the use of conjunctive adverbials in the academic papers of advances taiwanese learners

The use of conjunctive adverbials in theacademic papers of advanced TaiwaneseEFL learners

Cheryl Wei-yu ChenNational Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

The current study explores the use of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in twocorpora compiled by the author. The learner corpus consists of 23 finalpapers contributed by 10 MA TESOL students from Taiwan while thecontrol corpus contains 10 journal articles from two prestige internationalTESOL journals. On the quantitative dimension, student writers were foundto slightly overuse connectors when the analysis was based on word-levelAdditionally, the qualitative analysis revealed that certain CAs (e.g. besides,therefore) were used inappropriately by some of the learners. The paper endswith several teaching suggestions on how to help student writers master thecomplex system of conjunctive adverbials in English.

Keywords: conjunctive adverbials, corpus-based study, academic writing,advanced EEL learners

1. Introduction

This corpus-based study' offers a quantitative and qualitative account on theuse of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in the writing of advanced EFL learners inTaiwan. On the quantitative dimension, all the CAs extracted from the writ-ing of advanced EFL learners are compared to those extracted from publishedjournal articles; the aim is to generalize the overall usage pattern of the twogroups. As for the qualitative analysis, the researcher probes into the use ofspecific CAs by the learner group (e.g. besides, therefore) to illustrate that somelogical connectors may have been used inappropriately even by English learn-ers at a very advanced level.

The organization of this paper is as follows. First, literature related toCAs as cohesive ties will be briefly reviewed; a taxonomy of CAs will also be

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics i i : i (2006), 113-130.ISSN 1384-6655 / E-ISSN 1569-9811 John Benjamins Publishing Company

114 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

presented and later used as the benchmark for identifying the CAs in the twosets of writing samples. Next, several corpus-based studies on learner connec-tor usage will also be reviewed. The next section is the study itself, followedby several teaching suggestions on how to help learners master the complexsystem of CAs.

2. Background

2.1 Conjunctive adverbials as cohesive ties

The 1976 publication of Halliday and Hasans Cohesion in English has stimu-lated much interest in the study of cohesion and coherence. One type of com-monly-used cohesive devices is logical connectors. Defined by Celce-Murciaand Larsen-Freeman (1999), they are "lexical expressions that may add littleor no propositional content by themselves but they serve to specify the rela-tionships among sentences in oral or written discourse, thereby leading tbelistener/reader to the feeling tbat the sentences 'hang together' or make sense"(1999:519). In other words, if placed appropriately, logical connectors shouldfunction as signposts, guiding the listener/reader through the discourse. Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman classified these cohesive devices into three types coordinating conjunctions (e.g. but, and, or), adverbial subordinators (e.g.because, though and if), and conjunctive adverbials (e.g. therefore, however andthus). The focus of this paper is on the third type of logical connectors con-junctive adverbials.

As for the different types of CAs, tbe author of this paper adopts Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman's simplified version (1999) of Halliday and Hasan's(1976) four-way classification which divides conjunctions into the followingfour types: additive, adversative, causal and temporal. The following is a list ofall tbe CAs used in tbis study:

1. Additiveemphatic: in addition, additionally, moreover, further, furthermore, besides,also, in fact, at the same timeappositional: that is, that is to say, in other words, for instance/examplecomparative: likewise, similarly

2. Adversativeproper adversative: however, nevertheless, nonetheless, despite this, in(by)contrast

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 115

contrastive: conversely, in fact, on the other hand, at the same time, in themeantime, meanwhile, otherwisecorrection: instead, rather, on the contrary, at leastdismissal: in any case/event, anyhow, at any rate

3. Causalgeneral causal: therefore, consequently, for that reason, thus, as a result (con-sequence), hence, thereby, accordingly, in consequencecausal conditional: then, in that case, in turn

4. Temporalsequential: then, in turn, next, first, second, third, fourth (fifth..), first of all,firstly (secondly...), last, finally, later, initiallysummarizing: in short, in summary, in brief, in sum, in conclusion, to sumup, to conclude, to summarize, overall, all in all

Most of the above CAs were taken directly from Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman's list (1999: 530; see Appendix A for their original list). CAs whichwere not on the original list but were identified in tbe writing samples werelater added to the list. It is hoped tbat such a list can provide a reliable bench-mark which is less arbitrary in nature and presents a more realistic picture ofhow these connectors are actually used in academic writings.

