A Corpus-Based Comparative Study Of Connectives In English Argumentative Essays By Chinese And Native College Students

Connectives usually play an indispensible part in creating a composition.To a considerable extent, the way Chinese students learn to use connectives in English writing is to imitate how native writers use such words in their own writing. In consideration of this, it is absolutely necessary to obtain some comprehensive information about native writers' way of using connectives.The present thesis makes an all-around contrast in terms of connectives between Chinese English major students (CEMSs) and native college students (NCSs) with the aim of finding some differences and exploring the reasons so as to enlighten the present instruction of English as a foreign language (EFL) writing.This thesis employs a corpus-based method to conduct a research consisting of four branch studies. The four contrasts are made in respect of the quantitative dimensions, register, syntax and the actual use of connectives between Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (WECCL) and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS).Such theories as Contrast Analysis (CA), Contrast Interlanguage Analysis (CIA), Language Transfer, Discourse Analysis (DA) and Error Analysis (EA) are applied accordingly to explain the findings in combination with quantitative or qualitative analysis.The first contrast reveals that CEMSs use significantly more connectives than NCSs in respect of types and tokens. The reasons why there are some connectives solely used in WECCL are explored. The other quantitative dimensions also show that there are striking differences between the two corpora. The contrast of the register of connectives shows that the total number of connectives with spoken feature in WECCL is relatively larger than that in LOCNESS.The reasons for the findings are also explored:teachers or textbooks' insufficient instruction, students'judgement of the register of connectives by intuition and the developmental factor in the process from interlanguage to target language can partly account for the findings.Another contrast finds that CEMSs prefer to put connectives in the sentence-initial position, whereas NCSs place connectives in a more flexible way. This study discusses the findings from the respect of language transfer. It is quantitatively proved that the transfer of LI leads to CEMSs'preference to put connectives in such a particular position.The last contrast observes that some connectives are overused in WECCL.Such overused connectives are located and that the formulaic writing models, the similar way of giving assignments and the different preference of using cohesive devices can account for the overuse. There are also many cases of problematic use of connectives in WECCL with some individual connectives having a even higher error rate. This study finds that unfamiliarity with the usage of connectives, negligence of the subtle differences between connectives and Chinese thinking model contribute to the problematic use.