| Writing has always been the research focus of second language acquisition(SLA).The ability of writing is one of the important evaluation criteria to second language(L2)learners' language level.Keywords,which play a pivotal role in theme expression,should be given more focus.In recent years,studies of keywords concentrate on various fields,including news,travel notes,etc.Other studies explore L2 learners' use of keywords in the aspects of listening and speaking.However,few studies concentrate on features of keywords used by L2 learners in writing.There is also a lack in comparative studies on the use of keywords in compositions written by L2 learners and native speakers.Considering the importance of keywords in writing and limitations of the previous research,this study takes Sino-American college students' compositions in the Program of "Cross-Pacific Exchange" as the observation corpora.The Chinese Students' Compositions in Cross-Pacific Exchange corpus(CSCCPE)consists of 308 passages from students in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(GDUFS)and the American Students' compositions in Cross-Pacific Exchange corpus(ASCCPE)consists of 171 passages from students in the Pennsylvania State University(PSU).By comparing the quantitative features of keywords in two corpora from number and frequency as well as their distributive features from dispersion,this study aims to answer the following research questions:(1)How adequately can Chinese and American college students use keywords while writing?(2)What similarities and differences are there in frequency of keywords in Chinese and American college students' compositions?(3)What similarities and differences are there in the distribution of keywords in Chinese and American college students' compositions?Study results show that:(1)No keyword can be found in 35 Chinese college students' compositions,which takes 11.4%in all the 308 texts and 12 compositions by American college students have no keyword,taking 7%in the whole 171 compositions.Obviously,American students' awareness of adopting keywords in writing is better than Chinese students.However,both of them can be improved.Besides,most Chinese students'compositions have 1 to 3 keywords(231 compositions,taking 75.1%of all the 308 texts)while most American students' compositions have 2-5 keywords(126 compositions,taking 73.7%of all the 171 texts).Since the proper number of keywords in an individual text should be 3 to 5,both Chinese and American college students fail to use keywords adequately while writing,but number of keywords used by American college students is obviously more reasonable.(2)The mean frequency of the majority of compositions in CSCCPE is from 6 to 13(taking 65.9%in all 273 compositions which have keywords),but that in ASCCPE is from 5 to 11(taking 54.7%in all 159 compositions).Comparatively,keywords in Chinese students' compositions are of higher frequency than in American students' compositions.Nevertheless,22%of American students' compositions have their keywords repeated more than 20 times but the percentage in Chinese students'compositions is 6.6%.Apparently,more individual differences of the frequency of keywords are seen in American students.(3)No extreme cases,in which the dispersion value of keywords is from 0 to 0.2,are found in two observation corpora.85.3%of Chinese students' compositions and 85.6%of American students' compositions have the dispersion value from 0.5 to 0.8.In reference to the distributive feature of keywords,there is no significant difference between Sino-American college students' compositions.Both Chinese and American students tend to make keywords uniformly distributed in the text while writing.Major findings of this study give some implications to English teaching in China.By introducing the definition,function,reasonable number and distribution of keywords in class,the English teachers can improve L2 learners' ability of using keywords to enhance the theme-prominence of compositions. |
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