Connectors as Textual Orienting Themes in Korean and ...journal.kate.or.kr/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/kate_62_1_6.pdf · connectors in Korean EFL and Australian ENL university students

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English Teaching, Vol. 62, No. 1, Spring 2007

Connectors as Textual Orienting Themes in Korean and Australian Student Essay Writing

Seong-Woo Lee (Chonnam National University)

Lee, Seong-Woo. (2007). Connectors as textual orienting themes in Korean and Australian student essay writing. English Teaching, 62 (1), 121-147.

Although there has recently been much empirical research on native and non-native writers’ connector usage, relatively few comparative studies to date have been conducted on connectors in Theme from a semantic perspective. This study examines the use of connectors in Korean EFL and Australian ENL university students’ English essay writing, with the main focus on the connectors employed in thematic position in the t-unit. The analytical methods adopted here have been mainly informed by systemic functional accounts of Theme and conjunctive cohesion. The results of the study have revealed that Korean university student writers tend to overuse connectors (in particular, coordinators) in initial thematic position. Korean university students’ ‘overthematization’ of connectors has been found to be mainly due to their lack of control over formal written genres and registers. In particular, they have been found to have insufficient knowledge of mode differences between speech and writing, frequently employing characteristic connectors of spoken discourse in their essay writing. It is thus suggested that in Korea’s tertiary English education should give due weight to the teaching of formal written English, with special attention to the genre/register-sensitivity of various discourse features and patterns.

I. INTRODUCTION Numerous comparative studies have recently been carried out on the use of connectors

in native and non-native university students’ English essay writing from pedagogical perspectives (e.g., Bolton, Nelson & Hung, 2002; Clachar, 2003; Granger & Tyson, 1996; Hinkel, 2002; Schleppegrell, 1996). It has been suggested from previous studies that non-native student writers of English tend to use connectors significantly differently from their native speaker counterparts. In particular, as will be seen below, non-native student writers have a strong tendency to overuse connectors, and also employ speech-typical connectors relatively frequently.

Most, if not all, comparative studies on native and non-native student writers’ use of

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connectors seem to agree that connectors are in general ‘overused’ in non-native writing of English (Bolton et al., 2002; Crewe, 1990; Hinkel, 2002). Hinkel (2002), for example, examined various types of conjunctions in a large number of English argumentative texts (about 1,450 texts) written by ENL (English as a native language) and ESL (English as a second language) university students (Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese students). She found that both sentence-level conjunctions such as therefore and what she called logical-semantic conjunctions such as because of that were invariably more common in the ESL than in the ENL writing. In particular, sentence-level conjunctions were more than twice as common in any of the six ESL essay groups (medians ranging from 1.33 to 1.95) as in the ENL group (0.64).1 Interestingly, in Hinkel’s study, Korean students – the focus of this study – were seen to employ sentence-level conjunctions most frequently, with the frequency in their writing being more than three times higher than in their American ENL counterparts’ writing.

An exception rejecting the generally accepted hypothesis that non-native writers overuse connectors comes from Granger and Tyson’s (1996) study. Granger and Tyson compared the frequencies of connectors in a corpus of EFL (English as a foreign language) argumentative essays (89,918 words) taken from the French component of the International Corpus of Learner English with those in a corpus of ENL essays (77,723 words) taken from the Louvian Corpus of Native English Essay Writing. In their study, overall, French EFL university students in Arts used connectors, in particular those functioning to contrast (e.g. however) and develop the argument logically (e.g. therefore), considerably less frequently (1085 instances per 100,000 words) than their native speaker counterparts (1178 instances).

Granger and Tyson’s (1996) results above, however, seem to be rather misleading. In their study of connectors, which was carried out mainly based on Quirk et al.’s (1985, pp. 631-647) category of ‘conjuncts’, Granger and Tyson did not take into account ‘temporal connectors’, assuming that they were “external to the argumentation” (1996, p. 20). They instead included what Quirk et al. (1985) called ‘attitudinal disjuncts’ (e.g., of course) and ‘emphasizers’ (e.g., in fact), most of which are deemed interpersonally, rather than textually, prominent in function (see Halliday, 1994, pp. 81-83). Also, in their study, unlike in most other studies on native and non-native writers’ connector usage, and and but, which have been found to be particularly common in non-native essay writing (Bolton et al., 2002), were simply left out of consideration. It has been well evidenced that and and but, in particular those employed at the sentence boundary, can serve as cohesive connectors (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Dorgeloh, 2004), even in formal writing (Biber et al., 1999; 1 In Hinkel’s (2002) study, the median frequency rates were calculated in proportion of the number

of the instances of a category to the total number of the words in the text examined. E.g.) Five instances of conjunctions in a text with 300 words: 5 / 300 x 100(%) = 1.67%.


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Rossette, 2004). Granger and Tyson’s study should thus not be used as rejecting non-native

writers’ general tendency to overuse connectors.

Non-native writers have also been found to show a relatively strong tendency to transfer

speech-typical connectors into writing (Schleppegrell, 1996; Clachar, 2003). Influenced by

linguistics studies on differences between speech and writing (Chafe, 1984; Halliday,

1985), Schleppegrell (1996), for example, studied American ESL university students’ use

of because clauses in written discourse. She found that the ESL writers tended to employ

the ‘internal’ (or, interpersonal), rather than ‘external’ (or, ideational), type of because

clauses (see Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Martin, 1992 for the distinction between internal and

external conjunctions). To elaborate, they often used because clauses not to show a causal

relationship between propositions, but, often together with oral discourse features (e.g., let

say), to justify their personal viewpoint or assertion, or to connect large discourse segments.

