Oh, Sun-Young. (2009). Korean college students' use of English demonstratives in argumentative essays. English Teaching, 64(1), 51-78. The present study examines the Korean college students' use of English demonstratives in argumentative essays through a comparison with that of native speakers. The results of the quantitative analysis indicate that overall learners underuse demonstratives compared to the native speakers. More specific quantitative differences include: the learners' greater

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... dence on the distal (as opposed to proximal) demonstratives, underuse of this/those as a pronoun and of these as a determiner, and overuse of that as a pronoun, when compared with the native norm. The qualitative analysis reveals several interesting findings such as fewer instances of text reference and the limited type and variety of nouns and modifiers that co-occur with demonstratives in learner essays. These findings are discussed in terms of the rhetorical significance of demonstrative choice in persuasive argumentation, the transfer of spoken characteristics to a written register and the native language transfer. Despite the occasional better performance of the higher level learners than the lower level learners, the two groups are found to generally belong together. This suggests that the native-like use of the demonstratives is not automatically achieved with the increase of the general language proficiency. Some important pedagogical implications are drawn from these results.