A Study On The Use Of First Person Subject Pronouns In Argumentative Writing Of Chinese College Students

Non-native English learners often find it overwhelming to write in English. And it has constantly drawn researchers' attention to the writing practice of Chinese EFL(English as Foreign Language) learners.Among different types of writing, argumentative writing is a common and familiar style to this group of English learners. In recent years, the focus of research subject in this research field changes to learners' themselves and their self-reference in writings. First person pronouns can act as a connection between the writers and readers, and through the analysis of their discourse functions, it help to identify found the characteristics of learners when using English as foreign language. Meanwhile, with the development of corpus linguistics and application of learner corpus, researches can provide more empirical and intuitive proofs for summary of characteristics of Chinese English learners and give more objective and convincing account of them.This study explores the usage of first person subject pronouns Chinese college students of non-English majors in argumentative writings by finding the frequencies and distributions of first person pronouns in Chinese Learner English Corpus and the change in the use of them along the increase of students' level. A mini corpus is with data coming from Chinese Learner English Corpus, known as CLEC, with 100 argumentative compositions by learners from two groups. The researcher uses software like Antconc to examine the frequencies and find discourse functions of first person subject pronouns.The results show that first person plural pronoun “we” is used more frequently than its singular counterpart “I”, and cross-group comparisons show that the overall frequency of first person subject pronouns steadily decreases along with learners' development. Students tend to use first person singular pronoun to state a goal, and use first person plural pronoun to state results or claims. Due to the differences of research object, Chinese learners seldom use either “I” or “we” to explain a procedure.The findings will enrich the research of Chinese English learners' English learning and writing, and may help the teachers and instructors to have a more comprehensible understanding of Chinese English learners' writings practice.