The ESL writers, it was also found, often added information in because-only clauses, or

independent because clauses, which are deemed rare in writing.

II. THE PRESENT STUDY

Non-native student writers’ overuse of connectors and their transfer of speech-typical

connectors into writing, briefly noted above, is taken into account in the present study. The

study, however, focuses mainly on examining the connectors employed in initial position.

This is because connectors most typically occupy first position, which in English,

according to Halliday (1967, 1994), realizes the function of Theme making a significant

contribution to the overall text development.2 The Theme, followed by the Rheme, is an

important textual resource to construct ideational and interpersonal meanings as

information, and thus to organize clauses or sentences as ‘local messages’ to be conveyed

to the reader (Matthiessen, 1995, p. 20).

As well evidenced in the literature (Brown & Yule, 1983; Halliday, 1994; Quirk, et al.,

1985), the ideational information in initial position typically, if not always, comes from the

preceding verbal context. This implies that the ideational thematic information itself,

mostly without the help of explicit connectors, can contribute to the cohesive connection

between parts of discourse. Non-native writers’ overuse of connectors therefore tends to

make individual messages in a text unnecessarily ‘cluttered up’ (Crewe, 1990, p. 324), thus

often affecting the overall text coherence negatively rather than positively. This negative

effect can be aggravated by non-native writers’ marked tendency to place connectors in

initial thematic position. Green, Christopher and Lam (2000), for example, found that

2 Function words such as Theme and Rheme are written with an initial capital.

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Chinese EFL university students’ relatively frequent thematization of three additive logical connectors (i.e., moreover, furthermore, besides) and two ‘topic-fronting’ devices (i.e., for, concerning) often led to the violation of the unmarked pattern of information progression, i.e. from ‘Given’ conflated with Theme, to ‘New’ with Rheme. Green et al. further showed that Chinese EFL writers’ strong tendency to place such elements in thematic position caused native English teachers to have great difficulty understanding the EFL texts, and accordingly to mark them down.

Green et al.’s study above is particularly interesting here in that it explored non-native student writers’ connector usage from a thematic perspective; however, as seen, it confined its interest to a few selected additive connectors. This study examines initially occurring connectors of various semantic types and syntactic forms comprehensively in Korean and Australian university student essay writing. The study eventually aims to help Korean EFL university students develop writing skills that are essential for linking individual messages appropriately in tertiary-level English essay writing.

III. METHODOLOGY

1. The Texts Analyzed This study first set up as model texts essays written by Australian ENL university

students, in reference to which Korean EFL university students’ essays were examined. It should be noted, however, that though the study looked at both the EFL and the ENL essays, its primary concern is with examining Korean students’ writing skills for developing ideas, or ‘messages’ with various types of connectors in written English discourse. The purpose of analyzing Australian students’ writing is then to identify ‘minimally’ acceptable writing skills for using connectors appropriately in formal essay writing in internationalized ENL tertiary contexts. The analysis of the ENL texts will also be used as illuminating relative strengths and weaknesses of the Korean EFL texts.

Following Kirkpatrick’s (1997) and Swales’ (1990) suggestions for a systematic comparative written discourse analysis, the study analyzed ‘authentic’ texts written by ‘similar’ groups of writers in ‘similar’ situations for ‘similar’ purposes, mostly without receiving writing help from others. That is, both the EFL and the ENL essays were produced as written assignments by undergraduates for course completion without much time pressure in their normal course of study. However, since the EFL and the ENL essays were produced in, respectively, the Korean and the Australian participants’ conventional tertiary contexts, the essay lengths and prompts were naturally different. The EFL essays were between 450 and 550 words long; the ENL essays were typically around 1000 words


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long. The essay prompt for the EFL participants was: ‘Discuss TEE (Teaching English in English) for Korean secondary school students in the current Korean EFL context’. The essay prompt for the ENL participants was: ‘Discuss the instructional implications of any area or areas of either human cognitive architecture or the development of cognitive structures’. As seen here, the EFL essay topic is more general in nature than the ENL essay topic; however, the essays submitted as written assignments in tertiary contexts, with their lecturers or tutors as the audience, are in general normally expected to be in the formal mode of exposition and/or argument supported with sound logic and evidence.

The data selected for analysis were composed of two corpora: the EFL corpus consisting of 20 essays selected from 72 essays written by Korean undergraduates specializing in English Education at a top-ranked university in Seoul; the ENL corpus consisting of 15 essays selected from 99 essays written by first-year Australian university students specializing in Education at a highly internationalized university in Sydney. The selection of the final data was first based on a simple questionnaire survey: e.g. the participants’ age (ranging from 18 to 21), their overseas learning experience (not more than 6 months), and the ENL participants’ L1 background (Australians who did not use any language other than English extensively at home and school).

Then, based on the assessment by an experienced native speaker ESL teacher (for the EFL texts) and the tutors in charge (for the ENL texts), the remaining essays in each corpus (30 EFL and 43 ENL essays) were divided into three ranking groups: high, middle and low. Of them, 20 EFL and 15 ENL essays were finally selected for analysis of connectors in Theme (and Rheme): five high-rated, 10 medium-rated, and five low-rated EFL essays; five essays in each of the three ENL proficiency groups. The reason for analyzing more EFL essays is mainly due to the difference in the average length between the EFL and the ENL corpus; and the middle group EFL essays should be expected to be more revealing and representative of the EFL corpus than the other two groups. The assessment of the EFL essays was done in a blind reading, based on a holistic scoring system including four criteria, i.e. ‘structure and cohesion’, ‘content’, ‘grammar’, and ‘vocabulary and spelling’. The assessment of the ENL essays was based on ‘discourse organization’, ‘style’ (including vocabulary and grammar), ‘content’, and ‘argument and analysis’, with the last two given more emphasis.

