A Corpus-based Study Of The Logical Connectors In Chinese EFL Argumentative Writing

A series of recent reports on corpus linguistics suggest that “ESL/EFL writing”may be the area where modern corpus studies can make some significantcontributions. It is possible and necessary for us in the field of EFL teaching havesomething to gain by appling some typical techniques of corpus linguistics to thestudy of the logical connectors in English writing. The objective of the current studyhere is to determine how EFL teachers extract some useful empirical data from thelearner corpora.Three following hypotheses have been proposed at the beginning of the study:1.Chinese EFL learners use more certain logical connectors than native speakers2.Chinese EFL learners “overuse” logical connectors of all kinds.3. the transfer ofmother tongue directly leads to the “misuse” of Chinese EFL learners.The required data were supplied from three corpora that is a native student’scorpus, one part of LOCNESS corpus; an academic corpus of18published articles onsome famous periodicals; and a learner corpus,350argumentative essays inSWECCL.Data comparison and analysis, discussion and research findings show that theusage of logical connectors in Chinese EFL learners’ writing displays some features asfollows:1. As compared with native speakers, Chinese EFL learners use more logicalconnectors.2. Though different logical connectors are used, they are not abundant.3.Logical connectors used by Chinese EFL learners are only simple and high frequencywords. The more complicated logical connectors are not used.4. Chinese EFLlearners have little awareness of register.The result of Chi-Square Calculator shows that Chinese students overuse totally10logical connectors:“and, but, or, for example, at least, in fact, in addition, forinstance, however, because”. This result is consistent with some findings in ChristineNg’s, Liu’s and Braine’s study. In addition, the overuse of logical connectors “but”and “in fact” also overlapped in Bolton’s and Chen’s study.The overuse of logical connectors in Chinese EFL learners’ English essays is acommon feature among many relative studies in this field. Moreover, the overuse of additive logical connectors has been frequently reported in a large number of studies,in contrast with the overuse of other types of logical connectors. However, such resultcannot reflect the good command of these types of logical connectors by Chineselearners. In fact, it shows that Chinese EFL learners cannot skillfully use a variety oflogical connectors.The conclusion of overuse of logical connectors in Chinese EFL learners’ Englishessays confirms the first hypothesis in the beginning of the study, namely, ChineseEFL learners use more certain logical connectors than native speakers. However, theresult of the study does not show that Chinese college students overuse logicalconnectors of all kinds. The relevant data of this study indicate that Chinese collegestudents only overuse the logical connectors in the category of “addition”. Noevidence, however, shows the overuse of “causal” or “temporal” logical connectors,two other categories classified by Halliday accordingly. Consequently, the secondhypothesis is rejected. As compared with native English speakers, Chinese EFLlearners do not overuse logical connectors of all kinds.In reference to native academic writings, the ‘misuse’ of some logical connectors,such as “and, but, finally, actually, in fact, moreover”, has been analyzed thoroughlyon theoretical basis of functional linguistics, cohesion and coherence theoriesframework. Thus, four causes that lead to the ‘misuse’ have been identified: i. themisleading of some textbooks; ii. the uncertainty of ‘register’; iii. the influence ofnegative transfer; iv. the mode of thinking of Chinese people. Moreover, the thirdhypothesis is also rejected being lack of enough evidence.At the end of the study, some findings have shown that(1) The Chinese freshmen of English majors in this study tend to use moreparticular logical connectors as compared with native English students and Englishwriters.(2) The transfer of mother tongue is not the only and radical reason that gives riseto the “misuse” of Chinese EFL learners.(3) Chinese EFL learners in this study have little stylistic awareness in writing butthey are not clear about register.(4) This study shows that Chinese college students’ English writings are greatlyinfluenced by Chinese thinking mode.(5) Data analysis and discussion in this study show that cohesion theory and relevant theories of Halliday’s functional linguistics can not fully explain the“misuse” problem of Chinese EFL learners.A number of suggestions are proposed in pedagogy, teaching methods andtextbooks. There are no exceptions in this study for its limits and deficiencies: thecorpus used in this study has deficiencies in corpus equivalence; the process andanalysis of data is not enough because of some limitation of the softwares adopted inthis study.The author proposes prospects for the follow-up research: there should beobservation of Chinese EFL learners’ English writing and their Chinese writingaccordingly in the future.