After a quick scan at the above list, readers may find that some commonly-used connectors (e.g. and, but, yet, because, so) are not included. These con-nectors are important cohesive ties, and they have been under investigationin many previous connector studies (see below). However, Celce-Murcia andLarsen-Freeman categorize and, but and yet as coordinating conjunctions andbecause and 50 as adverbial subordinators, and consequently these items willnot be investigated in the current study.

In summary, conjunctive adverbial is a means to build coherence in a text.Tbis section explicates the properties of CAs so tbat the scope of the currentinvestigation is well-defined. Next, a brief review of some recent corpus-basedconnector studies will be presented.

2.2 Previous corpus-based connector studies

The following four corpus-based connector studies will be reviewed in this sec-tion Milton and Tsang (1993), Cranger and Tyson (1996), Altenberg andTapper (1998) and Bolton et al (2002).

Milton and Tsang (1993) compared Hong Kong students' use of logicalconnectors in a 4-million-word learner corpus with that of the Brown and

ii6 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

LOB Corpora. They identified an overuse pattern of an entire range of logicalconnectors in students' writing samples; the top ten overused connectors werelastly, besides, moreover, secondly, firstly, consequently, furthermore, regarding,therefore and namely (1993:226-27). In addition to this quantification, a quali-tative analysis of two specific connectors, moreover and therefore, suggestedthat students had two kinds of difficulty regarding the use of connectors re-dundant use (the logical connector is not necessary and its presence does notcontribute to the overall coherence of the writing) and misuse (tbe use of acertain logical connector is misleading). In order to correct what tbey calledthe "discourse-marker overkill" phenomenon (ibid.:234), the researchers con-tended tbat teachers of writing need to work on raising learners' sensitivity ofthe use of connectors in compositions. More specifically, students need to learnthat these connectors should not merely play an ornamental role in their writ-ing; instead, when selecting wbich connectors should be used, students needto go tbrough a careful thought process to ensure the logic ofthe arguments isenhanced, not hampered, by the use of these linking devices.

The second relevant study was conducted by Granger and Tyson (1996).In this study, connector usage was investigated by comparing the 89,918-wordFrench sub-corpus of the ICLE with a comparable 77,723-word native corpuscalled the Louvain Corpus of Native Essay Writing (LOCNESS). Tbe autbors'hypothesis was that the French learners overuse connectors in their essays. Tbequantitative analysis did not support the initial hypothesis, as tbe total numberof connectors per 100,000 words was 1,085 for tbe learner corpus and 1,178 fortbe native one. However, a more detailed qualitative investigation portrayed arather different picture. Based on such analysis. Granger and Tyson were ableto identify tbe connectors which were underused by tbe French learners, e.g.however, therefore and thus. At the same time, some connectors were overusedby the learners, e.g. moreover, for instance and on the contrary. As for misuse,the researchers stated that learners are often insensitive to tbe "stylistic restric-tions" of certain connectors (Granger & Tyson 1996:23). An example is the"colloquial-marked" use of anyway found in one of tbe essays in tbe learnercorpus. It is suggested that more emphasis should be put on matters of style inwriting classes.

The third study under review in this section is Altenberg and Tapper (1998).For the learner corpus, the authors selected 86 untimed essays (totaling about50,000 words) from tbe Swedish component of the ICLE. Tbis set of data wasthen compared to a native English control corpus, consisting of 70 essays (alsototaling about 50,000 words) by juniors and seniors at tbe University of Surrey,England. The authors' general assumption was that "advanced Swedish learners


of English tend to underuse conjuncts in their written English" (Altenberg &Tapper 1998:83). This impression was supported by the overall frequencies ofconjuncts computed for the two corpora: the Swedish learners used fewer con-juncts in tbeir writing than the native students (72 vs. 95 examples per 10,000words). Like the two aforementioned studies, a more detailed investigation wasalso carried out to determine the use of individual conjuncts. It was foundthat some conjuncts were overused (e.g. moreover, for instance and on the con-trary) and some were underused (e.g. hence, therefore, thus and however) by theSwedish learners.

Altenberg and Tapper took a step further by comparing tbe above usagepattern of tbe Swedish students with the result from Granger and Tyson's 1996study. They found that when compared to the French learners, tbe Swedishunderused conjuncts to a great extent (1,085 vs. 722 tokens/100,000 words). Asfor the use of individual conjuncts, the two groups of learners, with few excep-tions, shared a highly comparable profile of overuse and underuse. With regardto the Swedish group, the authors suggested tbat the underuse of resultive andcontrastive conjuncts is because the students "prefer less formal connectors(e.g. but) to the formal alternatives" (Altenberg & Tapper 1998:91) in their ar-gumentative or expository writing. According to the authors, many Swedishlearners are not aware ofthe fact that these less formal conjuncts are not alwaysappropriate in academic writing. Therefore, a teaching suggestion is that teach-ers sbould work more on raising students' sensitivity to register distinctions inthe target language.