The finally selected essays were all manually analyzed, and will be discussed primarily quantitatively, with the method of frequency counts mainly employed. Though the size of the corpus is relatively small, the corpus-based manual data analysis is both detailed and delicate so that it has proven useful and helpful to investigate native and non-native writers’ connector usage in ‘authentic’ written texts ‘objectively’, rather than intuitively, from a ‘descriptive’, rather than prescriptive, perspective.

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2. Analytical Methods For analysis of connectors in Theme, this study basically follows Halliday’s (1967,

1994) accounts of ‘textual Themes’, that is, non-ideational textual elements preceding the ‘topical Theme’ (i.e., the first ideational, or propositional element functioning in transitivity). The study, however, departs from Halliday in two important ways. Firstly, unlike Halliday and many other systemic functional Theme researchers, who tend to adopt the ‘clause’ as their basic grammatical unit for Theme analysis, this study, following Fries (1983, 1995), employs the ‘t-unit’ as the basic unit to segment each of the texts into individual messages. The t-unit is defined as a single independent clause plus any subordinate clause(s) attached to it (Hunt, 1965). Thus, the present study focuses mainly on analyzing cohesive connectors between and across independent clauses, with subordinating conjunctions (and coordinating conjunctions, too, when not followed by the explicit Subject) ignored.

The t-unit division of the texts means that in this study, frequencies of connectors are calculated primarily on the basis of the numbers of the t-units examined. In previous quantitatively oriented corpus-based studies on connectors, the frequency calculation of connectors has often been based on the numbers of the words examined (Biber et al., 1999; Granger & Tyson, 1996; Hinkel, 2002). This tendency was criticized by Bolton et al. (2002) as “fundamentally flawed” or “illogical” (p. 172). Bolton et al. argued that connectors primarily operate across sentence boundaries, thus employing the sentence as their unit for calculating what they termed the ‘ratio of frequency (Rf)’ (i.e., Rf per 1000 sentences). Bolton et al.’s criticism might be considered legitimate, though the word-based frequency calculation in some studies may well be understandable, due to the large size of the corpora (e.g. over 40 million words in Biber et al.’s study).

Bolton et al.’s sentence-based frequency calculation seems to be supported by Halliday and Hasan (1976) arguing that cohesive relations, including conjunctive cohesion, are basically inter-sentential, not intra-sentential, relation. The orthographic sentence, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop, however, is in some cases inappropriate for the analysis of conjunctive cohesion, partly due to the indeterminate or flexible punctuation system (Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 232). Cohesive connectors often occur between independent clauses within a sentence, for example, followed by a semicolon, as in students must have acquired the appropriate schemas; otherwise the teaching will make no sense. Also, as Halliday (1994, p. 232) noted, in modern English, some discourse Adjuncts such as however may function ‘like’ paratactic structural conjunctions within a sentence (e.g., younger children still adopt a rehearsal strategy, however, if given, for example, the digits 435682, they will…).

Secondly, Halliday’s term, textual Theme is here replaced with ‘textual orienting Theme


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(OT)’. Textual OTs subsume not only the components of textual Themes set out by Halliday (1994, p. 54), such as coordinators, discourse Adjuncts and continuatives, but also what Hyland (2000) calls ‘endophoric markers’ (e.g., in what follows) and what is called in this study ‘textual clauses’ (e.g., a corollary is that; this is because). Both endophoric markers and textual clauses have not been consistently identified as textual Themes in systemic functional Theme analysis. Endophoric markers function primarily textually to refer backward or forward to part(s) of the text explicitly, thus contributing to the cohesiveness of the text. Textual clauses also serve to create cohesive relations between two or more adjacent messages, rather than add new ideational information to the discourse. They are typically realized with a text reference (e.g. this, that) and/or what Francis (1985) calls A-nouns (e.g. reason, point) as the Subject, followed by an identifying or projecting verb (e.g. be-verb, show), and then by a conjunction (e.g. that, because), as in a reason for this is that memory and attention are inseparable.

A rationale for including endophoric markers and textual clauses in Theme is that in many cases, there is no exact one-to-one relationship between grammar and discourse. In the clause, this is because memory and attention are inseparable, for example, it has its own thematic structure from a grammatical perspective, with this analyzed as Theme, and the rest as Rheme. From the point of view of building up a discourse, however, this is because, as a whole, can be considered as functioning primarily textually to link the previous message to its immediately following main ideational or propositional content through the semantic relation of ‘cause’.

To sum up, in this study, Textual OTs are divided into four different types of linguistic realizations, as illustrated below: (Themes are underlined, with textual OTs italicized.)

1. Coordinators (e.g. and, but, yet, so)3 But TEE will be very helpful for more advanced learners… 2. Discourse Adjuncts (e.g. however, then, to conclude) In addition, developments in linguistics contributed to the emergence… 3. Endophoric Markers (e.g. as discussed, in the previous chapter) as I mentioned above, we should not put TEE into practice immediately… 4. Textual Clauses (e.g. this suggests that, a result is that) This shows that people remember most information… In the next section, a brief account will first be given of the overall frequency differences

in textual OTs between the EFL and the ENL corpus, and also across the ranking groups 3 In this study, for convenience sake, so and yet, regarded by Quirk et al. (1985, p. 920) as “a

gradient relating coordinators to conjuncts”, are classified as coordinators (e.g., Halliday, 1994), mainly because of their structural restriction to initial position (with or without and).

