A Corpus-Based Study of Contrastive/Concessive Linking Adverbials in Spoken English of Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract

This paper reports a corpus-based study on the usage patterns of contrastive/concessive linking adverbials in Chinese EFL learners’ speech. The results suggest that: a) compared with English native speakers, the Chinese learners tend to significantly underuse contrastive/concessive adverbials in their speech; b) while both the learners and the native speakers rely heavily on a limited set of contrastive/concessive adverbials in their speech, the learners are found to overuse certain adverbials and underuse others; c) the learners prefer to use contrastive/concessive linking adverbials in initial position of a sentence. The factors underlying what is found in learners’ use of contrastive/concessive adverbials are multifold, such as mother tongue influence, teaching instructions, and semantic misuse. Pedagogical implications of the present study are drawn and research suggestions are presented at the end of the paper.