The use of conjunctive adverbials in the

academic papers of advanced Taiwanese

EFL learners
Cheryl Wei-yu Chen
National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan

The current study explores the use of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in two
corpora compiled by the author. The learner corpus consists of 23 final
papers contributed by 10 MA TESOL students from Taiwan while the
control corpus contains 10 journal articles from two prestige international
TESOL journals. On the quantitative dimension, student writers were found
to slightly overuse connectors when the analysis was based on word-level
Additionally, the qualitative analysis revealed that certain CAs (e.g. besides,
therefore) were used inappropriately by some of the learners. The paper ends
with several teaching suggestions on how to help student writers master the
complex 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 the

use of conjunctive adverbials (CAs) in the writing of advanced EFL learners in
Taiwan. On the quantitative dimension, all the CAs extracted from the writing of advanced EFL learners are compared to those extracted from published
journal articles; the aim is to generalize the overall usage pattern of the two
groups. As for the qualitative analysis, the researcher probes into the use of
specific CAs by the learner group (e.g. besides, therefore) to illustrate that some
logical connectors may have been used inappropriately even by English learners at a very advanced level.
The organization of this paper is as follows. First, literature related to
CAs 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 two
sets of writing samples. Next, several corpus-based studies on learner connector usage will also be reviewed. The next section is the study itself, followed
by several teaching suggestions on how to help learners master the complex
system of CAs.

2.

Background

2.1 Conjunctive adverbials as cohesive ties

The 1976 publication of Halliday and Hasans Cohesion in English has stimulated much interest in the study of cohesion and coherence. One type of commonly-used cohesive devices is logical connectors. Defined by Celce-Murcia
and Larsen-Freeman (1999), they are "lexical expressions that may add little
or no propositional content by themselves but they serve to specify the relationships among sentences in oral or written discourse, thereby leading tbe
listener/reader to the feeling tbat the sentences 'hang together' or make sense"
(1999:519). In other words, if placed appropriately, logical connectors should
function as signposts, guiding the listener/reader through the discourse. CelceMurcia 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 and
thus). The focus of this paper is on the third type of logical connectors conjunctive adverbials.
As for the different types of CAs, tbe author of this paper adopts CelceMurcia and Larsen-Freeman's simplified version (1999) of Halliday and Hasan's
(1976) four-way classification which divides conjunctions into the following
four types: additive, adversative, causal and temporal. The following is a list of
all tbe CAs used in tbis study:
1. Additive
emphatic: in addition, additionally, moreover, further, furthermore, besides,
also, in fact, at the same time
appositional: that is, that is to say, in other words, for instance/example
comparative: likewise, similarly
2. Adversative
proper adversative: however, nevertheless, nonetheless, despite this, in(by)
contrast

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

contrastive: conversely, in fact, on the other hand, at the same time, in the
meantime, meanwhile, otherwise
correction: instead, rather, on the contrary, at least
dismissal: in any case/event, anyhow, at any rate
3. Causal
general causal: therefore, consequently, for that reason, thus, as a result (consequence), hence, thereby, accordingly, in consequence
causal conditional: then, in that case, in turn
4. Temporal
sequential: then, in turn, next, first, second, third, fourth (fifth..), first of all,
firstly (secondly...), last, finally, later, initially
summarizing: in short, in summary, in brief, in sum, in conclusion, to sum
up, to conclude, to summarize, overall, all in all
Most of the above CAs were taken directly from Celce-Murcia and LarsenFreeman's list (1999: 530; see Appendix A for their original list). CAs which
were not on the original list but were identified in tbe writing samples were
later added to the list. It is hoped tbat such a list can provide a reliable benchmark which is less arbitrary in nature and presents a more realistic picture of
how these connectors are actually used in academic writings.
After a quick scan at the above list, readers may find that some commonlyused connectors (e.g. and, but, yet, because, so) are not included. These connectors are important cohesive ties, and they have been under investigation
in many previous connector studies (see below). However, Celce-Murcia and
Larsen-Freeman categorize and, but and yet as coordinating conjunctions and
because and 50 as adverbial subordinators, and consequently these items will
not 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 current
investigation is well-defined. Next, a brief review of some recent corpus-based
connector studies will be presented.
2.2 Previous corpus-based connector studies
The following four corpus-based connector studies will be reviewed in this section Milton and Tsang (1993), Cranger and Tyson (1996), Altenberg and
Tapper (1998) and Bolton et al (2002).
Milton and Tsang (1993) compared Hong Kong students' use of logical
connectors in a 4-million-word learner corpus with that of the Brown and