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within each corpus. Individual connectors will then be discussed from a semantic perspective, with the main focus on explicating how Korean university students expand their ideas in a text by employing various semantic types of connectors.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION For the analysis of thematic connectors in the EFL and the ENL corpus, as discussed

above, each of the texts was segmented into t-units. Frequencies of connectors in the corpora are thus discussed mainly by reference to the numbers of the t-units examined. For discussion of some thematic connectors such as sentence-initial and and but occurring necessarily at the sentence boundary only, however, it is also sometimes necessary to resort to the numbers of the sentences examined. In addition, this study attempts to substantiate its findings by making frequent reference to other previous studies on connectors, which based their frequency calculation on the numbers of the words (Biber et al, 1999; Hinkel, 2002) or the sentences they examined (Bolton, et al., 2002; Jenkins, 1990). The numbers of the words and sentences as well as the t-units in the EFL and the ENL texts are presented in Table 1.

TABLE 1

Numbers of the Words, T-units and the Sentences in the Corpora Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts

High 5 texts

Middle 10 texts

Low 5 texts

Total 20 texts

High5 texts

Middle5 texts

Low 5 texts

Total 15 texts

Words 2853 4920 2577 10350 5426 5628 5624 16678 T-units 161 305 179 645 287 320 313 920

Sentences 139 283 162 584 271 301 280 852 Table 2 below first presents the overall frequencies of the textual OTs found in the EFL

and the ENL corpus, and also those in the three ranking groups within each corpus. It then shows the frequencies of the 10 most frequently occurring individual textual OTs in each corpus in declining order of frequency, followed by the frequencies of the other relatively uncommon textual OTs found. The figures shown indicate raw frequencies of thematic connectors, with the percentages all calculated in proportion to the numbers of the t-units examined–this statement applies to the figures and percentages shown in the tables throughout this paper, unless otherwise explicitly stated.


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TABLE 2 Frequencies of Individual Textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL Texts

Korean EFL Texts

Australian ENL Texts High Mid. Low Total High Mid. Low Total Total of

Textual OTs

71 44.10%

143 46.89%

85 47.49%

299 46.36%

Total of Textual

OTs 46

16.03%64

20.00%62

19.81% 172

18.70% but 17

10.56% 23

7.54% 23

12.85%63

9.77%

and 7 2.44%

10 3.13%

12 3.83%

29 3.15%

and 12 7.45%

19 6.23%

16 8.94%

47 7.29%

therefore 4 1.39%

8 2.50%

7 2.24%

19 2.07%

So 3 1.86%

16 5.25%

16 8.94%

35 5.43%

however 4 1.39%

9 2.81%

3 0.96%

16 1.74%

first, second...

10 6.21%

11 3.61%

3 1.68%

24 3.72%

but 4 1.39%

2 0.63%

4 1.28%

10 1.09%

however 1 0.62%

12 3.93%

1 0.56%

14 2.17%

for example

3 1.05%

5 1.56%

2 0.64%

10 1.09%

then 3 1.86%

7 2.30%

2 1.12%

12 1.86%

also 2 0.70%

4 1.25%

3 0.96%

9 0.98%

therefore 1 0.62%

7 2.30%

3 1.68%

11 1.71%

this means…

2 0.70%

4 1.25%

3 0.96%

9 0.98%

(that’s) because

1 0.62%

5 1.64%

3 1.68%

9 1.40%

first, second…

0 0.00%

6 1.88%

2 0.64%

8 0.87%

in addition

3 1.86%

4 1.31%

0 0.00%

7 1.09%

yet 5 1.74%

2 0.63%

0 0.00%

7 0.76%

for example

1 0.62%

2 0.66%

2 1.12%

5 0.78%

this is because

0 0.00%

2 0.63%

5 1.60%

7 0.76%

4 instances: also, as (I) mention [write / say] above, in other words 3 instances: this… means, in this way, in conclusion2 instances: as a matter of fact, as a result, because of this reason, besides, for, for… reasons, in previous/this article (sic.), in this/that case, in this point of view (viewpoint), on the other hand, that is, that’s why 1 instance: above all, at the same time, consequently, furthermore, if so, I mean, in fact, in short, in this aspect, in this context, in this reason, in this situation, it’s like, moreover, now, or, plus, rather, simultaneously, that says to us that, the question is whether, this is an evidence which suggests that, thus, to do so, to say conclusionally (sic.), what I mean is… cf. numbering (1 to 8) in one middle-rated text

7 instances: the [a / this] result(s)… is [show / demonstrate] that 6 instances: so 5 instances: thus 3 instances: in doing this, otherwise 2 instances: as a result, for this reason, from this, in comparison, in conclusion, that is, then 1 instance: afterwards, an example would be, because of this, by doing this, if not, in simpler terms, in this case, specifically, to do this cf. numbering (a, b, c) in one low-rated text

As shown in Table 2 above, far more textual OTs are found in the EFL than in the ENL

texts, with the overall frequency being nearly two and a half times higher in the former than in the latter. This result supports most previous studies showing non-native writers’ general tendency to overuse connectors, as discussed in Section 2 above. It is also seen that textual OTs are significantly more various in the EFL (a total of 54 different textual OTs) than in the

