A Contrastive Study Of Adversative Linking Adverbials By Chinese EFL Learners

In the study of linking adverbials,we need to make sure whether their use is affected by the learners' L1 background,or simply universal of learners.Therefore,this paper takes adversative linking adverbials as research focus adopting the CIA approach and attempts to find out the using features of Chinese EFL learners.The research questions are as follows:(1)What differences exist in the use of adversative linking adverbials between Chinese EFL learners and EFL learners with other L1 backgrounds?(2)What characterize Chinese EFL learners' use of adversative linking adverbials in terms of their writing proficiency? The corpus selected in this article is ETS,and the following conclusions are obtained using corpus research methods such as concordance analysis,significant difference test,correspondence analysis and so on.Firstly,Chinese EFL learners differ from French and Arabic EFL learners in the use of adversative linking adverbial.Overall frequency: Chinese EFL learners use more frequently,French learners the less,and Arabic learners the least.Specific adversative linking adverbials: Chinese EFL learners use more however,instead and in/by contrast and use less on the other hand than French and Arabic EFL learners.Richness: the richness of adversative linking adverbials is generally low.Position: EFL learners tend to use the initial position of the sentence,using less in the middle position of the sentence,and end of the position the least.Secondly,Chinese EFL learner' usage of adversative linking adverbials are characterized of high frequency but with low richness.However is the most used adversative linking adverbials,but the using position is not flexible enough and there are many misuses.Thirdly,in Chinese EFL learners' writing,high grade learners use more frequency and more variety of adversative linking adverbials.It has been expected that the above research results can throw some light on English teaching at large and instruction of English writing in particular.