115

ii6

Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

LOB Corpora. They identified an overuse pattern of an entire range of logical

connectors in students' writing samples; the top ten overused connectors were
lastly, besides, moreover, secondly, firstly, consequently, furthermore, regarding,
therefore and namely (1993:226-27). In addition to this quantification, a qualitative analysis of two specific connectors, moreover and therefore, suggested
that students had two kinds of difficulty regarding the use of connectors redundant use (the logical connector is not necessary and its presence does not
contribute to the overall coherence of the writing) and misuse (tbe use of a
certain logical connector is misleading). In order to correct what tbey called
the "discourse-marker overkill" phenomenon (ibid.:234), the researchers contended tbat teachers of writing need to work on raising learners' sensitivity of
the use of connectors in compositions. More specifically, students need to learn
that these connectors should not merely play an ornamental role in their writing; instead, when selecting wbich connectors should be used, students need
to go tbrough a careful thought process to ensure the logic ofthe arguments is
enhanced, 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-word
French sub-corpus of the ICLE with a comparable 77,723-word native corpus
called the Louvain Corpus of Native Essay Writing (LOCNESS). Tbe autbors'
hypothesis was that the French learners overuse connectors in their essays. Tbe
quantitative analysis did not support the initial hypothesis, as tbe total number
of connectors per 100,000 words was 1,085 for tbe learner corpus and 1,178 for
tbe native one. However, a more detailed qualitative investigation portrayed a
rather different picture. Based on such analysis. Granger and Tyson were able
to identify tbe connectors which were underused by tbe French learners, e.g.
however, therefore and thus. At the same time, some connectors were overused
by 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 restrictions" of certain connectors (Granger & Tyson 1996:23). An example is the
"colloquial-marked" use of anyway found in one of tbe essays in tbe learner
corpus. It is suggested that more emphasis should be put on matters of style in
writing 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 about
50,000 words) from tbe Swedish component of the ICLE. Tbis set of data was
then compared to a native English control corpus, consisting of 70 essays (also
totaling about 50,000 words) by juniors and seniors at tbe University of Surrey,
England. The authors' general assumption was that "advanced Swedish learners