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ENL texts (a total of 31). At first sight, this finding seems to conflict with findings of some previous studies (Bolton et al., 2002; Crowhurst, 1987), which suggests that proficient writers tend to employ more various connectors than less proficient ones. Despite the wide variety of textual OTs in the EFL texts, however, almost half of the individual textual OTs in the corpus (26 out of 54) are found to occur only once. Korean EFL writers instead tend to rely excessively on three coordinators, and, but and so, which together account for nearly half of the textual OTs in the EFL texts (145 out of 299 instances), while in the ENL texts there is no such predomination of a few connectors. Lastly, significant frequency differences are also found across the ranking groups within each corpus: in both corpora, less proficient student writers in general tend to employ textual OTs more frequently than proficient ones. This finding suggests that the frequent thematization of connectors is likely to be undervalued in both native and non-native university student essay writing.

1. Three Semantic Categories of Textual OTs

The overall frequencies of textual OTs briefly noted above will now be discussed in detail

from a semantic perspective. Semantically, textual OTs can be divided into three broad categories of ‘expansion’, i.e., ‘elaboration’, ‘extension’ and ‘enhancement’ (Halliday, 1994, pp. 323-330). Based on this division, the frequencies of textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL texts are now re-presented in, respectively, Tables 3 and 4.

TABLE 3

Frequencies of Textual OTs in the EFL Texts – Semantic Division4 High Middle Low Total

and / but / or 12 / 17 / 1 19 / 23 / 0 16 / 23 / 0 47 / 63 / 1 Extension DA: Add. / Adv. 7 / 1 8 / 14 1 / 1 16 / 16

SUM 38 (23.60%)

64 (20.98%)

41 (22.91%)

143 (22.17%)

so / for 3 / 2 16 / 0 16 / 0 35 / 2 DA: S-T. / Ca-Co. 11 / 6 15 / 20 5 / 8 31 / 34 DA: Man. / Mat. 0 / 0 0 / 2 3 / 1 3 / 3 Textual Clauses 2 7 3 12

Enhancement

End. Markers 1 3 3 7 SUM 25

(15.53%) 63

(20.66%)39

(21.79%) 127

(19.69%) DA: App. / Cla. 2 / 3 6 / 5 3 / 2 11 / 10 Elaboration Textual Clauses 3 5 0 8

SUM 8 (4.97%)

16 (5.25%)

5 (2.79%)

29 (4.50%)

4 Notational conventions for Tables 3 and 4 (presented in alphabetical order): Add. – Addition; Adv.

– Adversative; App. – Apposition; Ca-Co. – Causal-Conditional; Cla. – Clarification; DA – Discourse Adjuncts; End. Markers – Endophoric Markers; Man. – Manner; Mat. – Matter; S-T. – Spatio-Temporal.


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TABLE 4 Frequencies of Textual OTs in the ENL Texts – Semantic Division

High Middle Low Total and / but / yet 7 / 4 / 5 10 / 2 / 2 12 / 4 / 0 29 / 10 / 7 Extension

DA: Add. / Adv. 2 / 4 4 / 9 3 / 3 9 / 16 SUM 22

(7.67%) 27

(8.44%) 22

(7.03%) 71

(7.72%) so / for 1 1 4 6

DA: S-T. / Ca-Co. 0 / 8 8 / 10 5 / 16 13 / 34 DA: Man. / Mat. 0 / 0 1 / 0 1 / 0 2 / 0 Textual Clauses 7 5 7 19

Enhancement

End. Markers 1 0 0 1 SUM 17

(5.92%) 25

(7.81%) 33

(10.54%) 75

(8.15%) DA: App. / Cla. 3 / 2 7 / 1 3 / 0 13 / 3 Elaboration Textual Clauses 2 4 4 10

SUM 7 (2.44%)

12 (3.75%)

7 (2.24%)

26 (2.83%)

To understand the classification used in the tables above, some clarification is necessary.

First, and often functions to simply connect clauses pragmatically rather than semantically (Schiffrin, 1987); however, for ease of discussion, all instances of and found in the corpora are analyzed as ‘additive’ coordinators. Second, though but may have three distinct meanings, i.e. ‘adversative’, ‘replacive’ and ‘concessive’ (Halliday, 1994, p. 236), the overwhelming majority of its instances found here express the adversative semantic relation. Third, also is difficult to classify. Biber et al. (1999), for example, distinguished also as an ‘additive linking adverbial’ functioning “primarily to link units of discourse”, from also as an ‘additive circumstance adverbial’ functioning “[primarily] to show that one bit of propositional content is being added to a previously mentioned idea or entity” (p. 780). In this study, only the instances of also occurring in initial position are analysed as additive connectors. Fourth, endophoric markers are included in the semantic category of ‘enhancement’, since they typically include spatio-temporal references in them (e.g., as discussed above). Lastly, ‘because-only clauses’, or ‘independent because clauses’ (Schleppegrell, 1996), are included in the category of enhancing textual clauses, considering because as representing, e.g., this is because.

Tables 3 and 4 above show that in the EFL texts, the conjunctive relation of ‘extension’ is the most frequent type, followed by that of ‘enhancement’, with elaborating textual OTs relatively uncommon. In the ENL texts, enhancing textual OTs are slightly more frequent than extending ones. In what follows, textual OTs will be discussed in the order of extending, enhancing and elaborating Textual OTs.

