A Comparative Study Of Connectors In English M.A. Theses By Chinese And American Students

As English academic writing has become one of the most important ways for academic communication both abroad and at home, the ability to write academic articles effectively in English is a prerequisite for Chinese students, especially those majoring in English. As an important part of academic writing, the writing of M. A. theses has aroused a great deal of attention in EFL writing teaching research field.One of the most significant ways to achieve cohesion and coherence in academic writing is to use connectors which "enable the speakers to organize what he is saying in such a way that it makes sense in the context and fulfills its function as a message"(Halliday&Hasan,2001). However, the use of connectors in English writing has been problematic for English language learners for a long time, especially for foreign language learners. Research at home and abroad shed some light on the use of connectors in learners’ writing in school or examinations, but few studies have been carried out to investigate the use of connectors in academic writing, particularly for Chinese advanced English learners. Due to that fact, this thesis compares the use of connectors in M. A. theses written by Chinese English-major postgraduates with those by American English-major postgraduates.On the basis of theoretical framework of Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, this thesis, by adopting a quantitative and qualitative approach, aims to provide detailed information of the use of connectors in the M. A. theses written by Chinese English-major postgraduates, especially in the following four aspects:overall tendency of connectors, distributions of semantic categories, positions of connectors and the use of individual connectors, in comparison with the M. A. theses written by American English-major postgraduates.Differences in the use of connectors between M. A. theses written by Chinese postgraduates and American postgraduates are shown in this thesis. Compared with American students, Chinese students tend to use more connectors than American students, and Chinese students have a tendency to use more appositive and causal/resultive connectors than American students but fewer contrastivc connectors. In addition, Chinese students lack the awareness of using connectors in a flexible position. As for the individual connector, both Chinese and American students rely heavily on the top ten connectors in their M. A. theses, and19overused connectors and10underused connectors have been found in the M. A. theses written by Chinese students. The possible explanations for these results have all been explored from several perspectives, which include the overgeneralization of the target language learned, typical model of Chinese English-teaching, insufficient knowledge of semantic restrictions on the use of connectors and so on.This thesis has great pedagogical significance for the teaching of English academic writing in China, and it is also very helpful for Chinese English learners to use connectors appropriately in academic writing.