Advanced EFL Learners' Use of Conjunctive Adverbials in Academic Writing

[[abstract]]The present study aims to explore the use of conjunctive adverbials in academic writing by Taiwanese graduate students of English and to examine if there is any discrepancy between their use with that of the professional native writers. Data for investigation were collected from ELT-related proceedings published in Taiwan and from relevant international applied linguistics journals. These articles were transformed into machine-readable formats and categorized and respectively stored in the Taiwanese Learner Corpus and Professional Writer Corpus. This research benefiting from the advantages of corpus analysis adopts a quantitative approach to examine data. Qualitative analysis is also employed to study the conjunctive adverbials which are more frequently and less frequently applied in the Taiwanese writers’ writing based on the results of per 10,000 word discrepancy analysis. Quantitative results have indicated that the Taiwanese writers applied conjunctive adverbials almost to the same extent as the professional native writers. Both groups of writers were inclined to employ a fixed and limited set of conjunctive adverbials. The discrepancies of the overall occurrences of conjunctive adverbials between the two groups did not indicate significant differences. Yet, the result of the overall frequency analysis was consistent with previous research that non-native writers tend to apply more conjunctive adverbials in writing. Regarding the semantic relations realized by the used of conjunctive adverbials, both the Taiwanese writers and professional native writers did not show significant differences. Some semantic relations, however, tended to be marked more frequently by the Taiwanese writers. Furthermore, the Taiwanese writers also had a strong preference for the initial use of conjunctive adverbials and such a difference between the two groups of writers nearly hit a significant difference. As to register sensitivity, these Taiwanese writers had little difficulty selecting stylistically appropriate conjunctive adverbials in academic writing as few instances of informal register occurred but three conjunctive adverbials occurred differing in styles in the two groups’ writing. Similar to the results of the quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis indicated that most conjunctive adverbials examined were used quite effectively. However, there were still instances of deviant use identified. The deviant use included misuse and redundant use. The misuse resulted from two major sources: one is that conjunctive adverbials of similar semantic meanings were treated interchangeably when the situation did not allow so; the other is due to poor logicality shown in the inappropriate choice of adverbials to chunk irrelevant ideas together with the use of additives. The redundant use can also be categorized into two kinds. One is excessive use and this is particularly common in the use of additives to mark overtly the connectedness between sentences. This type of use after all will not hinder comprehension. However, the second type of redundant use, such as the use of contrastives to connect information with no contrastive value, will impede mental processing and cause confusion. In the end of this research, concordancing-based classroom activities are suggested to train graduate students’ use of conjunctive adverbials in academic writing. Further research is expected to further look into this very subject.