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1) Textual Orienting Themes of Extension As seen in Table 3 above, Korean EFL writers, in particular less proficient ones, have a

strong tendency to rely on and and but for the semantic relation of extension. Most instances of and and but in the EFL texts, however, are found not to make a contribution to enhancing the comprehensibility of the texts, instead resulting in a simple “chaining of ideas and fragmented writing style”, as Hinkel (2002, p. 143) put it. The two coordinators have often been considered by previous researchers indicative of low-level student writers’ ‘syntactic immaturity’ (Crowhurst, 1987; Reid, 1992; Rutherford, 1987; Scarcella, 1984), and also of spoken, rather than written, discourse (Biber, 1986; Chafe, 1984; Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987; Grabe, 1987; Granger & Tyson, 1996).

In the EFL texts, and and but together account for about 77 percent of the extending textual OTs while in the ENL texts, they account for about 55 percent. Proportionally, and is about two and a half times more common in the EFL than in the ENL texts. The frequency difference in but between the corpora is even far greater: but is found in nearly every 10 t-units in the EFL texts, while in the ENL texts it is relatively uncommon, occurring only in every 92 t-units. This significant proportional difference in but is partly attributable to the two cohorts of writers’ markedly different ways of expressing the adversative semantic relation between individual messages. In the EFL texts, about 80 percent of the adversative connectors are realized by but, and about 18 percent by however (plus, two instances of on the other hand). In the ENL texts, on the other hand, about half of the adversative connectors are realized by however, and only about 30 percent by but; another coordinator, yet, which is not found at all in the EFL texts, is also not uncommon in the ENL texts.

Interestingly, in the EFL corpus, most instances of and and but are found at the sentence boundary while in the ENL corpus no such instance is found, as shown in Table 5 (The percentages are calculated here in proportion to the numbers of the sentences examined, since sentence-initial and and but are necessarily sentential properties.).

TABLE 5

Frequencies of Sentence-initial and and but in the EFL and the ENL Texts Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts

High 139 Ss

Middle 283 Ss

Low 162 Ss

Total 584 Ss

High271 Ss

Middle301 Ss

Low 280 Ss

Total 852 Ss

And 3 (2.16%)

11 (3.89%)

9 (5.56%)

23 (3.94%)

0 0 0 0

But 8 (5.76%)

14 (4.95%)

15 (9.26%)

37 (6.34%)

0 0 0 0

SUM 11 (7.91%)

25 (8.83%)

24 (14.81%)

60 (10.27%)

0 0 0 0


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Sentence-initial and and but should not be prescriptively treated as grammatically infelicitous, since they are often found in naturally occurring authentic written, as well as spoken, discourse, even in formal academic writing (Chang & Swales, 1999; Dorgeloh, 2004; Jenkins, 1990). Weaver (1996, pp. 75-76) commented that the prescriptive rule against using sentence-initial and and but might have an adverse effect on student writers producing rhetorically effective and desirable writing, and becoming proficient writers like professionals. It should also be noted, however, that frequencies of sentence-initial and and but vary considerably according to registers (Biber et al., 1999; Rossette, 2004). Biber et al. (1999), for example, found that sentence-initial and and but were most frequent in conversation while they were relatively uncommon, though not impossible to find, in academic prose.

The frequencies of sentence-initial and and but in the EFL texts, compared to those reported in previous studies (Bolton, et al., 2002; Jenkins, 1990), are deemed excessively high for essay writing. Interestingly, less proficient Korean EFL writers employ sentence-initial and and but considerably more frequently than proficient ones. This suggests that the overuse of sentence-initial and and but has a negative effect on the quality of essay writing, and accordingly on the assessor’s marking of the writing.

Compared to extending coordinators in Theme, extending discourse Adjuncts are found to be relatively infrequent in the EFL texts. As seen in Tables 6 and 7 below, however, extending discourse Adjuncts in Theme are also still considerably more common in the EFL than in the ENL texts, with the frequency being nearly twice as high in the former as in the latter.

TABLE 6

Frequencies of Extending Discourse Adjuncts in the EEL Texts High Middle Low Total

Additive Discourse Adjuncts 7 8 1 16 (2.48%) Adversative Discourse Adjuncts 1 14 1 16 (2.48%) Sum of Extending Discourse Adj. 8 22 2 32 (4.96%) Frequencies of Individual Extending Discourse Adjuncts in Theme however 1 12 1 14 (2.17%) in addition 3 4 0 7 (1.09%) also 2 2 0 4 (0.62%) 2 instances: besides, on the other hand 1 instance: plus, moreover, furthermore Frequencies of Extending Discourse Adjuncts in Rheme: 0

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TABLE 7 Frequencies of Extending Discourse Adjuncts in the ENL Texts

High Middle Low Total Additive Discourse Adjuncts 2 4 3 9 (0.98%) Adversative Discourse Adjuncts 4 9 3 16 (1.74%) Sum of Extending Discourse Adj. 6 13 6 25 (2.72%)

Frequencies of Individual Extending Discourse Adjuncts in Theme however 4 9 3 16 (1.74%) also 2 4 3 9 (0.98%)

Frequencies of Individual Extending Discourse Adjuncts in Rheme however 5 2 0 7 (0.76%) in contrast 0 1 0 1 (0.11%) Tables 6 and 7 show that however is the most frequent thematic extending discourse

Adjunct in both corpora. The relatively frequent use of however is not surprising, since, as found by previous studies (Biber et al., 1999; Bolton et al., 2002), it is generally deemed common in formal writing. Research also shows that however tends to be more frequent in native than in non-native formal writing (see Granger & Tyson, 1996; Bolton et al., 2002). This seems to be partially borne out by the results of this study. Though thematic however alone is proportionally slightly more frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts, the overall frequency of however in both Theme and Rheme is in fact higher in the ENL (2.50% of the CCs) than in the EFL texts (2.17% of the CCs). In addition, it should be noted that in the EFL texts, the majority of the instances of however (12 out of 14 instances) are found in the middle-rated texts, which suggests that it is not a general characteristic feature of Korean university students’ essay writing.