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

117

of English tend to underuse conjuncts in their written English" (Altenberg &

Tapper 1998:83). This impression was supported by the overall frequencies of
conjuncts computed for the two corpora: the Swedish learners used fewer conjuncts in tbeir writing than the native students (72 vs. 95 examples per 10,000
words). Like the two aforementioned studies, a more detailed investigation was
also carried out to determine the use of individual conjuncts. It was found
that some conjuncts were overused (e.g. moreover, for instance and on the contrary) and some were underused (e.g. hence, therefore, thus and however) by the
Swedish learners.
Altenberg and Tapper took a step further by comparing tbe above usage
pattern of tbe Swedish students with the result from Granger and Tyson's 1996
study. They found that when compared to the French learners, tbe Swedish
underused conjuncts to a great extent (1,085 vs. 722 tokens/100,000 words). As
for the use of individual conjuncts, the two groups of learners, with few exceptions, shared a highly comparable profile of overuse and underuse. With regard
to the Swedish group, the authors suggested tbat the underuse of resultive and
contrastive conjuncts is because the students "prefer less formal connectors
(e.g. but) to the formal alternatives" (Altenberg & Tapper 1998:91) in their argumentative or expository writing. According to the authors, many Swedish
learners are not aware ofthe fact that these less formal conjuncts are not always
appropriate in academic writing. Therefore, a teaching suggestion is that teachers sbould work more on raising students' sensitivity to register distinctions in
the target language.
To the author's knowledge, the most recently published corpus-based connector study is Bolton et al (2002). After a comprehensive review of previous
research, Bolton et al pointed out three methodological issues which deserve
researchers' attention. Tbe first one is "the identification of linguistic items as
connectors" (ibid.:171). By this, they referred to the fact that many previous
studies simply adopted the existing frameworks/classifications of connectors
(e.g. Halliday & Hasan 1976 and Quirk et al 1985) without questioning their
suitability. Tbeir response to tbis problem is that instead of using any readymade framework as the benchmark, they made a list of all tbe connectors
found in their control corpus, a subset of published academic writing in the
British component of tbe International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). Tbe result
was 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 identification of connectors should not be regarded as uncontroversial and given
and that a more realistic list of connectors would improve the accuracy of the
analysis. 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 classification (1976) by Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999; Appendix A)
would be used as the basis for this study. Although it was developed almost
three decades ago, Halliday and Hasan's classification of conjuncts is the catalyst wbich has triggered many interests in the study of cohesion and coherence.
Indeed, tbeir framework still forms the base of many recent investigations on
cohesive ties (e.g. Chang 1997). Therefore, a modified version of Halliday and
Hasan's framework is used in this study. In order to ensure tbe comprehensiveness ofthe list, as explained earlier, CAs whicb were not on tbe original list but
were identified during data processing were also added to the list.
Tbe second methodological issue raised by Bolton et al is tbe calculation of
ratio of frequency. According to tbem, most ofthe previous corpus-based studies adopted a word-based calculation. For example, Milton and Tsang (1993)
calculated tbe ratio of occurrence by dividing the total number of words in a
corpus with the number of identified connectors. Anotber widely-used wordbased calculation metbod is that of presenting the ratio of frequency in terms
of tbe number of connectors per 10,000 or 100,000 words; this method was employed in Granger and Tyson (1996) and Altenberg and Tapper (1998). Bolton
et 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 unit
for analysis. However, as pointed out by one reviewer of the earlier version
of this paper, both the word- and sentence-based approacbes are reasonable
because CAs can also be used in non-finite, dependent clauses. Therefore, to
rigorously test the overuse hypothesis (see below), tbe ratio of occurrence will
be 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, Bolton
et al criticized the use of general corpora (e.g. Brown and LOB) and writings
of 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 corpus of published academic writing in English" (2002:173) because the best target 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 disciplines, published between 1990 and 1993 inclusively" (ibid.:173). Like Bolton et
al's study, efforts were also made to ensure the suitability and comparability of
the control corpus in this study. Specifically, since learners in this study are firstand second-year students in a MA TESOL program, a suitable target model

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 119

for them would be academic papers already published in well-known Englishlanguage, TESOL-related international journals. Because no such ready-made
corpus is currently available, tbe author bad to compile a control corpus to be
used in this study. It should be noted that the aforementioned control corpus of
Bolton et al's study is not a good candidate for the current study because as stated 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 compare
tbe use of conjunctive adverbials in two sets of TESOL-related writing.
With regard to the study itself, Bolton et al (2002) compared connector
usage in three sets of data part of the Hong Kong component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-HK), tbe corresponding data from tbe British component of ICE (ICE-GB), and a subset of published academic writing
taken from ICE-GB. In other words, the writing by undergraduate students in
Hong Kong and Britain were compared to that of accomplished writers. The
results indicated that both groups of students sbowed a pattern of overuse in
their writing. However, this overuse was much greater on the part of Hong
Kong students, as they used more than twice more connectors than professional writers. The top five overused connectors by the Hong Kong students
were 50, and, also, thus and but. The ranking was somewhat different for the
British students: however, so, therefore, thus and furthermore.
To sum up, this section offers a review on four corpus-based studies on
connectors. Bolton et al (2002) is of special interest because ofthe three methodological issues they raised. Responding to these important issues, measures
are taken in the current study to ensure a more accurate analysis and interpretation 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 writing
by first- and second-year students in a MA TESOL program in Taiwan. The
hypothesis is that the Taiwanese learners would overuse CAs in their essay
writing. One reason for formulating this overuse hypothesis is that as a teacher
of writing, the author often identifies an overuse pattern of CAs in students'
writing. In addition to this impressionistic account, several Hong Kong-based
studies (Crewe 1990; Field & Yip 1992; Milton & Tsang 1993 and Bolton et al
2002) bave indicated tbat Chinese students tend to overuse a wide range of
connectors. Therefore, it is bypothesized that tbe Taiwanese students in the
current 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's
knowledge, tbis is the first systematic, corpus-based connector study on the
writing of master students in Taiwan. It is hoped that the results of this study
will sbed some light on the everlasting cohesion and coherence problems in
EFL/ESL writing. Secondly, the insights gained from the quantitative and qualitative analysis can provide English teachers with a better idea on what needs to
be 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 TESOL
students from the English Department of a prestige university in Taiwan. All
the writers are non-native speakers of English wbo passed a very competitive
entrance exam to become students in tbe master program. As for tbe genres
of the final papers, there are 4 diary studies, 6 literature reviews, 4 research
proposals, 1 research article and 8 pedagogical "how-to" papers. Meanwhile,
the control corpus contains 10 journal articles from Studies in Second Language
Acquisition (published in 2000 and 2001) and 6 from Reading in a Eoreign Language (published in 2002 and 2003). Appendix B gives a list of all the papers
used to compile the control corpus.
All the tables,figures,charts, end/footnotes, references and appendices in
each writing were excluded in word and sentence count performed by Microsoft Word. As a result, tbe total word count for the learner corpus is 78,630 and
120,909 for the control corpus. With regard to sentence count it is 3,732 and
4,611 respectively.
All the CAs were manually extracted from the corpora. In order to ensure
all tbe CAs were identified, the concordancing function of WordSmitb Version
4 (downloaded from bttp://www.lexically.net) was used to verify tbe results of
manual extraction. All the extracted CAs were tben classified according to tbe
framework discussed earlier.
4.2 Results
A total of 617 and 871 CAs were identified in tbe learner and reference corpora
respectively. Table 1 presents the percentage of each type of CA found in the
two corpora.

