A Corpus-based Study on Concessive Clauses Used in English Writing by Chinese Senior High School Students

Abstract

This paper is designed to reveal the characteristics and figure out the errors in Chinese senior high students’ construction of concessive clause. The study uses data from Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) and a collection of concessive clauses from 499 English compositions written by senior two students in a key public high school in Beijing. The result shows that the construction of concessive clauses exhibits certain characteristics: (1) employing a wide range of linking words, “although” being the most frequently used concessive conjunction, which differs from the use of linking words in St2 from CLEC; (2) having a tendency to place the subordinate clause before the matrix and to construct the concessive clause as “Subject + Linking Verb + Predicate”. Fifty-seven errors are identified in 132 concessive clauses, including: (1) errors of linking words; (2) the wrong matrix-subordinate clause relationship; (3) errors such as choosing the wrong linking words, inconsistent tense between the matrix and subordinate clauses, errors within the clauses, and incorrect use of punctuation. These errors are mainly influenced by the negative transfer from Chinese.