The second most common extending discourse Adjunct in the EFL texts is in addition, which is not found in the ENL texts. The lack of in addition in the ENL texts may be explained by Biber et al.’s (1999) finding that in addition is in general uncommon across all registers (about 100 and 50 instances per million words in, respectively, academic prose and conversation). Also, the high-rated EFL texts, it has been seen, contain two instances of besides. Besides has been in general deemed rare in formal writing, though it has often been found to be overused in non-native student essay writing (Green et al., 2000; Bolton et al., 2002). This may suggest that non-native student writers tend to fail to recognize the stylistic appropriateness of connectors varying according to genres and registers (Granger & Tyson, 1996).

Another extending discourse Adjunct worth noting is also, which might be considered semantically synonymous with in addition and besides. Research has shown that the frequent use of also is indicative of student writing (Crowhurst, 1987), and also of non-native writing (Bolton et al., 2002). Crowhurst (1987, p. 198), for example, found that and and also were the most common additive conjunctives in argumentative texts by


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students at grades 6, 10 and 12. In Bolton et al.’s (2002) study, also (apparently, sentence-initial also) represented the third most frequently overused connector in Hong Kong university student writing, while it rarely occurs in both professional academic writing and British university student writing. The findings reported by these previous studies do not seem to accord with the results of this study showing that thematic also is slightly less frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts. This suggests that the frequent use of also may not be indicative of non-native writing. More extensive and systematic research, in particular on the classification of also, however, should be done before making any conclusive comments on native and non-native writers’ use of also.

The other extending discourse Adjuncts shown in Tables 6 and 7 (e.g., in contrast; furthermore) are found to occur only occasionally in the corpora; they are thus left out of consideration. It is worthwhile to note, however, that in the EFL corpus, thematic extending discourse Adjuncts are considerably more various in both the high-rated and the middle-rated texts than in the low-rated texts. Though the low-rated EFL texts have 41 instances of extending textual OTs, 39 of them are realized by but (23 instances) or and (16 instances), with only two instances realized by discourse Adjuncts (i.e., however and furthermore). This supports Evenson’s finding (1985, cited in Evenson, 1990, p. 171) that connectors tend to be more diversified in advanced EFL writing than in less advanced EFL writing.

2) Textual Orienting Themes of Enhancement

Textual OTs of ‘enhancement’ are broadly divided into ‘spatio-temporal’,

‘causal-conditional’, ‘manner’ and ‘matter’ (see Halliday, 1994, pp. 325-326), with initially occurring endophoric markers included in the category of ‘spatio-temporal’ textual OTs. Frequencies of each of these subcategories in the EFL and the ENL texts are presented in Table 8.

TABLE 8 Frequencies of Enhancing Textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL Texts

Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts High Middle Low Total High Middle Low Total

Cau-Con 12 (7.45%)

43 (14.10%)

27 (15.08%)

82 (12.71%)

14 (4.88%)

15 (4.69%)

26 (8.31%)

55 (5.98%)

Spa.-Tem 12 (7.45%)

18 (5.90%)

8 (4.47%)

38 (5.89%)

3 (1.05%)

8 (2.50%)

6 (1.92%)

17 (1.85%)

Man./Mat 1 2 4 7 0 2 1 3 SUM 25

(15.53%) 63

(20.66%) 39

(21.79%)127

(19.69%)17

(5.92%)25

(7.81%)33

(10.54%) 75

(8.15%)

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Clear frequency differences are found in enhancing textual OTs between the EFL and the ENL texts, with the overall frequency being well over twice as high in the EFL as in the ENL texts. In both corpora, causal-conditional textual OTs are by far the most common, followed by spatio-temporal ones. Worth noting here is a general tendency that in both corpora, the frequency of enhancing textual OTs is higher in lower-rated than in higher-rated texts. The frequent use of enhancing textual OTs may thus be deemed characteristic of less proficient novice academic writing in general. The discussions below will focus on relatively frequent enhancing textual OTs in both corpora; hence, textual OTs of manner and matter, which are found to be rare in both corpora, will not be taken into account.

Table 9 compares frequencies of individual textual OTs expressing causal-conditional semantic relations in the EFL and the ENL texts.

TABLE 9

Frequencies of Causal-conditional Textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL Texts Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts Textual

OTs High Middle Low TotalTextual

OTs High Middle Low Total so 3

(1.86%) 16

(5.25%) 16

(8.94%)35

(5.43%)there-for

e 4

(1.39%)8

(2.50%)7

(2.24%) 19

(2.07%) therefore 1

(0.62%) 7

(2.30%) 3

(1.68%)11

(1.71%)this is

because0

(0.00%)2

(0.63%)5

(1.60%) 7

(0.76%) then 3

(1.86%) 5

(1.64%) 2

(1.12%)10

(1.55%)…result shows..

