하다’ in Korean. Finally, in the case of the verb ‘suspect’, a [believe] element should be considered. Since it implies believing the proposition of its complement, it might be better to teach the verb ‘suspect’ as ‘~일거라고 생각하다’ than ‘의심하다’ in Korean.