To the author's knowledge, the most recently published corpus-based con-nector study is Bolton et al (2002). After a comprehensive review of previousresearch, Bolton et al pointed out three methodological issues which deserveresearchers' attention. Tbe first one is "the identification of linguistic items asconnectors" (ibid.:171). By this, they referred to the fact that many previousstudies simply adopted the existing frameworks/classifications of connectors(e.g. Halliday & Hasan 1976 and Quirk et al 1985) without questioning theirsuitability. Tbeir response to tbis problem is that instead of using any ready-made framework as the benchmark, they made a list of all tbe connectorsfound in their control corpus, a subset of published academic writing in theBritish component of tbe International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). Tbe resultwas a list of 54 connectors, with no further classification of different types.

The author of the current study agrees with Bolton et al tbat the identi-fication of connectors should not be regarded as uncontroversial and givenand that a more realistic list of connectors would improve the accuracy of theanalysis. However, instead of completely abandoning tbe existing frameworks.

ii8 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

it was decided that the simplified version of Halliday and Hasan's original clas-sification (1976) by Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999; Appendix A)would be used as the basis for this study. Although it was developed almostthree decades ago, Halliday and Hasan's classification of conjuncts is the cata-lyst wbich has triggered many interests in the study of cohesion and coherence.Indeed, tbeir framework still forms the base of many recent investigations oncohesive ties (e.g. Chang 1997). Therefore, a modified version of Halliday andHasan's framework is used in this study. In order to ensure tbe comprehensive-ness ofthe list, as explained earlier, CAs whicb were not on tbe original list butwere identified during data processing were also added to the list.

Tbe second methodological issue raised by Bolton et al is tbe calculation ofratio of frequency. According to tbem, most ofthe previous corpus-based stud-ies adopted a word-based calculation. For example, Milton and Tsang (1993)calculated tbe ratio of occurrence by dividing the total number of words in acorpus with the number of identified connectors. Anotber widely-used word-based calculation metbod is that of presenting the ratio of frequency in termsof tbe number of connectors per 10,000 or 100,000 words; this method was em-ployed in Granger and Tyson (1996) and Altenberg and Tapper (1998). Boltonet al criticized these word-based methods as "fundamentally flawed" (2002:172)because connectors function as cobesive ties at tbe sentential level and beyond.Therefore, they suggested that sentence, not word, sbould be tbe basic unitfor analysis. However, as pointed out by one reviewer of the earlier versionof this paper, both the word- and sentence-based approacbes are reasonablebecause CAs can also be used in non-finite, dependent clauses. Therefore, torigorously test the overuse hypothesis (see below), tbe ratio of occurrence willbe presented in two ways: frequency per 10,000 words and per 1,000 sentences.Differences between the two sets of results, if any, will also be noted.

In addition to tbe two aforementioned methodological problems, Boltonet al criticized the use of general corpora (e.g. Brown and LOB) and writingsof native students as the target model for non-native undergraduate students.They contended that "a better set of control data would be provided by a cor-pus of published academic writing in English" (2002:173) because the best tar-get model for academic writing would be those whicb were already published.Based on this reason, the researchers compiled a control corpus consisting of"40 samples, taken from academic papers and books across a range of disci-plines, published between 1990 and 1993 inclusively" (ibid.:173). Like Bolton etal's study, efforts were also made to ensure the suitability and comparability ofthe control corpus in this study. Specifically, since learners in this study are first-and second-year students in a MA TESOL program, a suitable target model


for them would be academic papers already published in well-known English-language, TESOL-related international journals. Because no such ready-madecorpus is currently available, tbe author bad to compile a control corpus to beused in this study. It should be noted that the aforementioned control corpus ofBolton et al's study is not a good candidate for the current study because as stat-ed by the authors, it consists of academic writings from a range of disciplines.The purpose ofthe current study is narrower in scope in that it aims to comparetbe use of conjunctive adverbials in two sets of TESOL-related writing.

