| Connectives play an essential role in the discourse as cohesive ties. However, a number of studies have shown that language learners, especially foreign language learners, tend to over/under use or misuse connectives. Previous studies on connectives are mainly concentrated on the use of connectives in written discourse, but few have been carried out to investigate Chinese EFL learners'use of connectives in spoken discourse. This thesis employs a corpus-based approach and carries out a comprehensive contrastive interlanguage analysis of Chinese EFL learners of English major's use of connectives in written and spoken discourse. Through comparison, the differences and similarities of the use of connectives in the written and spoken discourse are explored. Our main purpose is to provide an understanding of the normative use of connectives as demonstrated in native speakers'writings and conversation. The study explores the following questions:(1) What are the differences in the use of English connectives between Chinese EFL learners of English major and native English speakers in their written discourse?a. Do Chinese EFL learners use connectives to the same extent as native English speakers?b. Do they use their connectives to express the same semantic relations as native speakers?c. Do they place them in the same positions as native English speakers?d. What are the most frequently used connectives in NNS corpus and NS corpus respectively?e. What are the overused and underused connectives by the Chinese EFL learners compared with the NS of English? (2) What are the differences in the use of English connectives between Chinese EFL learners of English major and native English speakers in their spoken discourse?a. Do Chinese EFL learners use connectives to the same extent as native English speakers?b. Do they use their connectives to express the same semantic relations as native speakers?c. What are the most frequently used connectives in NNS corpus and NS corpus respectively?d. What are the overused and underused connectives by the Chinese EFL learners compared with the NS of English?(3) Do Chinese EFL learners of English major demonstrate a similar pattern of writing-speaking difference as the NSs do in the use of connectives?This research uses four corpora as the data sources: NNWC, NNSC, NWC and NSC. The former two comes from the sub-corpora of Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL), while the latter two is composed of the sub-corpora of British National Corpus (BNC). First, the author drew from the above resources the four corpora used in the research. Then the author classified the connectives into eight semantic types and listed all the connectives which would be investigated in the present study. Next, with the help of AntConc software and BNC online search service, the author examined the frequencies of each connective in the four corpora respectively. At the same time, the actual context, in which each connective occurs, was also carefully examined. The cases of non-connectives were eliminated and the multifunctional connectives were differentiated. After that, the statistical findings were collected for various analytical purposes mentioned above. Finally, the author sought appropriate interpretations for the results. The major findings of the study include: (1) The Chinese EFL learners of English major display a great tendency to overuse connectives in their English writings in terms of total tokens. The frequency of each semantic type shows the distribution of different semantic types is almost the same in the two written corpora. We may say that Chinese EFL learners of English major have internalized the essence of argumentation in English writings. However, Chinese EFL learners greatly overused the listing and resultive connectives. This may be attributed to the writing handbooks'and teachers'instruction and the learners'L1 transfer. Both groups of writers frequently use roughly the same connectives. However, it seems that Chinese EFL learners use those connectives more frequently than native English speakers. It shows that the learners lack sensitivity to the variety of connectives. At the same time, we may say that the learner avoid using the connectives they are not familiar with, and Chinese EFL learners tend to avoid formal connectives and replace them by less formal ones. It indicates that the learners seem to lack the stylistic and register awareness. The learners'underuse of certain corroboration connectives may be explained as the learners'lack of audience awareness. By examining the position of connectives in the sentence, we find that the learners'positional tendencies are basically in accordance with their counterparts, though they tend to put more connectives in the sentence initial position.(2) From the overall frequencies of the connectives used in the two spoken corpora, we find that Chinese EFL learners of English major tend to underuse connectives in contrast to English native speakers. The frequency of each semantic type in the two spoken corpora shows that the distribution of different semantic types displays great difference between the two groups. This indicates that the learners don't clearly know the features typical of the speaking register. They tend to overuse listing and resultive connectives, as used in the written corpora. The underused connectives are mainly confined to corroboration and transitional categories. The underuse of transitional connectives is due to the underuse of the discourse markers like"well"and"now". This obviously shows insufficient knowledge and pragmatic incompetence of Chinese EFL learners. With comparison of the top ten connectives in the two spoken corpora, we find that eight are identical. It means that both groups frequently use roughly the same connectives. However, the learners seem to use the top ten connectives more frequently than the English NSs.(3) Chinese EFL learners of English major demonstrate a different pattern of writing-speaking difference as the NSs do in the use of connectives: they tend to use more connectives in their writing than they do in their speaking; conversely, NSs use more connectives in their speaking than they do in their writing. This result shows that Chinese EFL learners don't clearly know the writing-speaking difference in the use of connectives. They need to develop the knowledge about how those connectives are typically used in the different registers.The present study can shed light on the features characteristic of Chinese EFL learners in their use of connectives in written and spoken discourse to help raise both teachers'and learners'awareness of the value of connectives in English. Furthermore, it can help establish a corpus-based approach that can be extended to the studies of other linguistic phenomena. |
