A Corpus-based Study On The Use Of Connectives In English Writing Of CET-4and CET-6

English Writing is an important way to see an English learner s English level. And it salso a necessary part in all kinds of English examinations. Connectives play an essential rolein English Writings as cohesive ties. With the emergence of large corpus, analyzing softwareand wide application of computer, corpus-based study is becoming more and more popular.In this study, both qualitative and quantitative analytical methods are used to compareChinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and English Native Corpus (BNC) on theirtendency of connective usage. Using WordSmith and other statistical analysis software, thepresent study discusses the use of connectives in Chinese non-English major s composition,including total frequency, frequency of commonly used connectives, semantic relation andposition characteristic. The main purpose of the present study is to explore Chinesenon-English major s current situation and regular pattern of connective usage to find thedeficiencies and provide some instructions for English teaching and study. The present studyanswers the following questions:1. What are the frequency characteristics of Chinese non-English major s use ofconnectives compared with native English speakers?2. What are the semantic relation characteristics of Chinese non-English major s use ofconnectives compared with native English speakers?3. What are the position characteristics of Chinese non-English major s use ofconnectives compared with native English speakers?The research procedures are as follows: firstly, the study uses Quirk s classification ofconnectives to divide connectives into seven semantic types and a table is drawn to show allthe connectives analyzed in the present study. Then the sub-corpora used in the research arecarefully selected from CLEC and BNC, they are: ST3and ST4in CLEC and BNC writtenpart. The present study used WordSmith and BNC web CPQ-edition online search service toanswer the research questions. At the same time, with the assistance of File View, the realcontext is also examined carefully. Non-connectives were eliminated manually using FileView. What s more, Excel is used for noting and counting the frequency of each connective.Finally, the statistical findings are analyzed and discussed. The raw data collected are normalized before conducting contrastive studies on connectives. Moreover, Log-likelihoodtest is also used to test the observed differences.The research findings indicate that Chinese non-English majors have a generaltendency to use more connectives in their English writing. Chinese non-English majors andnative English speakers have displayed great tendency of similarity in the use of mostfrequently used connectives. And the distribution of different semantic types is almost thesame in the two corpora. Log-likelihood test shows that the Chinese English learners displaya stronger tendency in employing the connectives of resultive, contrastive and appositivewhile using fewer listing connectives. Chinese non-English majors use of some connectivesmight be influenced by their Chinese mode of thinking, the pattern of teachers instructionand the lack of stylistic awareness and so on.Based on the above analysis, four implications for English teaching and learning areput forward as follows: firstly, pay attention to discourse knowledge in reading and writingteaching; secondly, use proper teaching and learning strategies to help students understandhow to use connectives correctly in writing; thirdly, provide sufficient proper language inputfor students; fourthly, use connectives in proper and wise ways.