With regard to the study itself, Bolton et al (2002) compared connectorusage in three sets of data part of the Hong Kong component of the Inter-national Corpus of English (ICE-HK), tbe corresponding data from tbe Brit-ish component of ICE (ICE-GB), and a subset of published academic writingtaken from ICE-GB. In other words, the writing by undergraduate students inHong Kong and Britain were compared to that of accomplished writers. Theresults indicated that both groups of students sbowed a pattern of overuse intheir writing. However, this overuse was much greater on the part of HongKong students, as they used more than twice more connectors than profes-sional writers. The top five overused connectors by the Hong Kong studentswere 50, and, also, thus and but. The ranking was somewhat different for theBritish students: however, so, therefore, thus and furthermore.

To sum up, this section offers a review on four corpus-based studies onconnectors. Bolton et al (2002) is of special interest because ofthe three meth-odological issues they raised. Responding to these important issues, measuresare taken in the current study to ensure a more accurate analysis and interpre-tation ofthe results. Next is the study itself.

3. The current study

The purpose of tbe study is to investigate the use of CAs in academic writingby first- and second-year students in a MA TESOL program in Taiwan. Thehypothesis is that the Taiwanese learners would overuse CAs in their essaywriting. One reason for formulating this overuse hypothesis is that as a teacherof writing, the author often identifies an overuse pattern of CAs in students'writing. In addition to this impressionistic account, several Hong Kong-basedstudies (Crewe 1990; Field & Yip 1992; Milton & Tsang 1993 and Bolton et al2002) bave indicated tbat Chinese students tend to overuse a wide range ofconnectors. Therefore, it is bypothesized that tbe Taiwanese students in thecurrent study overused CAs as well.

12O Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

The significance of tbis study is at least two-fold. First of all, to the author'sknowledge, tbis is the first systematic, corpus-based connector study on thewriting of master students in Taiwan. It is hoped that the results of this studywill sbed some light on the everlasting cohesion and coherence problems inEFL/ESL writing. Secondly, the insights gained from the quantitative and qual-itative analysis can provide English teachers with a better idea on what needs tobe done in order to belp learners make better use of conjunctive adverbials.

4. Methodology and Results

4.1 Data collection and analysis

The learner corpus consists of 23 final papers contributed by 10 MA TESOLstudents from the English Department of a prestige university in Taiwan. Allthe writers are non-native speakers of English wbo passed a very competitiveentrance exam to become students in tbe master program. As for tbe genresof the final papers, there are 4 diary studies, 6 literature reviews, 4 researchproposals, 1 research article and 8 pedagogical "how-to" papers. Meanwhile,the control corpus contains 10 journal articles from Studies in Second LanguageAcquisition (published in 2000 and 2001) and 6 from Reading in a Eoreign Lan-guage (published in 2002 and 2003). Appendix B gives a list of all the papersused to compile the control corpus.

All the tables, figures, charts, end/footnotes, references and appendices ineach writing were excluded in word and sentence count performed by Micro-soft Word. As a result, tbe total word count for the learner corpus is 78,630 and120,909 for the control corpus. With regard to sentence count it is 3,732 and4,611 respectively.

All the CAs were manually extracted from the corpora. In order to ensureall tbe CAs were identified, the concordancing function of WordSmitb Version4 (downloaded from bttp://www.lexically.net) was used to verify tbe results ofmanual extraction. All the extracted CAs were tben classified according to tbeframework discussed earlier.

4.2 Results

A total of 617 and 871 CAs were identified in tbe learner and reference corporarespectively. Table 1 presents the percentage of each type of CA found in thetwo corpora.


Table 1. Percentage use of CAs by category

AdditiveAdversativeCausalTemporal

Learner Corpus33.8%20.6%24.0%21.6%

Reference Corpus30.9%37.0%18.9%13.2%

As can be seen from Table 1, the advanced EFL writers in the current studyused additive CAs most often (33.8%), while the professional writers most fre-quently used the CAs in the adversative category (37%).

As for the use of individual CAs, Table 2 shows a list of the top most fre-quently used CAs in the two corpora, with their raw frequencies (the figuresin parentheses) and their frequencies per sentence (multiplied by 1,000 toeliminate very low figures). As stated earlier, the total sentence number for thelearner corpus is 3,732 and 4,611 for the reference one.

