Abstract
The correct use of connectives has great influence on language learners’ writing proficiency, while errors of connectives are common in foreign learners’ interlanguages. This study examines the types of errors that occur in native English-speaking learners’ Chinese writing, the possible causes for the errors, and the learners’ consequent learning strategies. The present research adopted corpora investigation, questionnaire survey, and focus-group interviews to examine the error types, causes of identified errors, and related learning strategies. Data analysis indicated that: (1) the main error types made by native English-speaking learners from high to low are misuse, overuse, mismatch, misplacement, and underuse of connectives; (2) causes related to intralingual transfer greatly contributes to the presence of errors; and (3) memory, social, and cognitive strategies were the most preferred, followed by metacognitive and compensation strategies, and then by effective strategies which were the least preferred. These findings showed that different strategies can be employed to cope with different errors in writing. The study further suggests that teachers and educators need to help native English-speaking learners find strategies that work best for them in terms of learning Chinese connectives.
Highlights
Connectives are one-word items or fixed word combinations that express the relationship between clauses, sentences, or utterances in the discourse (Pander and Sanders, 2006, p. 33)
This study investigated the types of errors that native Englishspeaking learners make when using Chinese connectives, the possible causes, and the strategic responses they adopted in response to the errors
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the Chinese connective error types in native English-speaking learners’ writing and the strategic responses they adopted in response to these connective errors
Summary
Connectives are one-word items or fixed word combinations that express the relationship between clauses, sentences, or utterances in the discourse (Pander and Sanders, 2006, p. 33). Connectives are recognized as conjunctions (Halliday and Hasan, 1976), cohesive devices (Schiffrin, 1987), discourse markers (Fraser, 1999), and discourse units (Celle and Huart, 2007). They play an important role in language expression fluency as well as argumentation reliability in both spoken and written language (Hu and Li, 2015; Uccelli et al, 2015; Crossley et al, 2016) and in writing and reading (Ferstl and von Cramon, 2001; Crosson and Lesaux, 2013). Other studies have shown that connectives are especially challenging for language learners since even experienced
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