A Corpus-based Study of Connectors: Research from the CAS Learner Corpus of English Essays

1. A Corpus-based Study of Connectors: Research from the CAS Learner Corpus of English Essays Haiyang Ai, Gong Peng Graduate University, Chinese Academy of Sciences

2. Outline of the talk • Introduction • Previous Studies • Methodology and Corpus Building • Results and Discussion • Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

3. Definition of connectors • Connectors are devices used to state the relationship between units of discourse (Biber et al, 1999) • Including conjunctions, some adverbs (e.g. firstly, namely, alternatively), and some prepositional phrases (e.g. in brief, in fact, of course)

4. Classification of connectors • Quirk et al’s (1985) framework A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language • Adding of corroborative category - (Granger & Tyson, 1996)- (Altenberg & Tapper, 1998)

5. Quirk et al’s (1985) framework

6. Connectors investigated (68 items) • Listing: first, second, third, firstly, secondly, thirdly, finally, furthermore, in addition, moreover, lastly, last but not least, to begin with, for another, in the first place, in the second place, similarly, for one thing, for another • Summative: to sum up, to conclude, in summary, in short, in brief, in conclusion, overall, all in all, altogether • Appositive: that is, that is to say, in other words, for instance, for example, namely, e.g.( eg), i.e.( ie)

7. Connectors investigated (68 items) • Resultive: consequently, hence, therefore, thus, as a result, as a consequence, in consequence, • Inferential: otherwise, in that case • Contrastive:however, although, (even) though, on the other hand, instead, after all, on the contrary, in contrast, besides, nevertheless, anyway, still, by contrast, nonetheless, alternatively • Transitional:meanwhile, eventually, subsequently, originally • Corroborative:actually, in fact, of course,indeed, apparently

8. Rationales to use corpus data • Corpus data are real and authentic => empirical study • Combines intuitions of many, more objective (McEnergy & Wilson, 2001) • Corpora are precious resources for testing out linguistic hypothesis (Meyer, 2002) • Learner corpus serves as the meeting point of corpus linguistics and SLA (Granger 1998) => pioneer: Sylviane Granger, ICLE

9. Research questions • What’s the semantic distribution? • What’s the top 10 most frequently used connectors? • Which connectors are overused? • What’s the differences and similarities compared with related studies, and why (universal features vs. transfer-related?)

10. Hypothesis • Hypothesis: PhD students at GUCAS would overuse connectors in their English writings • Formulated based on • Previous studies from HK and Taiwan (Crewe 1990, Field & Yip 1992, Milton & Tsang 1993, Bolton et al 2002, Chen 2006) • The author’s own observation

11. Significance • Systematic and corpus-based connector studies on PhD students writing of in GUCAS =>shed some light on the everlasting cohesion & coherence problems in ESL/EFL writing • Quantitative analysis can provide teachers (esp. at GUCAS) with a better idea on what needs to be done • The construction of the CASCLEE computer learner corpus itself (Resources)

12. Outline again • Approaching Connectors • Previous Studies • Methodology and Corpus Building • Results and Discussion • Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

13. Previous corpus-based studies • Milton & Tsang (1993) • high ratio of overuse of entire range of connectors (HKUST vs. Brown, LOB) • Granger & Tyson (1996) • 108 connectors, CIA method • overuse <= L1 transfer • Altenberg & Tapper (1998) • timed + untimed essays • underuse (resultive, contrastive) <= prefer less formal connectors

14. Previous corpus-based studies • Bolton et al (2002) • Overuse exists in both groups, ICE-HK vs. ICE-GB • Raised 3 methodological issues • Chen (2006) • Latest, published on IJCL, Taiwanese EFL Learners • Slightly overused connectors • Increase learner’s register differences

15. Outline • Introduction • Previous Studies • Methodology and Corpus Building • Results and Discussion • Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

16. Corpus building • Corpus name: CASCLEE - CAS Corpus of Learner English Essays • Corpus Size: 494 essays, 120, 836 words, covering timed and untimed writings • Data analysis: WordSmith Tool 4.0 + Manual Extraction • Sampling & Representativeness • Learner Background & Register of text

17. Method: CIA • Contrastive interlanguage analysis (Granger 1996) • L2 vs. L1 • L2 vs. L2 • Reference corpora • Informative Writings of BNC Sampler Corpus (L1) • The ICLE French Subcorpus (L2)

18. Outline • Introduction • Previous Studies • Methodology and Corpus Building • Results and Discussion • Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

19. Overall frequencies (normalised)

20. Semantic distribution

21. Top 10 most frequently used connectors

22. Quantitative difference: Overuse • Overused connectors • Group A (see Table 4) • Group B (see Table 5)

23. Comparing with related studies • Altenberg & Tapper (1998)Overuse of furthermore, for instance, still, of course (CASCLEE also) • Bolten et al (2002)overuse both exist in ICE-HK & ICE-GB • Chen (2006) slightly overused

24. Major findings • PhD students overused a whole range of connectors (hypothesis supported) • They significantly overused listing and summative connectors • Overuse of connectors exist both in CASCLEE and ICLE French subcorpus

25. Outline • Introduction • Previous Studies • Methodology and Corpus Building • Results and Discussion • Conclusion and Pedagogical Implication

26. Conclusion • Objectives and contributions • Build the CASCLEE learner corpus • Analyzing connectors based on Quirk et al (1985) framework • Methodology: contrastive interlanguage analysis • L1 vs. L2 (CASCLE vs. BNC Sampler-info) • L2 vs. L2 (CASCLEE vs. ICLE-French)

27. Pedagogical Implication • Pedagogical implication • Focus on contrastive, resultive and appositional connectors, over 70% • Listing connectors should be addressed • Correct forms of connectors • Looking forward… • More large-scale, corpus-based studies on EFL learners’ connector usage • Probe into the possible causes for certain connector usage patterns

28. The End !