Use of If-Conditionals in Korean EFL Learners’ Prepared Oral English Presentation Scripts

This study aimed to examine how Korean EFL learners use conditional if-clauses in written scripts prepared for oral presentation, focusing on their overall frequency, position relative to the main clause, and possible differences across English proficiency levels. The findings showed that initial-position conditional if-clauses predominated in the corpus, representing 78.8% of all instances. Although the normalized frequency increased gradually from the low to the high proficiency group, no statistically significant proficiency-related difference was found in either the overall frequency or positional distribution of conditional if-clauses. The predominance of initial if-clauses is broadly compatible with the previous accounts that preposed conditional clauses may provide a conceptual or discourse framework for the following main proposition. However, because discourse functions were not independently measured, this interpretation should be regarded as a possible effect rather than as a directly demonstrated function of the clauses. These findings describe patterns in prepared presentation scripts, and further research is needed to determine whether similar patterns occur in other contexts.