Sentence Connectors in English Academic Writing

102 Pages·2009·1.29 MB·English

by  Ellen Wießner

Philosophische Fakultät
Professur Englische Sprachwissenschaft
Magisterarbeit
Sentence Connectors in English Academic Writing -
An Empirical Comparison of Research Articles by German
and Native English Writers
eingereicht von
Ellen Wießner
geboren am 14. August 1982
Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Josef Schmied
Dr. Christoph Haase
Chemnitz, den 7. Juli 2008
ii
Contents
List of Abbreviations iv
List of Figures v
List of Tables vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Academic Writing and the EFL Context 4
2.1 Academic English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2 Writing Across Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 English as a Foreign Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.1 Aspects on L2 Composition and Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3.2 Previous Research on Cohesion in EFL Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3 Sentence Connectors - Functions and Uses 22
3.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2 Structural Relations between Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2.1 Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2.2 Subordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2.3 Adverbial Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.2.4 Overlap of Syntactic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.3 Logical Relations between Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.3.1 Additive Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.3.2 Adversative Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.3.3 Causal Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.4 Temporal Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3.5 Overlap of Semantic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.4 Position of Sentence Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Contents iii
3.5 Sentence Connectors and Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4 Empirical Study 38
4.1 Purpose of the Study and Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.2 Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.3 Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.4 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.5 Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.5.1 Overall Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.5.2 Overall Variety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.5.3 Syntactic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.5.4 Semantic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.5.5 Connector Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5 Summary of Findings and Discussion 60
5.1 Main Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.2 Connector Frequency: A Pointer to L1 Interference? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3 Connector Variety: Native and Non-Native Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3.1 ’Lexical Teddy Bears’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.3.2 Inconsistency in Register . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.3.3 British and American Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5.4 Connector Position: A Pointer to Non-Native Pattern? . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6 Conclusion and Implications for Future Research 67
Primary Sources viii
Secondary Sources xi
A Additional Data on Primary Material xv
B Additional Tables xxii
Zusammenfassung xxviii
Selbstständigkeitserklärung xxxiv
iv
List of Abbreviations
Abbreviation Meaning
AE American English
BE British English
CConj Coordinating Conjunction
EAP English for Academic Purposes
ESL/EFL English as a Second/Foreign Language
L1 First or Native Language
L2 Second or Foreign Language
LinkAdv Linking Adverbial
MELAB Michigan English Language Assessment Battery
RA Research Article
SConj Subordinating Conjunction
TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language
v
List of Figures
4.1 Distribution across Syntactic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.2 Distribution across Semantic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.3 Sentence-Initial Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
vi
List of Tables
4.1 Statistical Data of Text Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.2 Overall Connector Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.3 Most Frequently Used Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.4 Connector Variety according to Syntactic Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.5 Clause-level Coordinators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.6 Coordinators and Linking Adverbials in Combination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.7 Additive Linking Adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.8 Adversative Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.9 Selected Adversative Subordinators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.10 Causal Connectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.11 Temporal Connectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.12 Connectors with Multiple Semantic Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.13 Initial Connector Usage across Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
1
1 Introduction
Although much attention, time, effort, and resources are devoted to teaching L2 aca-
demicwritinganditsconventions,itappearsthatnon-nativespeaker(NNS)textdiffers
substantially from that of native speakers (NSs) of similar academic standing (Hinkel,
2002, p. xvii).
As English is the world’s predominant language of research and scholarship (Swales, 1990),
scholars and scientists from all over the world are required to have proficient knowledge
of the conventions of English academic discourse these days. Especially when publishing
academic papers and literature, well-developed writing skills are necessary to ensure that
the intended meaning is communicated properly. Non-native speakers of English, however,
are challenged by writing in a foreign language. Studies have shown that there are sub-
stantial linguistic and rhetorical differences between native and non-native written texts
and that non-native speakers of English often lack coherence in their writing (see, for ex-
ample, Hinkel, 2002; Silva, 1993; Wikborg, 1990). As has been emphasized by numerous
researchers,thislackofcoherence“canseriouslyaffectthecredibilityofnon-nativewriters”
(Mauranen, 1993, p. 2) and thus may be detrimental to their academic and professional
careers.
The fact that non-native English writing is often conceived as incoherent and ineffective
by native speakers is partly attributed to the different writing styles and organizational
patternsemployedbynativeandnon-nativeEnglishwriters(Hinds,1990;Mauranen,1993),
but also to a deficient and inadequate use of cohesive ties (e.g., Hinkel, 2002; Milton and
Tsang, 1993). The connection between cohesion and coherence is in fact an often discussed
issueintextlinguisticresearch. Itisevident,however,thatbothcohesionandcoherenceare
crucial to produce clear and well-organized texts. Whereas cohesion is generally referred
to the surface structure of a text, including overt semantic relations linking sentences or
sections of a text together (Halliday and Hasan, 1976), coherence mostly derives from
the concepts and relations underlying the sentences (DeBeaugrande and Dressler, 1981).
