Compare accuracy, fluency and complexity

Sophia and Anna B are in the same Korean language class, but the proficiency profiles of these two learners seem to be quite different. Sophia sounds more confident and fluent in speaking Korean than Anna B. Whereas Sophia makes eye contact with the interviewer and responds spontaneously, Anna B takes longer pauses, has less eye contact, and uses many interjections. Sophia appears to be more accurate than Anna B as well. In the excerpt, Sophia does not use wrong case markers, but just omits them. She mostly responds with shorter sentences that leave out subjects or objects. Although Anna B uses erroneous case markers and predicate conjugations, she actually produces longer sentences than Sophia. In terms of complexity, Anna B uses more complex Korean than Sophia using connective endings such as ‘-는데’ and ‘-고’ . In contrast, Sophia uses simple sentences and connective adverbs, ‘하지만’ and ‘왜냐하면’ instead of connective endings. Thus, Sophia is more fluent and more accurate than Anna B, but Anna B produces more complex Korean sentences than Sophia does.

These differences in the two learners’ language use appear to be related to their learning experiences. Sophia was exposed to Korean speaking environments for two years in Korea, and might be more familiar with informal and natural conversation situations. She may have learned simpler Korean syntax that is appropriate to those situations. On the other hand, Anna B has never been to Korea, but only learned and practiced Korean with her fellow students in the classroom where natural and spontaneous conversations rarely happen. Thus, Anna B’s utterances sound more like written language, containing more complex sentence structures.