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 121

Table 1. Percentage use of CAs by category

Learner Corpus
33.8%
20.6%
24.0%
21.6%

Additive
Adversative
Causal
Temporal

Reference Corpus
30.9%
37.0%
18.9%
13.2%

As can be seen from Table 1, the advanced EFL writers in the current study
used additive CAs most often (33.8%), while the professional writers most frequently used the CAs in the adversative category (37%).
As for the use of individual CAs, Table 2 shows a list of the top most frequently used CAs in the two corpora, with their raw frequencies (the figures
in parentheses) and their frequencies per sentence (multiplied by 1,000 to
eliminate very low figures). As stated earlier, the total sentence number for the
learner corpus is 3,732 and 4,611 for the reference one.
Overall, the top ten most frequently used CAs account for 65% (403/617
X 100% = 65%) of all the CAs used in the learner corpus and 67% (583/871
Table 2. The top 10 most frequently used CAs
Learner Corpus
Rank CA
F.P.S." R.F.'' %'
1
however
20.6
(77) 12.5%
2
therefore
20.4
(76) 12.3%
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

for instance/
example
thus
moreover
besides
also
first

Ref. Corpus
Rank CA
F.RS.^ R.F.'^ %'^
1
however
50.1 (231) 26.5%
2
for instance / 13.7 (63) 7.2%
example
3
thus
13.4 (62) 7.1%

14.7

(55)

8.9%

13.7

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

8.3%
4.1%
4.1%
4.1%
4.1%

(24)

3.9%

(20)

3.2%

10

6.7
6.7
6.7
6.7

then (tempo- 6.4

ral)
in addition
5.4

(403) 65%
" Frequency per 1000 sentences
'' Raw frequency
' % ofthe overall CAs used

5
6
7
8

therefore
that is
further-more
then (causal)
in fact (additive)
in other words

9.3

on the other
hand

6.3

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

4.9%
4.6%
4.1%
3.6%
3.3%

5.2

(24)

2.8%

5.2

(24)

2.8%

8.7
7.8
6.7

(583) 67%

122 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

Table 3. Overall frequencies of CA usage (1)

Corpus size in words
Number of CAs
CAs/10,000 words

Learner Corpus
78,630
617
78

Reference Corpus
120,909
871
72

Table 4. Overall frequencies of CA usage (2)

