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
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.The importance of adversative linking adverbials
  • 4.Corpus linguistics, learner corpora and contrastive methods
  • 5.Methodology
    • 5.1Context and corpus compilation
      • 5.1.1Equivalent type and similar stage of the learner
      • 5.1.2Comparable text type
    • 5.2Data and procedure
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Overall frequency of adversative LAs
    • 6.2Overuse and underuse of adversative linking adverbials
    • 6.3Use of adversative linking adverbials by L1 groups
    • 6.4Difficulties in the use of LAs: Zooming in on five cases of misuse
      • 6.4.1Nevertheless
      • 6.4.2Although
      • 6.4.3In contrast
      • 6.4.4However
      • 6.4.5On the other hand
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 February 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.18020.nav
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