Priming effects in simple sentences with verb bias on Korean EFL learners' proficiency

Abstract

The study aims to explore whether there is priming effects in simple sentences with verb bias on Korean EFL learners and find out how the effects of EFL learners react differently along their proficiency. Especially, experiment in this research is set in comprehension because there is temporary ambiguity caused by mismatches in structure expected by verb bias. To investigate the priming effects of those sentences in reading comprehension, prime and target sentences are designed with biases with verbs and with verbs without biases presented by self-paced reading. If priming effect is robust, it will dominate the structure in target despite the neutral property of verbs in target, thus reading comprehension will be speeded up. Also, the proficiency of participants will be reanalyzed to further examine the structural priming at different stages of learning.