Study on the use of the High—Frequency AND BUT OR in Chinese English Learners’Argumentative Essays Based on Self—built Corpus

Yan Shanshan

【Abstract】Writing skill is essential in English learning.The present thesis makes an attempt to explore the universal features of English coordinators in argumentative essays of the students in Pre-departure Training Department of BLCU.This is accomplished by conducting a contrastive analysis between the native speaker corpus and a self-built corpus based on the computerized corpora and database software tools.It will also find the difference and the degree of difference between the two corpora.And，it will be detecting the problems behind these performances and the relevant causes，while offering some corresponding solutions from the qualitative perspective.The study turns out that the Chinese English learners “misuse” and “overuse” English coordinators to a certain extent in the writing of argumentative essays compared with the native English speakers，which is mainly attributed to such factors as：language transfer，overgeneralization，the lack of the awareness of stylistic and different ways of thinking between eastern and western people.

【Keywords】 writing skill； coordinators； corpus； corpus linguistics

1.Research Background

Writing is an essential dimension of language acquisition.In general，Chinese English learners English level and examination achievement have a noticeable improvement，however，their English writing ability and writing achievement do not make the same progress as other items，such as English reading and speaking.（Pan Jun，1999） Cohesion and cohesiveness are generally thought of as nature of “excellent composition”.（Halliday & Hasan 1976； Halliday 2000） To enhance a learners ability to apply English cohesion and cohesive skill correctly is an important aspect to improve the situation.Many researchers have indicated that appropriately employing conjunctions can contribute greatly to the clarity and comprehensibility of discourse （Mauranen，1993； Flowerdew & Tauroza，1995）.

2.Research Questions

The study is designed to attempt to answer the following questions：

（1）Do Chinese English learners use coordinators as frequently as native speakers？

（2）Do they“overuse”and“misuse”certain coordinators？

（3）What are the possible causes of “misuse”？

3.Research Design

“The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays” （LOCNESS） is employed for comparative analysis in this research.LOCNESS，constructed by S.Granger and S.De Cock at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium，is the native speaker corpus widely used as control corpus for comparison with learners interlanguage.The present thesis selects 176 English argumentative essays written by native speakers of American college students （aging from 20 to 30），with 149，574 words.The topics include many aspects of social life.Samples of the topics used are education，ideology，religion，and politics，with other topics being used as well.

The self-built corpus is a small-scaled one—Corpus of Pre-departure Training Department （CPTD），with 164 English argumentative essays about 47，213 words accomplished by students （aging from 30 to 40） in Pre-departure Training Department of Beijing Language and Culture University to conduct a comparative analysis.The topics cover aging society，shopping online and continuing education.Although topics of the self-built corpus differ from that of native speakers corpus，the present study attaches greater importance to the similarity of the stylistic features.

The present paper selects the high-frequency coordinatiors，namely，AND，BUT，OR，of the two corpora as the subject.Antconc 3.2.1 w （Windows），Log-likelihoods and SPSS software are adopted to achieve the purpose of the study.

4.Data Analysis and Discussion

4.1 Overall frequencies of AND BUT OR in LOCNESS and CPTD.Corpus is generally considered as the relatively reliable tool to study frequency.（McEnery & Wilson，1996）To research the usage of AND BUT OR in terms of overuse，underuse and misuse，the frequency of these three coordinator is one of the most critical factors compared in discourses of LOCNESS and CPTD.

4.1.1 Comparison of the frequencies of AND BUT OR between LOCENESS and CPTD.The following table presents results of the comparison of the frequencies of AND BUT OR between LOCNESS and CPTD.

Table 4.1 Overall AND BUT OR in LOCNESS and CPTD

Coordination CPTD LOCNESS

and 2.0587% 2.3861%

or 0.4575% 0.4820%

but 0.2076% 0.0006%

Based on the data given above，it can be seen that BUT is overused，and AND，OR，are underused in CPTD in comparison with LOCNESS.