Corpus size in sentences
Number of CAs
CAs/1,000 sentences

Learner Corpus
3,732
617
165

Reference Corpus
4,611
871
189

X 100% = 67%) in the reference corpus. In other words, the top ten most frequently used CAs account for approximately two-thirds of all the CAs used in
the two sets of writing. This shows that both groups of writers rely heavily on a
rather small set of connectors in their writing.
The adversative CA however is the most frequently used CA in the two corpora. This high frequency of use is especially noticeable in the reference corpus
where 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 four
frequently used CAs from both groups is fairly similar however, therefore, for
instance/example and thus for the learner corpus, and however, for instance/example, thus, and therefore for the reference corpus.
To test the overuse hypothesis stated earlier, i.e. the Taiwanese learners
would 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 can
be seen in Table 3 and 4.
Results from Table 3 indicate that learners use slightly more CAs than professional writers do (78 vs. 72). On the other hand, results from Table 4 do not
support the overuse hypothesis the writers in the reference corpus made
more use of CAs (189 per 1,000 sentences) than the EFL learners (165 per
1,000 sentences).

5.

Discussion

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

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 123

do not. Because learners wrote much shorter sentences than professional writers did (21 words vs. 26 words per sentence), using sentences as the basis for
analysis, as suggested by one reviewer, puts a particular spin on the results. In
other words, professional writers in the current study probably needed to use
more CAs because they wrote longer and more complex sentences. To arrive
at a more holistic description of the connector usage, both word- and sentence-based analysis need to be included, and the general syntactic features
(i.e. syntactic complexity) deserve more attentions. It is possible that if a different method of analysis were applied to the data ofthe earlier connector studies
discussed in the review section, a different usage pattern could have emerged.
Another important methodological issue is the size of corpora. Although
the current learner corpus is bigger than those used in some previous corpusbased studies (e.g. Altenberg & Tapper 1998), it consists of only 23 essays contributed by 10 graduate students. For a study of individual words, the corpora
are indeed quite small. It is possible that with another group of learners who
have different personal preference of connectors and writing styles or who are
required 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 be
generalized to many populations, the 10 student writers do represent some of
the very advanced EFL learners in Taiwan. A careful analysis of their writings
is not only of research interest, but also of pedagogical importance.
Among the use of CAs, of particular interest is that oi besides by the learners in this study. As shown in Table 2, it is the sixth most frequently used connector by the learners, occurring 6.7 times per 1,000 sentences. In fact, it is
used by seven ofthe ten students who contributed their essays for analysis. On
the contrary, besides is not used at all by the professional writers. Examples of
the use of besides by student writers can be found in the following excerpts:
(1) learner corpus writing # 20
Language is for communication. There are different communicative acts
in different situations. Besides, everyone has his/her personal style of using
language. As a result, there should be no fixed expression in a particular
circumstance.
(2) learner corpus writing # 5
Academically, in Burroughs and Tezer's research, the low achievers
complain about the use ofpoor teaching methods and techniques, and
also they become apathetic about their lack of accomplishment. Besides,
teachers tend to take their duties less seriously, and their teaching tends to
disintegrate (1968).

124 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

The above use of besides adheres to Frodesen and Eyrings definition for emphatic 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 of
example (1) and (2) attempted to add new information to what has been previously stated.
Two Hong Kong-based studies also address the use of besides in student
writing. As discussed earlier, Milton and Tsang (1993) found that next to lastly,
besides is the most overused connector by university students in the HKUST
Learner's Corpus. Field and Yip (1992) further investigated qualitatively the
use of this additive connector in student writing. According to them, besides
is an informal connector which is used more often in speech. Therefore, in
formal academic writing, its use is not register-appropriate and should be
avoided. In an analysis of writing difficulties experienced by English majors in
Taiwan, Huang (2001) maintains that one such difficulty is that these students
often write with "colloquial diction", i.e. students write as they speak or they
write what they learn from their conversation textbooks (ibid.:417). The use of
besides gives an unintended colloquial tone to the academic paper. However, as
evident from its repeated use, the learners in this study do not seem to be aware
ofthe inappropriateness of using besides in their writing.
Another reason to avoid using besides in formal writing is that it is sometimes 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 # 7
To master English passives requires longer instruction on form. Besides,
the instruction on functions of English passives is urgently needed because
mostly the main criterion for Chinese learners to use English passives is
the semantic characteristic of their first language, that is, associated with
unfavorable happenings.

