A Corpus-based Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Use Of First Person Subject Pronouns In Their Argumentative Writings

This study investigates Chinese English majors' use of first person subjectpronouns in their argumentative writings by describing the general characteristics of theuse of first person subject pronouns and exploring the changes in the use of first personsubject pronouns along with L2 development.The materials employed in the present study were taken from "The Written EnglishCorpus of Chinese Learners", known as WECCL, with 90 argumentative compositionsby the EFL learners of three different groups, i.e. Grade-One, Grade-Two andGrade-Three tertiary-level students. The data analysis generated the following majorfindings:Firstly, the statistical calculation reveals first person plural pronoun "we" is usedmore frequently than its singular counterpart "I", suggesting that first person pluralpronoun is the learners' first choice in fulfilling the major functions of the first personpronouns.Secondly, either "I" or "we" followed by present-tense-verbs enjoys a much higherpercentage than by past-tense-verbs, indicating that the learners are more likely todescribe habitual actions and states or their positions and opinions in argumentativewritings. Comparatively, first person singular pronoun tends to be followed by thepast-tense-verbs and first person plural pronoun followed by present-tense-verbs, whichimplies that the learners choose to use "I" while describing past specific actions orevents and use "we" while describing their habitual actions and/or states or presentingtheir opinions and positions.Thirdly, cross-group comparisons show that the overall frequency of first personsubject pronouns steadily decreases along with L2 development, in which "we" is found to be less frequently used, while "I" is found to be higher in the frequency withGrade-Two learners' use accounts for the highest percentage. These two tendencies maymost probably be related to their language proficiency since the use of "I" in growingnumbers requires the learners' detailed description of past specific actions or stateswhile "we" is more associated with the general description of habitual actions or states,or with the presentation of the writers' positions or opinions, which also explains why"we" is more frequently used.Of the three grades, Grade-Two learners use present-tense-verbs least frequentlyand past-tense-verbs most frequently following either "I" or "we", indicating that theirdescription of personal experience is "past-action-oriented" in the illustration of orelaboration on the writers' points. Such a tendency is probably a consequence of theregular writing training they have received in this grade.The findings yielded from data analysis may have a few pedagogical implications.Firstly, L2 learners may be confused about the distinctive linguistic features of differentwriting styles; the findings from this study may help L2 instructors with a morecomprehensible understanding of L2 learners' writings. Secondly, L2 learners may notacquire the necessary knowledge of the highlighted characteristics of argumentation,such as the objective or impersonal perspective of expressing arguments or opinions.Thirdly, L2 learners may misuse or overuse such items as first person pronouns in theirwritings which would otherwise be used in oral communication. Therefore, the learners'awareness should be raised of the demarcation between writings and utterances.