Article published in:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 33:2 (2020) ► pp. 505–535

Linking or delinking of ideas?

The use of adversative linking adverbials by advanced EFL learners

| Universidad Complutense de Madrid
| Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
This paper explores the use of adversative Linking Adverbials (LAs) in the academic writing of advanced English Foreign Language (EFL) learners with different linguistic backgrounds. The learner corpus used in this study consists of 50 argumentative essays which are contrasted with a native corpus: the American university students’ corpus (LOCNESS). Liu’s (2008) comprehensive list of adversative LAs has been used for the analysis. Findings reveal that both non-native (NNS) and native speakers of English (NS) use similar types of adversative LAs, but NNS place them regularly in sentence- and sometimes in paragraph-initial position, which often results in punctuation issues and misuse. A total of 9 LAs were found to be overused (e.g., nevertheless) and underused (e.g., actually) by NNS. The analysis performed according to L1 has yielded unexpected results in terms of preference, frequency, and placement of adversative LAs. The so-called ‘teaching effect’ is considered one of the main factors influencing the learners’ choices.
Keywords: adversative linking adverbials, learner corpus, advanced learners of English, teaching effect, language transfer
Keywords: conectores adversativos, corpus de estudiantes, estudiantes avanzados de inglés, efecto pedagógico, transferencia lingüística
Published online: 10 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.18020.nav
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