Overall, the top ten most frequently used CAs account for 65% (403/617X 100% = 65%) of all the CAs used in the learner corpus and 67% (583/871

Table 2. The top 10 most frequently used CAs

Rank12

3

45678

9

10

Learner CorpusCA

howevertherefore

for instance/examplethusmoreover

besidesalsofirst

then (tempo-ral)in addition

F.P.S."20.620.4

14.7

13.76.76.76.76.7

6.4

5.4

R.F.''(77)(76)

(55)

(51)(25)(25)(25)(25)

(24)

(20)

(403)

%'12.5%12.3%

8.9%

8.3%4.1%4.1%4.1%4.1%

3.9%

3.2%

65%

Rank12

3

45678

9

10

Ref. CorpusCAhoweverfor instance /examplethus

thereforethat isfurther-morethen (causal)in fact (addi-tive)in other words

on the otherhand

F.RS.^50.113.7

13.4

9.38.77.86.76.3

5.2

5.2

R.F.'^(231)(63)

(62)

(43)(40)(36)(31)(29)

(24)

(24)

(583)

%'^26.5%7.2%

7.1%

4.9%4.6%4.1%3.6%3.3%

2.8%

2.8%

67%" Frequency per 1000 sentences'' Raw frequency' % ofthe overall CAs used


Table 3. Overall frequencies of CA usage (1)

Corpus size in wordsNumber of CAsCAs/10,000 words

Learner Corpus78,63061778

Table 4. Overall frequencies of CA usage (2)

Corpus size in sentencesNumber of CAsCAs/1,000 sentences

Learner Corpus3,732617165

Reference Corpus120,90987172

Reference Corpus4,611871189

X 100% = 67%) in the reference corpus. In other words, the top ten most fre-quently used CAs account for approximately two-thirds of all the CAs used inthe two sets of writing. This shows that both groups of writers rely heavily on arather small set of connectors in their writing.

The adversative CA however is the most frequently used CA in the two cor-pora. This high frequency of use is especially noticeable in the reference corpuswhere however occurs 50.1 times per 1,000 sentences and accounts for 26.5%of all the 871 CAs used in the reference corpus. The ranking for the top fourfrequently used CAs from both groups is fairly similar however, therefore, forinstance/example and thus for the learner corpus, and however, for instance/ex-ample, thus, and therefore for the reference corpus.

To test the overuse hypothesis stated earlier, i.e. the Taiwanese learnerswould overuse CAs in their essay writing, the overall frequencies of CA usage(in terms of 10,000 words and 1,000 sentences) are calculated. The results canbe seen in Table 3 and 4.

Results from Table 3 indicate that learners use slightly more CAs than pro-fessional writers do (78 vs. 72). On the other hand, results from Table 4 do notsupport the overuse hypothesis the writers in the reference corpus mademore use of CAs (189 per 1,000 sentences) than the EFL learners (165 per1,000 sentences).

5. Discussion

As can be seen from Table 3 and 4, different approaches used to calculate thefrequency of CAs yield different results. Results from the word-based analysissupport the overuse hypothesis while those from the sentence-based approach


do not. Because learners wrote much shorter sentences than professional writ-ers did (21 words vs. 26 words per sentence), using sentences as the basis foranalysis, as suggested by one reviewer, puts a particular spin on the results. Inother words, professional writers in the current study probably needed to usemore CAs because they wrote longer and more complex sentences. To arriveat a more holistic description of the connector usage, both word- and sen-tence-based analysis need to be included, and the general syntactic features(i.e. syntactic complexity) deserve more attentions. It is possible that if a differ-ent method of analysis were applied to the data ofthe earlier connector studiesdiscussed in the review section, a different usage pattern could have emerged.

Another important methodological issue is the size of corpora. Althoughthe current learner corpus is bigger than those used in some previous corpus-based studies (e.g. Altenberg & Tapper 1998), it consists of only 23 essays con-tributed by 10 graduate students. For a study of individual words, the corporaare indeed quite small. It is possible that with another group of learners whohave different personal preference of connectors and writing styles or who arerequired to write on different topics, the analysis would yield different results.While it is not the author's intention to claim that the results ofthe study can begeneralized to many populations, the 10 student writers do represent some ofthe very advanced EFL learners in Taiwan. A careful analysis of their writingsis not only of research interest, but also of pedagogical importance.

Among the use of CAs, of particular interest is that oi besides by the learn-ers in this study. As shown in Table 2, it is the sixth most frequently used con-nector by the learners, occurring 6.7 times per 1,000 sentences. In fact, it isused by seven ofthe ten students who contributed their essays for analysis. Onthe contrary, besides is not used at all by the professional writers. Examples ofthe use of besides by student writers can be found in the following excerpts:

(1) learner corpus writing # 20Language is for communication. There are different communicative actsin different situations. Besides, everyone has his/her personal style of usinglanguage. As a result, there should be no fixed expression in a particularcircumstance.

(2) learner corpus writing # 5Academically, in Burroughs and Tezer's research, the low achieverscomplain about the use of poor teaching methods and techniques, andalso they become apathetic about their lack of accomplishment. Besides,teachers tend to take their duties less seriously, and their teaching tends todisintegrate (1968).