The use of besides is rather abrupt in the above passage, as it connects two sentences with very different topics, i.e. the first one focuses on the need for longer
instruction on the passive structure while the second one shifts the focus to
the "semantic characteristic" of learners' first language. Also, the sentence following besides is confusing, further impeding the coherence of the passage.
Such misuse of besides can be identified in many other writing samples in the
learner corpus. Therefore, the author of the current study agrees with Field
and 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

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 125

professional writers did not make any use of besides in their writing. This can
be another reason for discouraging the use of besides in academic writing.
Another common problem identified in the learner corpus involves the use
of therefore, which according to Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, is a frequently misused connector in student writing (1999:535). A careful examination of learners' writing samples reveals the fact that some learners used therefore merely as "surface-level fillers" (Crewe 1990:321). In other words, these
writers seem to be trying to "impose surface logicality on a piece of writing
where no deep logicality exists" (ibid.:320). Such misuse is evident in the followings two passages:
(4) learner corpus writing # 1
Often, learners acquire a simplified and context-free register ofthe target
language with no explicit relationship between form and function in most
cases. Therefore, this paper aims to bring together a number of seemingly
different facts into a single coherent which, in turn, can be used by the
foreign learners of English to decide questions about the meaning of definite
noun phrases and about their own use ofthe definite article.
(5) learner corpus writing # 13
In conclusion, learner's learning process is complex and dynamic in nature.
In order to undergo a better understanding of the interaction between
learner and learning, we can never neglect the interrelationship of four
basic elements motivation, anxiety, and styles and strategies within
the individual learner. Therefore, the complexity and variety in learner's
learning process can be best realized and applied in the real classroom
settings.
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 target
language to stating her aim for the paper. As a matter of fact, how learners
acquire a language (i.e. the argument of the first sentence) is not the reason
why the writer wants to focus on the definite article in her paper. Although the
ideas are overtly linked by the use of therefore, no such logical link actually exists. A more serious logical problem is in example (5) where the content ofthe
sentence following therefore is not related to the previous statement about the
complex and dynamic nature of one's learning process. In fact, this concluding
paragraph is a rather smooth one until therefore occurs.
Some student writers in this study are also found to unnecessarily clutter
up the text with too many connectors. Consider the following example:

126 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

(6) learner corpus writing # 14

In order to achieve the ultimate control of English, language learners are
encouraged to learn English as early as one can. Thus, there is a tendency
that Taiwan will turn to an ESL context in the near future. However, there
must be a severe impact on learner identity, and learners can never have
ultimate control of English (Belz, 2002). The above researches in different
language contexts all prove that learner's identity is changing with language
contexts; moreover, learner would suffer from afar more dramatic struggle
in a more mainstream context. Therefore, if ESL context are hastily enacted
in Taiwan, where the mainstream language is still not English, then, it is
for certain that learners will never have ultimate achievement of English;
rather, they will suffer from not only a dramatic struggle, but also a severe
self-identity problem. Consequently, further researches are needed on this
issue to suggest a better language context for learners.

Seven CAs were used in a total of six sentences. It is not too difficult to understand what the writer intends to convey, but the string of connectors impedes
the 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 use
ofthe CAs. An important source of such incoherence is the misuse ofthe three
causal CAs thus, therefore, and consequently. All of them seem to be used to
state what the writer considers as the important issues. However, a strong impression after reading this passage is that the ideas linked by the CAs actually
do not hang together.

6. Conclusion and teaching implications

As a group, student writers in the current study were found to slightly overuse
connectors when the analysis was based on the word-level. Additionally, the
qualitative analysis uncovered a few problems. First, many students used besides as an additive CA. Such usage should not be encouraged mainly because
besides should be restricted to oral communication. As suggested by different researchers (e.g. Granger & Tyson 1996), teachers need to work on raising
students' sensitivity on register differences. With regard to writing academic
papers, teachers may need to explicitly point out that some of the connectors
used by the students in this study, including besides, plus, what's more and actually, are not appropriate in formal essay writing.
Another common problem is that students often used connectors to string
a series of sentences together without establishing any logicality. According