Cohesion thuscanbedefinedas“continuityinwordandsentencestructure”andcoherence
1. Introduction 2
as “continuity in meaning and context” (Louwerse and Graesser, 2005, p. 216).
Although the mere presence of cohesive devices is no guarantee for a text to be coherent,
it has been shown that cohesion contributes to coherence in various ways and that the
absence or misuse of explicit cohesive markers may rather distract the reader and lead to
whatBublitzandLenk(1999)refertoas’disturbedcoherence’. Moreover,asLorenz(1999)
points out, “advanced learners’ deficits are most resilient in the area of lexico-grammar,
wherelexicalitemsareemployedtosignalgrammaticalandtextualrelations”(p. 56). This
clearly involves cohesive ties, such as conjunctive expressions and demonstrative reference,
and should therefore be subject to further consideration.
Most textlinguistic studies analyzing cohesive ties in foreign language writing are based
on the concept of cohesion formulated by Halliday and Hasan (1976). In their work on
text-internal cohesion in English, they distinguish five types of cohesive relations, namely
reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Probably the most dis-
tinctive feature of non-native writing is that of conjunction. Conjunctive expressions in-
clude linking words and phrases from different grammatical categories, i.e. coordinators,
subordinatorsandlinkingadverbials,andaregenerallysubsumedundertheumbrellaterms
connectors or connectives. Many researchers stress the importance of connectors for mark-
ing logical relations between propositions (cf. Halliday and Hasan, 1976; Greenbaum and
Quirk, 1990; Leech and Svartvik, 1994) and, according to Lorenz (1999),
connectorusageisevidentlyanareawhichissensitivetomarkedlynon-nativestyle.
Whicheverwayagivengroupoflearnersmayleanintermsofconnectorfrequency,and
whetherornotthenumberofconnectivescorrelateswithproficiency,thewayinwhich
logical relations are signaled does have significant bearing on the subjective coherence
within learner’s writing (p. 57).
One way to investigate connector usage in native and non-native writing is the compar-
ative analysis of text corpora. Corpus-based studies are a useful tool in second language
research since they provide empirical evidence about actual language use. The quantita-
tiveandfunctionalanalysisofspecificlinguisticitemsinnaturally-occurringtextsallowsto
identify major patterns in language which can be particularly helpful for language learning
and teaching. Thus “knowing when to use structures appropriately is an essential part of
developing communicative competence in a language” (Biber et al., 1998, p. 80), and so
thefindingsofcorpusinvestigationscanbeused, forexample, toinformwritinginstruction
and pedagogy.
1. Introduction 3
Research on non-native English writing, however, has been carried out predominantly
for speakers of English as a second language (ESL) living or studying in English-speaking
countries, i.e. the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996). As
the majority of ESL students in these countries originate from non-Western cultures, stud-
ies on the English writing of speakers of Chinese (e.g., Field and Yip, 1992; Milton and
Tsang, 1993; Hinkel, 2002), Korean and Japanese (e.g., Hinkel, 2002) or Arabic (e.g., Reid,
1992;Hinkel,2002)havetakenaprominentplaceincontrastiveandtextlinguisticresearch.
In the European countries, research on English as a foreign language (EFL) composition
most notably includes EFL student writing from the Nordic countries, i.e. Finland, Swe-
den, Denmark and Norway, as reported in the NORDWRITE project (see, for example,
Evensen, 1990; Wikborg, 1990) as well as scientific writing by Finnish academics (Ventola
and Mauranen, 1991). The English writing of speakers of other European languages, such
as German, French and Italian as well as the East-European languages, has only been
addressed to a limited extent so far.
The purpose of this paper thus is to compare the English writing of German and native
English scientists. In particular, it is to furnish information about the frequency and
diversity of sentence connectors employed in English research articles by German and
native speakers of English. The study draws on the assumption that German EFL writers’
use of sentence connectors is different from that of native English speakers and that they
may over- or underuse these cohesive devices to a certain extent. It is further assumed
that native and non-native English writing differs with regard to connector position and
variety, and that these differences account for markedly native and non-native patterns of
connector usage.
The paper is organized in three main parts. The first part discusses some key issues
in English academic writing and provides an overview of previous research on writing in
a foreign language. The following chapter gives a syntactic and semantic classification
of sentence connectors providing a functional basis for the subsequent study. The third
part then presents the empirical comparison of sentence connectors in the English research
articlesofGermanandnativeEnglishwriters, followedbyadiscussionofthemainfindings
and a final conclusion.
4
2 Academic Writing and the EFL Context
2.1 Academic English
Academic success usually depends on following the conventions for academic English
in the relevant field of study (Hoadley-Maidment and Mercer, 1998, p. 291).
English is used as a medium for communication in higher education not only in English-
speaking,butalsoincreasinglyinnon-English-speakingcountries,anditservesasthelingua
francaininternationalscientificdiscourse(Hyland,2006). AcademicEnglishthereforeisof
crucial importance to the academic world. Though ’academic’ is a rather vague notion, in
text and discourse analysis, it is clearly associated with a particular type of discourse. “As
certain discourses become more deeply embedded in the social functioning of groups, these
discourses become conventionalized; they become recognized genres which serve functional
purposes in communication” (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, p. 136).
Genres are characterized in terms of rhetorical features that are considered to be ap-
propriate for a particular discourse. Disregarding those rhetorical conventions can have
serious effects on the speakers’ or writers’ reliability. If writers fail to meet the readers’
expectations of a particular text type, their statements are likely to be misconceived and
dismissed (Hinds, 1990; Mauranen, 1993). That is why EAP (English for Academic Pur-
poses) programs aim at raising the speakers’ and writers’ awareness for the syntactic and
lexical particularities of academic and scientific discourse as well as for the different genres
and registers1 existing in academic English.
1Theterms’genre’and’register’aregenerallybothusedtodescribefunctionallanguagevarietiesserving
particular communicative purposes. Some linguists draw a distinction between the two in that ’genre’
is used to refer to the text type itself (e.g. a scientific research article) while ’register’ refers to the
stylistic choices (e.g. the language of science) (Swales, 1990). Instead of distinguishing between the
twoconcepts,mostresearchers,however,showaclearpreferenceforeitherofthetwo, disregardingthe
other. Swales (1990), for example, exclusively uses ’genre’ while Biber et al. (1999) exclusively uses
’register’. In the present study, both terms are used without particular specification.