The above use of besides adheres to Frodesen and Eyrings definition for em-phatic connectors which signal "not only that (what I just said), but also this(what I am saying now)" (2000: 203). With the use of besides, the writers ofexample (1) and (2) attempted to add new information to what has been previ-ously stated.

Two Hong Kong-based studies also address the use of besides in studentwriting. As discussed earlier, Milton and Tsang (1993) found that next to lastly,besides is the most overused connector by university students in the HKUSTLearner's Corpus. Field and Yip (1992) further investigated qualitatively theuse of this additive connector in student writing. According to them, besidesis an informal connector which is used more often in speech. Therefore, informal academic writing, its use is not register-appropriate and should beavoided. In an analysis of writing difficulties experienced by English majors inTaiwan, Huang (2001) maintains that one such difficulty is that these studentsoften write with "colloquial diction", i.e. students write as they speak or theywrite what they learn from their conversation textbooks (ibid.:417). The use ofbesides gives an unintended colloquial tone to the academic paper. However, asevident from its repeated use, the learners in this study do not seem to be awareofthe inappropriateness of using besides in their writing.

Another reason to avoid using besides in formal writing is that it is some-times used to "weld together points which do not fit together coherently" (Field& Yip 1992:27). Take the following passage for example:

(3) learner corpus writing # 7To master English passives requires longer instruction on form. Besides,the instruction on functions of English passives is urgently needed becausemostly the main criterion for Chinese learners to use English passives isthe semantic characteristic of their first language, that is, associated withunfavorable happenings.

The use of besides is rather abrupt in the above passage, as it connects two sen-tences with very different topics, i.e. the first one focuses on the need for longerinstruction on the passive structure while the second one shifts the focus tothe "semantic characteristic" of learners' first language. Also, the sentence fol-lowing besides is confusing, further impeding the coherence of the passage.Such misuse of besides can be identified in many other writing samples in thelearner corpus. Therefore, the author of the current study agrees with Fieldand Yip's following comment: "On two accounts, its informality and its misuse,it would be best to discourage the use of besides in essay writing" (1992:27).Furthermore, as stated earlier, the result of the current analysis shows that the


professional writers did not make any use of besides in their writing. This canbe another reason for discouraging the use of besides in academic writing.

Another common problem identified in the learner corpus involves the useof therefore, which according to Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, is a fre-quently misused connector in student writing (1999:535). A careful examina-tion of learners' writing samples reveals the fact that some learners used there-fore merely as "surface-level fillers" (Crewe 1990:321). In other words, thesewriters seem to be trying to "impose surface logicality on a piece of writingwhere no deep logicality exists" (ibid.:320). Such misuse is evident in the fol-lowings two passages:

(4) learner corpus writing # 1Often, learners acquire a simplified and context-free register ofthe targetlanguage with no explicit relationship between form and function in mostcases. Therefore, this paper aims to bring together a number of seeminglydifferent facts into a single coherent which, in turn, can be used by theforeign learners of English to decide questions about the meaning of definitenoun phrases and about their own use ofthe definite article.

(5) learner corpus writing # 13In conclusion, learner's learning process is complex and dynamic in nature.In order to undergo a better understanding of the interaction betweenlearner and learning, we can never neglect the interrelationship of fourbasic elements motivation, anxiety, and styles and strategies withinthe individual learner. Therefore, the complexity and variety in learner'slearning process can be best realized and applied in the real classroomsettings.

Example (4) is a good illustration of what is often referred to as a "logical leap"in writing textbooks. This writer leaps from how learners usually learn a targetlanguage to stating her aim for the paper. As a matter of fact, how learnersacquire a language (i.e. the argument of the first sentence) is not the reasonwhy the writer wants to focus on the definite article in her paper. Although theideas are overtly linked by the use of therefore, no such logical link actually ex-ists. A more serious logical problem is in example (5) where the content ofthesentence following therefore is not related to the previous statement about thecomplex and dynamic nature of one's learning process. In fact, this concludingparagraph is a rather smooth one until therefore occurs.

