Corpus-based Study On Opening Sentential Adverbials In Chinese English Learners' Argumentative Writing

English adverbials which are adverbs, adverbial phrases or adverbial clauses give us additional information about the time, place, reason or manner of the action described in the rest of the sentence. In English, adverbials are the most flexible part among all six sentence elements and can be placed at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a sentence. The most common position for English adverbials is at the end of the sentence. Chinese adverbials which are nouns, adverbs and phrases also answer the questions of"when","where","why"and"how"in the sentence. But it is different in position of adverbials: Chinese adverbials are usually put sentence-initially or medially, seldom at final position.With the help of corpus analysis software, this study proposes to undertake a complete survey regarding characteristics of using sentence-initial adverbials in starting an essay based on Chinese English learners'and native speakers'corpora: Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (WECCL) and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). It is found that Chinese English learners tend to place adverbials at the beginning of opening sentences in argumentative essays, compared to native students– The percentage of opening sentential adverbials in WECCL is twice as high as it is in LOCNESS. In addition, Chinese English learners overuse the opening sentential adverbials related to Chinese meaning"现在","随着…发展", especially the seldom-found adverb"NOWADAYS"in large British and American corpora, as sentence-initial adverbials to start an essay, which is thought to be odd and is not used by native speakers. English-speaking people tend to present their idea directly and confidently.Why do Chinese English learners have such a tendency in writing argumentation? According to Kaplan's study (1966), English thinking pattern is "linear", so English-speaking people usually present the subject of sentence first, give straightforward statement of the theme, and then explain the background for discussion whereas Chinese tend to turn around the topic, introduce the background and do not present the theme directly because Chinese mode of thinking is spiral type. So Chinese idiom "wen si kan shan bu xi ping" (Writing is like enjoying the view of mountains: flatness is not appreciated. Instead it should be full of twists, turns, ups and downs.) is a typical Chinese rhetoric model and has also become a standard measure of literary grace. However, at the beginning of the article, Chinese often like to introduce background first, especially the current situation, and then slowly raise the subject. In addition, different thinking patterns also have effects on syntactic structure. English discourses and sentences are usually front-weight while Chinese discourses and sentences are end-weight. Therefore, according to the results of the study, Chinese tendencies of using sentence-initial adverbials in opening sentences reflects the effects of Chinese thinking patterns.