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This paper presents a contrastive study on adverbial connectors between the native English speakers and Chinese English learners. The study tries to answer the following questions:first, do Chinese English learners of different proficiency levels (st3, st4, st6) use the adverbial connectors to the same extent compared to the native speakers in frequency, distribution of semantic types? Second, do Chinese English learners favor certain adverbial connectors and semantic types?In order to answer the questions, we adopt the method of corpus-based analysis and Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis(CIA), combing a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The control corpus in the study is Loncness, which is a collection of argumentative writings by British and American students. The observation corpus used is Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC) which consists of five sub-corpora. The study takes the three of the five sub-corpora, namely st3, st4, st6 for investigation. They represent College English test Band 4, College English Band 6 and Test for English Majors Band 8 respectively. Firstly, mainly based on the list and semantic classifications made by Biber et al. in 2000, the researcher determines the adverbial connectors to be investigated at the initial stage. All the adverbial connectors fall into the seven semantic types of enumeration and addition, summation, apposition, result and reference, contrast and concession, collaboration, transition. The concordance software used in the investigation is AntConc. After the preliminary concordance, the adverbial connectors with low occurrence have been excluded from the research.91 adverbial connectors have been pinpointed for further investigation. Two types of comparison are conducted in the present research:the comparison in the use of adverbial connectors between Chinese English learners of various levels; the comparison in the use of adverbial connectors between Chinese English learners and the native speakers. Meanwhile, the researcher investigates the distribution of semantic types. Chi-Square is used to test the difference in semantic distributions. Finally, based on the statistics at hand, a qualitative and quantitative analysis has been carried out to investigate some typical individual adverbial connectors. The main findings of the research are as follows: First, Chinese English learners of various levels use adverbial connectors differently from the native speakers in frequency. Generally speaking, learners tend to overuse adverbial connectors. As their English proficiency improves, their use of adverbial connectors is closer to the native speakers in terms of frequency and the appropriateness.Second, the three most frequently used semantic types in both Loncness and st4 are enumeration and addition, result and reference, contrast and concession. Compared to native speakers, Chinese English learners tend to overuse semantic types of enumeration and addition, result and reference, summation while underusing the semantic type of contrast and concession.Third, among the top fifteen most frequently used adverbial connectors in Loncness and St4, ten items are the same, namely, so, first(ly), also, then, second(ly), for example, too, however, still, thus. Adverbials like so, first(ly), then, too, for example are likely to be overused while adverbials like also, however, though, rather, therefore, still, thus tend to be underused. Some adverbial connectors have been used inappropriately, such as what’s(is) more, on the contrary.Fourth, the frequency of adverbial connectors and the writing scores demonstrate a positive correlation in st4. More adverbial connectors have been used in higher-scored writings. Chi-square further testifies this.All of these observed differences may attribute to the influence of the L1, the teacher and the teaching mode, the textbooks and the language fossilization, etc. The paper also analyses the influence the present research has on English writing and teaching. And the role adverbial connectors play in English argumentative writing can be better perceived by teachers and the students as well.
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