Some student writers in this study are also found to unnecessarily clutterup the text with too many connectors. Consider the following example:


(6) learner corpus writing # 14In order to achieve the ultimate control of English, language learners areencouraged to learn English as early as one can. Thus, there is a tendencythat Taiwan will turn to an ESL context in the near future. However, theremust be a severe impact on learner identity, and learners can never haveultimate control of English (Belz, 2002). The above researches in differentlanguage contexts all prove that learner's identity is changing with languagecontexts; moreover, learner would suffer from afar more dramatic strugglein a more mainstream context. Therefore, if ESL context are hastily enactedin Taiwan, where the mainstream language is still not English, then, it isfor certain that learners will never have ultimate achievement of English;rather, they will suffer from not only a dramatic struggle, but also a severeself-identity problem. Consequently, further researches are needed on thisissue to suggest a better language context for learners.

Seven CAs were used in a total of six sentences. It is not too difficult to under-stand what the writer intends to convey, but the string of connectors impedesthe flow ofthe argument and makes the text sound rather fragmented. In fact,the many ideas which the author proposes are not linked coherently by the useofthe CAs. An important source of such incoherence is the misuse ofthe threecausal CAs thus, therefore, and consequently. All of them seem to be used tostate what the writer considers as the important issues. However, a strong im-pression after reading this passage is that the ideas linked by the CAs actuallydo not hang together.

6. Conclusion and teaching implications

As a group, student writers in the current study were found to slightly overuseconnectors when the analysis was based on the word-level. Additionally, thequalitative analysis uncovered a few problems. First, many students used be-sides as an additive CA. Such usage should not be encouraged mainly becausebesides should be restricted to oral communication. As suggested by differ-ent researchers (e.g. Granger & Tyson 1996), teachers need to work on raisingstudents' sensitivity on register differences. With regard to writing academicpapers, teachers may need to explicitly point out that some of the connectorsused by the students in this study, including besides, plus, what's more and actu-ally, are not appropriate in formal essay writing.

Another common problem is that students often used connectors to stringa series of sentences together without establishing any logicality. According


to Crewe (1990:324), such overuse "at best clutters up the text unnecessarily,and at worst causes the thread of the argument to zigzag about, as each con-nective points it in a different direction". Students in the current study werefound to have many problems with causal CAs. Although the causes for suchdifficulty are unknown and deserve future research efforts, it is quite possiblethat student writers often use causal CAs to express a conclusion without reallyproviding convincing evidence or enough information for the reader to followthe argument. Such misuse often results in incoherence.

Indeed, more rigorous training on connector usage is needed for non-na-tive students of all proficiency levels. In addition to raising students' awarenessofthe stylistic restriction of certain connectors, teachers also need to train theirstudents to "think through their argument before deciding on how it mightbe reinforced with logical connectives" (Crewe 1990:324). A good example ofsuch training activity is provided by Lee (1998) in which learners are asked tocompare the two versions of student texts about Forrest Gump, discuss whichversion is more coherent, and write their own version ofthe story.

This study is limited by the size ofthe two corpora. Although it is not clearhow big ofa corpus we need for this kind of study, researchers can aim at collect-ing as many sample writings as possible from the target group. Also, althoughthe two corpora are made up of academic writings, they are not completelymatched for register: the learner corpus consists of academic papers of severalgenres while the reference corpus is made up entirely of research articles. It isnot clear whether this difference contributes to the results. While the originalintention of the author was to analyze the connector usage in the academicwritings by Taiwanese advanced writers, a more rigorously controlled learnercorpus which consists only of research papers would lead to more convincingarguments when compared to the expert corpus.

Another problem is the definition of "overuse." While the current paperfollows the previous literature by comparing frequency figures to determinethe overall usage pattern, it does not define precisely what is meant by "over-use." As can be seen from Table 3, learners used 6 more CAs (on the basis of10,000 words) than the writers did. Is this a significant result and strong evi-dence for the overuse hypothesis? How should overuse be defined is a problemworthy of more future investigations.

For future research, it is hoped that more large-scale, corpus-based studieson EFL learners' connector usage will be conducted to enable us to gain a morecomprehensive picture on the interlanguage development of connectors bydifferent groups of learners. According to Altenberg and Tapper (1998), suchresearch will "greatly increase our knowledge of Ll-related and universal fea-


tures of connector usage" (ibid.:93). Another possible research direction is toprobe into the possible causes of a certain usage pattern. For example, why dolearners in this study seem unaware of the inappropriateness of using besidesand other colloquial-marked connectors in their writing? What role, if any,does the rhetorical style of the first language play on the connector usage insecond language writing? With regard to pedagogy, what pedagogical practicesare effective in helping the learners to improve coherence of their writing? It ishoped that the current study has not only contributed a fairly accurate descrip-tion of cohesion/coherence problems in non-native student writing, but alsohelped move related research forward.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier ver-sions of this paper. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Howard Chen of National Taiwan NormalUniversity and all of those peers who kindly contributed their papers.