4.1.2 Comparison of Log-likelihood of AND BUT OR between LOCNESS and CPTD.In order to test whether there are significant differences，the statistics will be applied in Log-likelihood test of SPSS.The LL tests are carried out respectively in terms of AND，BUT，OR，with CPTD against LOCNESS.A null hypothesis that there exists no significant difference between these two kinds of corpora on AND BUT OR is stated.The null hypothesis can only be rejected when the LL test value is more than the critical value.Detailed LL values are shown in the following table.

1% and 2% values show relative frequencies in the texts.

（+） indicates overuse in 01 relative to 02.

（-） indicates underuse in 01 relative to 02.

As illustrated in the above table，the coordination AND，BUT have significant differences with LOCNESS.LL test critical values of AND，BUT，in CPTD are 17.10 and12.6，respectively，which are all more than the critical value：3.84 （statistical significance under the level of significance 0.05）.Given this result，it can be concluded that there exists a significant difference between LOCNESS and CPTD concerning the use of AND，BUT，and the null hypothesis will be rejected.However，the coordination OR have not significant differences between the two corpora.LL test critical values of OR，is 0.46，which are less than the critical value.

4.1.3 Comparison of the sentence positions of AND BUT OR in LOCNESS and CPTD.According to Crystal，coordination is usually put in the middle of a sentence，connecting two phrases or short sentences.And there is a comma placed in front of the coordination.This can be named as “Middle-position” （M）.However，coordination can be put in the beginning of sentence，modifying a sentence，not connecting two independent sentences.This can be called as “Initial-position” （I）.This part attempts to study the different usage of AND BUT OR concerning the sentence positions between LOCNESS and CPTD.The results are offered as follows.

Figure 4.1 Sentence positions of AND BUT OR of LOCNESS and CPTD

As is revealed in the above figure，there is little difference with regard to the usage of AND OR.Both corpora present that AND OR are generally placed in the middle of the sentence.As for BUT，CPTD prefers to put it in front of the sentence，while LOCNESS places BUT in the middle of the sentence.

4.2 Error analysis of AND BUT OR in CPTD.The present thesis attributes errors of AND BUT OR in CPTD to the following factors.First，Chinese English learners improper use of AND BUT OR is partly due to first language transfer.Chinese English learners would transfer the Chinese conventions to their English writings if they have not acquired the target language proficiently enough.The second factor is overgeneralization.Once learners have acquired parts of a new system，increasingly intralingual transfer generalization within the target language is manifested.The third factor is the lack of awareness of stylistic writing that leads to the misuse of AND BUT OR in the English writing.Finally，perhaps the most fundamental factor is due to different ways of thinking.

5.Conclusion

Taking into account what have been discussed，the research findings are illustrated as follows.The usage of AND BUT OR differs between students of Pre-departure Training Department in BLCU and native speakers.Chinese English learners tend to overuse BUT，and underuse AND，OR.There are significant differences regarding AND，BUT in LOCNESS and CPTD.The usage of AND，OR of CPTD is in a more similar way to native speakers in respect of the sentence position，while the usage of BUT is not.First language transfer，overgeneralization，the lack of awareness of stylistic and different ways of thinking are likely to be causes of errors.

On the basis of the data and analysis above，educators （especially teachers），are suggested to have a clear picture of main usage patterns of these conjunctions and the general types of errors committed by students in order to reduce and avoid overuse，underuse and misuse of them.In teaching English writing，teachers are suggested to make it clear to students of the difference between L1 and L2 in order to help the students transfer their thinking pattern in writing essays.Text book designers are suggested to attach much more importance to the explanation and usage of coordination so that teachers and students can notice the focus.

Finally，there are some limitations left to the research，which need to be further studied.The self-built corpus is not tagged，so some subjective mistakes might have been made，even though they have been carefully checked many times.Due to limited time，memory limitation，fatigue and other factors，some performance errors may have affected the results of the study.In addition，the corpora collected are confined to the topic and scale of this study.Much more work is needed to analyze written corpora from other perspectives wherever possible.

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