부가의문문에 관한 연구

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the type and frequency distribution of tag questions in Middle School English textbooks and to check how properly future-English teachers use them and to help them learn and teach techniques of tag questions in English. For this purpose, first, 30 Middle School English textbooks were analyzed according to the frequency and variety form of tag questions. The detailed results of the study are summarized in the following paragraph. From 30 Middle School English textbooks, 171 tag question sentences were found. Among them 91% of all the sentences were contrasting polarity tag questions and only 9% matching polarity, which were all imperative sentences. It was also found that more than half of the sentences were used with auxiliary verbs 57%. With the tense, most of the sentences, 85% were present tense, followed by past tense 15%. 91%, almost all sentences were predicate, and the rest 9% were imperative sentences. There were no exclamatory sentences, compound sentences either. The most frequently used subjects of tag questions were 'you', 52% and there occurred no‘I’. With the results above, it was found that there were not many sentences with tag questions in the textbooks and the focus was on the simple grammatical form of tag questions. Moreover, the tag questions were not of various types and occurred in the practice drill or short conversations, not in the full context and all tag questions were practiced only by the normative grammar. Second, a survey was conducted with 41 prospective-English teachers, majoring in English Education in a graduate school to investigate their knowledge and use of tag questions. The findings showed that many of them didn't fully understand the tag questions and usually used them according to the normative grammar. The study, therefore, suggests that English textbooks should contain more various and practical types of tag questions in the full context to help Korean students learn and use them in real communication. Furthermore, Korean English teachers need to make an effort to acquire the correct knowledge of tag questions to teach proper use of tag questions in real life.