A Study On The Development Of Logical Connectors In Junior High School Students’ English Writing

Writing,as an indispensable component of students’ language competency of language key competency,reflects students’ comprehensive ability.Logical connectors,as signals for cohesion,will ultimately lead to text coherence.The use of logical connectors is deemed as a good indicator of the quality of writing and has drawn much attention from linguistic researchers.Despite an extensive corpus of research on the difference between non-native speakers and native speakers or students of different proficiency levels,there is relatively little systematic exploration of the developmental changes in the use of logical connectors and limited attempts to describe the development.Moreover,existing studies mainly select graduates and undergraduates as participants.This study aims to look into the developmental changes in the use of logical connectors by 139 junior high school students in two and a half years’ period.Based on cohesion theory and error analysis,this study aims to explore the developmental changes as well as misuses in the use of additive connectors,adversative connectors,causal connectors and sequential connectors by junior high school students.This study mainly focuses on two questions:(1)What are the developmental changes in the use of logical connectors in English writing by junior high school students?(2)What are the misuses of the logical connectors in English writing by junior high school students?The major findings of the study are as follows:(1)Firstly,all the four types of logical connectors show a non-linear development filled with ups and downs.The moving trajectory of additive connectors takes on a similar moving pattern to the letter "W".The moving trajectory of adversative connectors and sequential connectors share a similar pattern,which displays a continuous increase from the first exam to the fourth exam and a gentle drop in the last exam.And for the causal connectors,a gentle increase is detected from the first exam to the second exam.After a slight drop in the third exam,there is a sharp increase in the fourth exam and then a slight increase again in the last exam.Secondly,junior high school students have the awareness to use logical connectors to signal the logical-semantic relation in the writing.While a large disparity exists in the types of logical connectors as well as in individual connectors used in the writing.Additive connectors rank at top among the four types,its proportion declines across the five exams.Writing by eighth and ninth graders shows a higher proportion of adversative,causal,and sequential connectors than do that by seventh graders.Both the density and variation of logical connectors increase in the writing.The results also show that junior high school students rely more heavily on a limited set of logical connectors.(2)On the quantitative dimension,student writers are found to overuse certain connectors.Additionally,certain connectors are used inappropriately across the five exams,including spelling errors,grammatical errors,and logical-semantic errors.