Clarifying Learner Englishes From Greater China Using Native Language Identification — A Pilot Study

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to identify the characteristics of learner Englishes from the three major regions of Greater China, namely, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. To achieve this aim, a comparative study is conducted into the three learner Englishes via Native Language Identification (NLI). The average identification accuracy yielded in this study is 60 % on spoken monologues and 59.8 % on written essays. With these two satisfactory accuracies, this paper profiles the three learner Englishes by probing into their best-identifying indicators. The results show that learner English from Mainland China are characteristic for high degree of collectivistic involvement and uncertainty, low informativeness, and underuse of conjunctions; learner English from HKG is highly informative and impersonal; the two types of learner English from Taiwan are similar in that they share an individualistically involved style but differ in that the English essays by Taiwan L2 learners are found to be high on uncertainty and negation but low on informativeness and the usage of conjunctions..