A Corpus-Based Study Of Adverbial Connectors In The Chinese English Major Undergraduates' Academic Writings

This study conducted a contrastive study on the adverbial connectors in the academic writings written by the English major undergraduate learners at Nanjing Agricultural University and native English speakers.The present study explores the following questions:(1) Do Chinese English major undergraduate learners use adverbial connectors to the same extent as native English writers in terms of overall frequencies? If not, what is the general tendency in their use?(2) Do they use adverbial connectors to express the same semantic relations as native English writers?(3) What are the top ten most frequently used individual items employed by Chinese English major undergraduate learners and native English writers respectively? Is there any difference? Are there any connectors exclusive to Chinese English major undergraduate learners or to native English speaker writers among the top ten connectors?(4) What are the overused and underused items by Chinese English major undergraduate learners compared with native English speakers?(5) What are the possible causes that underlie the Chinese English major undergraduate learners' use of adverbial connectors?To answer these questions, we adopted the methodology of corpus-based analysis and Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) and used two corpora: native English speaker corpus (Corpus 1), and Chinese English major undergraduates Corpus (Corpus 2). We conducted contrastive studies on the adverbial connectors in the two corpora. First, we constructed two computerized corpora of academic writings: one containing the authentic native English speakers' writing and the other containing the Chinese English major undergraduates' writings for qualitative and quantitative researches. Then we determined the search items. Next, by making full use of a powerful corpus processing package Wordsmith Tools, all the search items with their actual context underwent careful examination. After that, statistical findings were collected for various analytical purposes mentioned above. Moreover, Chi-square test was used to test the observed differences. Finally, the statistical findings were analyzed and discussed.The major findings of the study include:(1) The Chinese English major undergraduate learners have displayed a general tendency to use more connectors in their academic writings.(2) Though there is a general overuse of other six semantic categories of adverbial connectors, the category of corroborative connectors is found to be underused by the Chinese English major undergraduate learners.(3) The Chinese English major undergraduate learners and the native English speakers have shown great tendency of similarity in the use of the top ten most frequently used individual items, although their rank order differs somewhat.(4) A Chi-square test demonstrates that the Chinese English major undergraduate learners display a stronger tendency in employing the adverbial connectors of enumeration and addition and result/inference, while they tend to use fewer contrastive/concessive adverbial connectors.(5) The Chinese English major undergraduate learners' use of some adverbial connectors might be explained as a result of teachers' instruction, the influence of the Chinese mode of thinking, Chinese learners' lack of stylistic awareness, audience awareness and sentential relationships awareness, as well as individual's author's style in choosing certain connectors.