A Comparative Study Of Use Of Nominalization In Argumentative Essays By English Majors And Native English Speakers

This study investigates the differences in the use of nominalization between the Chinese students’argumentative writings and native English speakers’in terms of types and frequency of use of nominalization. Specifically, this study addresses the following questions:1) What are the general characteristics of use of nominalization by Chinese English majors and native English speakers in their argumentative writings? 2) Are there any differences between Chinese English majors and native English speakers in the use of lexical and syntactic nominalization in their argumentative writings? If yes, what are they? 3) Are there any differences in Chinese English majors’use of lexical nominalization and syntactic nominalization between their different learning stages? If yes, what are they?The data used in the present study were extracted from The Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SWECCL) and The Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS).56 argumentative essays by Year One Students,55 by Year Three, were chosen from SWECCL according to the same topics.31 argumentative essays were extracted from LOCNESS according to the similar topics to the counterparts of Chinese EFL learners. The chosen data were consistently tagged, and AntConc was used to retrieve nominalization occurring in the data with manual double checking to exclude the non-nominalization words or patterns. The obtained statistics were processed and analyzed with SPSS 22.0 to undertake a comprehensive comparison, which yields the following findings:(1) In terms of use of lexical nominalization, there is a significant difference between both groups of learners. The frequency of use of de-verbal nominalization by both Chinese English majors and Native English Speakers is higher than that of de-adjective nominalization. The frequency of use of lexical nominalization by Chinese English majors is lower than that by Native English speakers, suggesting that Chinese EFL learners are not yet sufficiently aware of the need for the use of lexical nominalizationin in their argumentative writings and the register differences between oral and written productions. Of all the sub-types,-tion ranks the first in the frequency of use by the two groups.(2) In terms of use of syntactic nominalization, there is a significant difference between Chinese English majors and Native English speakers. The frequency of use by Chinese English majors is generally lower than that by Native English speakers, but Chinese English majors of higher learning stages have reached almost the same level of native English speakers in the use of that-clause nominalization.To-infinitive nominalization enjoys a higher frequency of use by both groups of learners. The results suggest that the Chinese learners have received a good training on that-clause nominalization and have a good mastery of use of to-infinitive nominalizationin in their written production.(3) The frequency of lexical and syntactic nominalization used by Chinese English majors tends to be increasing along with their learning level. However, no significant difference was found between the Chinese English majors of two different learning stages, implying that the Chinese learners’ argumentative writing performances have varied along with their learning stages and have changed for the better in some degree though not obviously.The findings suggest that tertiary EFL teaching in China, and writing teaching in particular, may take types and frequency of use of nominalization as one of the indications to the quality of EFL learners’ argumentative writings and thus to the assessment of the their writing proficiency.