| This thesis concerns the usages of high-frequency coordinate conjunctions AND BUT OR in English writing by Chinese EFL learners and American native speakers. The materials are original from Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (BROWN). In particular, it focuses on the differences and misuse that Chinese EFL learners make in English writing.This study is mainly adopted the research methods of using computerized corpora and database software tool AntConc3.2.1 and Log-Likelihood Ratio Test (LLT) in SPSS. They were used to analyze the frequency, significant differences and collocations between two corpora.The consequences demonstrate that Chinese EFL learners, even at the advanced proficiency level, still inevitably make great misuse in using high-frequency coordinate conjunctions AND BUT OR. Chinese EFL learners tend to overuse the conjunctions AND,BUT, especially in lower degrees. Simultaneously, they underuse the conjunction OR seriously. Only advanced students make approach of native speakers in using conjunction OR. In addition, there are great significant differences between corpus CLEC and corpus BROWN through the analysis by Log-Likelihood calculator. As it comes to collocation, Chinese EFL learners prefer to use phrases and habitual usages, but native speakers tend to use these three conjunctions as their basic meanings.In terms of these pedagogic considerations, teaching methods based on this research were explored. Factors that affect language learning, such as negative transfer of mother tongue, overgeneralization and incomplete application of rules were found. In fact, the most fundamental reason is due to different way of thinking by western and eastern countries people. |
