Corpus-based Contrastive Study Of It-clause In Academic Writing By Chinese Linguistic Learners And Native Speakers

Academic writing is an important social engagement through which writers use various interpersonal devices to build a relationship with their readers and persuade them to accept their views or research findings. The structure it-clause has been recognized as an effective way to communicate scientific knowledge from the propositional matter by using an impersonal subject it. This pattern appeared in the research papers as a salient feature to give a strengthening of something to be presented, to give advice, or to make a statement, and there is a high occurrence of it-clause in academic writing. However, studies focused on interpersonal function of this particular structure in academic writing is relatively few, and contrastive studies of this structure between Chinese advanced EFL learners and native linguistic professionals is fewer.In the present study we make a corpus-based contrastive study of it-clause in academic writings between native English professionals and Chinese English majors. We made two self-compiled corpora respectively contains 100 RAs of native experts and of Chinese English majors. After analyzing concordance lines of it-clause from native corpus, the author divided them into two syntactic groups, that is, it-clause with adjective complementation and passive verb complementation. Data shows that Chinese English majors prefer to use it-clause with passive verb complementation. Next the author discussed interpersonal differences of it-clause between the two corpora. Data shows that while native speakers tend to use an explicit way (it-clause with an adjectival complementation) to make claims, or express their attitudes and evaluations, Chinese learners would rather choose to use the most implicit way of expression, of which a passive verbal complementation is involved. Following Hyland's metadiscourse categories, it was found that compared with native experts, Chinese advanced English learners prefer to use it-clause to express certainty and importance of propositions, however, when expressing hedges and personal attitude, they are showing a great underuse. The possible underlying reasons can be explained mainly from perspectives of learner environment, learning strategies and cross-cultural differences.This study sheds some light on EFL academic writing teaching in China university. The categories suggested in this study proved a useful starting point for raising awareness of different interpersonal strategies used by native speakers and can provide the basis for learning to convey interpersonal stance in academic writing. This study also suggests some of the most frequently occurring, and most productive items in each of the categories native speakers use which may be adopted by Chinese EFL learners.