Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus LinguisticsVol. 7:2 (2002) ► pp.165–182
A corpus-based study of connectors in student writing
Research from the International Corpus of English in Hong Kong (ICE-HK)
This paper focuses on connector usage in the writing of university students in Hong Kong and in Great Britain, and presents results based on the comparison of data from the Hong Kong component (ICE-HK) and the British component (ICE-GB) of the International Corpus of English (ICE). While previous studies of Hong Kong student writing have dealt with the ‘underuse’, ‘overuse’, and ‘misuse’ of connectors, this study confines itself to the analysis of underuse and overuse, and is especially concerned with methodological issues relating to the accurate measurement of these concepts. Specifically, it takes as its benchmark of overuse and underuse the frequency of connectors in professional academic writing, in this case the data in the ICE-GB corpus. The results show that measured in this way, both groups of students – native speakers and non-native speakers alike – overuse a wide range of connectors. The results offer no evidence of significant underuse.
Keywords: connectors, student writing, ESL writing, academic writing, cohesion, coherence
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