A Corpus-based Study Of Evaluative Adjectives In Chinese EFL Learners' Thesis Writing

Evaluative adjectives(abbreviated as EAs afterwards)are a frequently occurring linguistic realization of evaluation and have a strong interpersonal dimension:they reveal much of the speaker/writer's attitude toward the textual content and are widely used to persuade the reader that the research topic is significant,methodology reliable and results valid.However,few studies have explored learner use of evaluative adjectives in their academic English writing.The present study conducted a corpus-based comparative study between expert writers and Chinese BA,MA and PhD students,aiming to describe overall features of Chinese EFL learners' use of EAs modifying general academic nouns.The study mainly has the following findings.First,in terms of overall frequency,Chinese students use significantly more EAs than expert writers do.In terms of the categorization of EAs,no significant difference is seen in the use of axiological EAs between Chinese students and expert writers,but Chinese students tend to overuse non-axio logical EAs,including EAs of comparison,importance,completeness,novelty and complexity,which seemingly shows that Chinese students tend to over-emphasize the research topic is significant,methodology reliable and results valid.Both Chinese students and expert writers use the relatively objective non-axiological EAs more frequently including EAs of comparison,importance and degree.However,they use the relatively subjective non-axio logical EAs less frequently,including EAs of rationality,novelty,obviousness and complexity.Second,in terms of collocation,while there is almost no difference in the number of frequently-used collocations between Chinese students and expert writers,the difference remains in specific use.This difference seems to indicate that student writers are less skillful than expert writers in the way of establishing their own research status and save face.Third,as to the cross-sectional features of EAs,the frequency of EAs increases enormously from BA to MA theses,and decreases slightly from MA to PhD theses,with PhD students resembling expert writers most.The present corpus-based empirical study proves the significance of using EAs in academic writing and provides implications for academic writing pedagogy.It is critical for academic writers to evaluate properly with EAs modifying general academic nouns.They need to be equipped with the full awareness of the subjectivity and objectivity of EAs and understand the specific context to which academic nouns belong.Also with such awareness,teachers can provide ample examples of context-specific use of EAs and so students could possibly improve their ability to use EAs in their academic writing.