Note

1. Part of the study was presented in the 2nd Asia TEFL Conference in Seoul, Korea, onNov. 5, 2004.

References

Altenberg, B. & Tapper, M. (1998). The use of adverbial connectors in advanced Swedishlearners' written English. In S. Granger (Ed.), Learner English on Computer (pp. 80-93).Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman Limited.

Bolton, K., Nelson, G. & Hung, J. (2002). A Corpus-Based Study of Connectors in StudentWriting: Research from The International Gorpus of English in Hong Kong (IGE-HK).International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 7 (2), 165-182.

Gelce-Murcia, M. & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher'sCourse (2nd ed). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.

Ghang, V. (1997). Freshman English Composition: An Error Analysis from the Discourse Per-spective. Taipei: Grane Publishing Go.

Grewe, W. (1990). The Illogic of Logical Gonnectives. ELT Journal, 44 (4), 316-325.Field, Y. & Yip, L. (1992). A Gomparison of Internal Gonjunctive Gohesion in the English

Essay Writing of Gantonese Speakers and Native Speakers of English. RELC Journal,23 (1), 15-28.

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EEL Learners 129

Frodesen, J. & Eyring, J. (2000). Grammar Dimensions 4. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publish-ers.

Granger, S. & Tyson, S. (1996). Gonnector Usage in the English Essay Writing of Native andNon-Native EFL Speakers of English. World Englishes, 15(1), 17-27.

Halliday, M.A.K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. Harlow: Longman Group UKLimited.

Huang, S.H. (2001). Teaching writing research papers. Proceedings of 2001 Forum, NationalTaipei Teachers College (pp. 15-433). Taipei: National Taipei Teachers Gollege.

Lee, I. (1998). Enhance ESL Students' Awareness of Goherence-Greating Mechanisms inWriting. TESL Canada Journal, 15 (2), 36-49.

Milton, J. & Tsang, E.S.G. (1993). A corpus-based study of logical connectors in EFL stu-dents' writing: Directions for future research. In R. Perbertom & E.S.G. Tsang (Eds.),Lexis in Studies (pp. 215-246). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar oftheEnglish Language. London: Longman.

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Author's address

Gheryl Wei-yu GhenDepartment of EnglishNational Taiwan Normal University3F, No.152, Sec. 1, Fusing E. Rd.Jhubei Gity, Hsinchu Gounty 302Taiwan

E-mail: [email protected]

Appendix A

The original list of conjunctive adverbials by Gelce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) con-sists ofthe following items:

1. Additiveemphatic: in addition, moreover, furthermore, besides, alsoappositional: that is, in other words, for instancecomparative: likewise, similarly

2. Adversativeproper adversative: however, nevertheless, despite this, in contrastcontrastive: in fact, actually, however, on the other hand, at the same timecorrection: instead, rather, on the contrary, at leastdismissal: in any case, anyhow, at any rate

3. Gausalgeneral causal: therefore, consequently, for that reason, thuscausal conditional: then, in that case, otherwise

130 Gheryl Wei-yu Ghen

4. Sequentialthen, next, first, second, last, finally, up to now, to sum up

Appendix B

The following is a list of all the papers used to compile the control corpus:

From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23 (4):1. Modeling perceptions of the accentedness and comprehensibility of L2 speech2. The role ofthe first language in second language acquisition

From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23 (1):1. The acquisition ofthe IP system in child L2 English2. Gomparing the Ll and L2 mental lexicon: A depth of individual word knowledge

model

From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (4):1. The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition2. How do learners perceive interactional feedback?

From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (2):1. The timing of self-repairs in second language speech production

From Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22 (1):1. Transferability and productivity of Ll rules in Gatalan-English interlanguage2. An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development3. Overpassivization errors by second language learners: The effect of conceptualizable

agents in discourse

From Reading in a Foreign Language, 15 (2):1. Promoting English language development and the reading habit among students in ru-

ral schools through the Guided Extensive Reading program2. Literacy and foreign language reading

From Reading in a Foreign Language, 15 (1):1. Does gender make a difference? Passage content and comprehension in second language

reading2. Metadiscourse and ESP reading comprehension: An exploratory study3. Making form-meaning connections while reading: A qualitative analysis of word pro-

cessing

From Reading in a Foreign Language, 14 (2):1. Ghinese Ll schoolchildren reading in English: The effects of rhetorical patterns

the use of conjunctive adverbials in the academic papers of advances taiwanese learners

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