The use of conjunctive adverbials in the writing of Taiwanese EFL Learners 127

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 connective points it in a different direction". Students in the current study were
found to have many problems with causal CAs. Although the causes for such
difficulty are unknown and deserve future research efforts, it is quite possible
that student writers often use causal CAs to express a conclusion without really
providing convincing evidence or enough information for the reader to follow
the argument. Such misuse often results in incoherence.
Indeed, more rigorous training on connector usage is needed for non-native students of all proficiency levels. In addition to raising students' awareness
ofthe stylistic restriction of certain connectors, teachers also need to train their
students to "think through their argument before deciding on how it might
be reinforced with logical connectives" (Crewe 1990:324). A good example of
such training activity is provided by Lee (1998) in which learners are asked to
compare the two versions of student texts about Forrest Gump, discuss which
version is more coherent, and write their own version ofthe story.
This study is limited by the size ofthe two corpora. Although it is not clear
how big ofa corpus we need for this kind of study, researchers can aim at collecting as many sample writings as possible from the target group. Also, although
the two corpora are made up of academic writings, they are not completely
matched for register: the learner corpus consists of academic papers of several
genres while the reference corpus is made up entirely of research articles. It is
not clear whether this difference contributes to the results. While the original
intention of the author was to analyze the connector usage in the academic
writings by Taiwanese advanced writers, a more rigorously controlled learner
corpus which consists only of research papers would lead to more convincing
arguments when compared to the expert corpus.
Another problem is the definition of "overuse." While the current paper
follows the previous literature by comparing frequency figures to determine
the overall usage pattern, it does not define precisely what is meant by "overuse." As can be seen from Table 3, learners used 6 more CAs (on the basis of
10,000 words) than the writers did. Is this a significant result and strong evidence for the overuse hypothesis? How should overuse be defined is a problem
worthy of more future investigations.
For future research, it is hoped that more large-scale, corpus-based studies
on EFL learners' connector usage will be conducted to enable us to gain a more
comprehensive picture on the interlanguage development of connectors by
different groups of learners. According to Altenberg and Tapper (1998), such
research will "greatly increase our knowledge of Ll-related and universal fea-

128 Cheryl Wei-yu Chen

tures of connector usage" (ibid.:93). Another possible research direction is to

probe into the possible causes of a certain usage pattern. For example, why do
learners in this study seem unaware of the inappropriateness of using besides
and other colloquial-marked connectors in their writing? What role, if any,
does the rhetorical style of the first language play on the connector usage in
second language writing? With regard to pedagogy, what pedagogical practices
are effective in helping the learners to improve coherence of their writing? It is
hoped that the current study has not only contributed a fairly accurate description of cohesion/coherence problems in non-native student writing, but also
helped move related research forward.

Acknowledgment
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Howard Chen of National Taiwan Normal
University 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, on
Nov. 5, 2004.

References
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Bolton, K., Nelson, G. & Hung, J. (2002). A Corpus-Based Study of Connectors in Student
Writing: Research from The International Gorpus of English in Hong Kong (IGE-HK).
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Gelce-Murcia, M. & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's
Course (2nd ed). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
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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
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Frodesen, J. & Eyring, J. (2000). Grammar Dimensions 4. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
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Non-Native EFL Speakers of English. World Englishes, 15(1), 17-27.
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Author's address
Gheryl Wei-yu Ghen
Department of English
National Taiwan Normal University
3F, No.152, Sec. 1, Fusing E. Rd.
Jhubei Gity, Hsinchu Gounty 302
Taiwan
E-mail: wychen66@hotmail.com

Appendix A
The original list of conjunctive adverbials by Gelce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1999) consists ofthe following items:
1. Additive
emphatic: in addition, moreover, furthermore, besides, also
appositional: that is, in other words, for instance
comparative: likewise, similarly
2. Adversative
proper adversative: however, nevertheless, despite this, in contrast
contrastive: in fact, actually, however, on the other hand, at the same time
correction: instead, rather, on the contrary, at least
dismissal: in any case, anyhow, at any rate
3. Gausal
general causal: therefore, consequently, for that reason, thus
causal conditional: then, in that case, otherwise

130 Gheryl Wei-yu Ghen

4. Sequential
then, 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 speech
2. 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 English
2. 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 acquisition
2. 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 interlanguage
2. An exploratory cross-sectional study of interlanguage pragmatic development
3. 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 rural schools through the Guided Extensive Reading program
2. 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
reading
2. Metadiscourse and ESP reading comprehension: An exploratory study
3. Making form-meaning connections while reading: A qualitative analysis of word processing
From Reading in a Foreign Language, 14 (2):
1. Ghinese Ll schoolchildren reading in English: The effects of rhetorical patterns