An eye-tracking analysis of EFL learners’ processing of grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement

The current study investigates how Korean learners of English process sentences involving subject–verb agreement, depending on whether they are grammatical or ungrammatical. The processing patterns were examined using an eye-tracking approach. Thirty-six Korean learners of English participated in the experiment. The target structures were two types with grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in subject-verb agreement in English. Eye-tracking data were analyzed across three areas of interest (AOIs): the NP1 and NP2 regions for subjects and the verb region. The results indicated that EFL learners exhibited distinct reading patterns for grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement sentences.