The purpose of the current study was to analyze Korean college students’ English writing corpus focusing on the use of connectors. The participants were six students out of 24 students who took the Intermediate English Composition 1 in a local university in Busan during the semester 1 of 2020. For the research method, the authors interviewed the volunteered students using the structural interview with eight questions. The findings of the study are as follows: First, 21.1% of the participants experienced difficulties in maintaining coherence across sentences or across paragraphs using English connectors. Next, regarding how they learned to use English connectors in their compositions, they answered in a variety of ways: A few practiced the use of English connectors through CLOZE test-like exercises, while the rest of them were taught to write sentences or essays with connectors and to correct the misused connectors. Half of them mentioned that they improved both their writing skills and the use of connectors as they wrote more essays in English. In addition, four students pointed out the importance of studying connectors and two students did not. Lastly, although two participants did not feel the necessity of studying connectors, one interviewee admitted that she overused ‘and’ and learning about the use of various connectors gave positive effects to her essay writings. The findings will shed light on how writing instructors understand Korean college students’ difficulties and find ways to better teach the use of connectors in their English writing. (243 words)

Taehee Kim is a doctoral student at Pukyong National University, Korea. Her research interests include ELT methodology and corpus linguistics. She has taught English from elementary school children to secondary school students. Ms. Kim can be contacted at 0218kth@hanmail.net.

Mae-Ran Park is a professor at Pukyong National University, Korea. Her research interests include ELT methodology, materials development, and professional development. She is a former president of Pan Korea English Teachers Association (PKETA). Dr. Park obtained her master’s degree in TESL and Ph. D. in Education from the University of Illinois-Urbana, U.S. She was a visiting scholar at Ritsumeikan University, Japan in 1995 and at Harvard University, U.S. in 2006. She has given numerous presentations in Japan, Australia, Malaysia, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, China, Russia, Indonesia, Macao, and U.S. She serves as the committee chair for the elementary school English textbook authorization in Korea. She can be contacted at mrpark@pknu.ac.kr.