A Corpus-based Study On The Use Ofconnectives In Senior Three Students Ofenglish Writing

Based on the theory of cohesion and coherence of Halliday and Hassan,taking the English native language student corpus as the reference,this study uses corpus research method to investigate the use of connectives in English writing of senior three students in Xiushan,Chongqing.This paper focuses on the unreasonable use of connectives by senior three students in this school and the differences between high and low grouping students in the use of connectives.The main purpose is to help people understand the use of connectives in the writing of senior three students,and to provide some enlightenment for English teaching and learning.The auther collected 180 English compositions of three large examinations of senior students of Zhongqing Xiushan Senior Middle School,which were divided into three level(A,B,C)according to their composition score,to set up a closed small corpus.Meanwhile,36 argumentative papers were randomly selected from the English writing of American senior high school students as reference corpus,then use corpus retrieval software AntConc3.5.7 to retrieve the 62 English conneectives used by the school's senior three students in their writing,and make a comparative analysis with the native speakers' essay corpus.In addition,use Excel software to organize the statistical data.Finally,a combination of quantitative and qualitative research method is used to analyze the use of connecting words in the writing of the school's senior students.The paper attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What is the overall overview of the use of connectives in English writing by the school's senior three students compared to native English learners(distribution,frequency,characteristics)?(2)What are the functions of the 3 connectives that are most frequently used in students' English writing?(3)Is there any unreasonable use of connectives in English writing for senior three students in this school?(4)What is the difference between the use of connectives in high-grade English composition and in low-grade English compositions in the school? The results areas follows:(1)The overall frequency of connectives by the school's senior three students is the same as native English speakers.The frequency of reference and purpose connectives is comparable to that of native speakers.The frequencies of addition,exemplification,concession,time,transition are much lower than that of native,while conflict/contrast,cause/result,condition,logical sequence,summation are used more frequently than native speakers.The 6 most frequently used 10 connectives of the school's senior students and native speakers were the same,namely and,if,also,because(of),but,when.(2)Two kinds of students have certain characteristics in using connectives,and tend to use the additional and sequential connectives,and the use of transitional and causal connectives are relatively few.The connectives that by they use have four types and 12 sub-categories with a variety of characteristics.The most frequently used in their writing are addition,and far more than the other three types of connectives.(3)The author analyzes the pragmatic functions of and,so,but,which are the most frequently used by students in their writing.For example,and has the function of cohesion,constructing text,adding information and transforming turn.So identifies results and topic connections,and but has the function of presenting ideas,comparing,realizing transition or concession,and adding information.These functions of connectives can help students to better organize the cohesion of the text and the construction of the writing content.(4)Inappropriate use of connectives exists among English writing of senior three students in Xiushan,ChongqingEnglish,such as the misuse of connectives,overuse of connectives and the absence of connectives.(5)The number,type and frequency of connectives used in high gouping English composition and low grouping English composition are different,and the former is more than the latter in number,type and frequency.Based on the conclusion,the author puts forward some enlightenments and suggestions to educators,learners and researchers.Finally,the limitations of this paper are discussed: the number of composition samples is not large;there is no questionnaire survey.