5 (1.74%)

2 (0.63%)

0 (0.00%)

7 (0.76%)

(that is) because

1 (0.62%)

5 (1.64%)

3 (1.68%)

9 (1.40%)

so 1 (0.35%)

1 (0.31%)

4 (1.28%)

6 (0.65%)

5 instances: Because of (For/In)…reason… 2 instances: As a result, For, In this (that) case, That’s (the reason) why 1 instance: Consequently, If so, To do so, Thus

5 instances: Thus 3 instances: Otherwise 2 instances: For this reason; As a result 1 instance: Because of this; If not; To do this; In this case

SUM 12 (7.45%)

43 (14.10%)

27 (15.08%)

82 (12.71%)

SUM 14 (4.88%)

15 (4.69%)

26 (8.31%)

55 (5.98%)

Causal-Conditional Discourse Adjuncts in Rheme No instance found. 1 instance: then; thus; for this reason; therefore

Overall, Korean EFL writers are found to employ causal-conditional textual OTs more

than twice as frequently as their Australian ENL counterparts. This large difference is attributable in the main to Korean EFL writers’ excessively frequent use of so. In the EFL corpus, so is the single most frequent enhancing textual OT, and, as seen in Table 2 above, it is the third most frequent textual OT in the corpus, only next to but and and. In the EFL texts, so alone accounts for about 43 percent of all the causal-conditional textual OTs, while in the ENL texts, it is deemed relatively uncommon. Proportionally, so is about nine times more frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts. This finding is consistent with


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Bolton et al.’s (2002) finding that so was the most overused connector in Hong Kong university student writing (3.56% of the sentences), compared to both British university student writing (1.62%) and professional academic writing (0.4%).

The causal connector, so has often been characterized as an ‘immature connective’ (Crowhurst, 1987; Rutherford, 1987), and also as a ‘colloquial connector’ (Granger & Tyson, 1996, p. 23). Biber et al. (1999), for example, found that so was far more common in conversation (about 2,200 and 3,400 times per million words in, respectively, British and American English conversation) than in academic prose (about 200 instances). Compared to Biber et al.’s results, the frequency of so in the EFL texts (33.82 instances in 10,000 words), in particular in less-proficient EFL texts, might be deemed unacceptably high for essay writing. This clearly suggests that Korean EFL university students lack knowledge about the degree of formality of tertiary essay writing.

The second most common causal-conditional textual OT in the EFL texts, Table 9 above shows, is therefore, which can be regarded as a semantic equivalent to so discussed above. Therefore is found to be more common in the ENL than in the EFL texts. In the ENL texts, therefore is by far the single most common causal-conditional textual OT, occurring over three times more frequently than so, while in the EFL texts, so is far more common than therefore. This marked difference clearly shows the two cohorts of writers’ different ways of expressing causal relations between individual messages, and it also confirms Korean EFL writers’ inappropriate stylistic preferences for relatively common coordinators over discourse Adjuncts in essay writing.

Research has shown that therefore is a relatively common connector in formal writing. Biber et al. (1999), for example, found that it was far more common in academic prose (about 600 instances per million words) than in speech (about 50 instances). Compared to Biber et al.’s results, therefore is deemed relatively common in both the EFL (10.63 instances per 10,000 words) and the ENL texts (11.99 instances). This is supported by Bolton et al.’s (2002) study suggesting that both native and non-native student writers, compared to professional academic writers, tend to overuse therefore. In their study, therefore was nearly twice as common in both Hong Kong and British university student writing (respectively, 1.89% and 1.90% of the sentences) as in professional academic writing (1.07%).

The frequencies of therefore need to be reconsidered in conjunction with those of thus and hence, since the three are in general deemed semantically synonymous, and thus interchangeable in many cases (Biber et al., p. 889). Hence, which is generally deemed less common than the other two, is not found at all in the corpora; thus is found once in the EFL texts, and six times (including one instance in Rheme) in the ENL texts. The frequency of therefore, thus and hence together in the ENL texts (15.59 instances per 10,000 words) is still slightly higher than that in Biber et al.’s academic writing corpus (approximately 14

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instances per 10,000 words). In the EFL texts, where therefore is deemed overused, the frequency of the three connectors together (11.59 instances per 10,000 words) is now considerably lower than that in Biber et al.’s academic writing corpus. This again suggests that Korean EFL writers have insufficient knowledge about various connectors, frequently relying on relatively common connectors only.

The third most frequent causal-conditional textual OT in the EFL texts is then, which has often been considered indicative of low-grade student writing (Crowhurst, 1987), and also of spoken, rather than written, discourse (Biber et al., 1999). It has also often been found to be more common in non-native than in native essay writing (Bolton et al., 2002). This is borne out by the results of the current study. Overall, then is considerably more frequent in the EFL (1.86% of the t-units, including both thematic and rhematic instances) than in the ENL texts (0.76%). Apart from the frequency difference, clear differences are also found in both the syntactic positioning and the meanings of then between the corpora. In the EFL texts, there are 12 instances of then, all of which are found in thematic position, with 10 instances marking the causal relation (1.55% of the t-units), and two the temporal relation (0.31%). In the ENL texts, on the other hand, there are seven instances of then, only two of which are in Theme (0.22%), with only one instance expressing the causal relation, and the other six the temporal relation.

Also worth noting here is the use of causal-conditional textual clauses. Though the overall frequencies of causal-conditional textual clauses in the EFL (1.86% of the t-units) and the ENL texts (1.63%) are similar, different sub-semantic types are preferred in each corpus. In the EFL texts, all the instances of causal-conditional textual clauses, except one (marking ‘purpose’), express the semantic relation of ‘reason’ (e.g., that’s because). In the ENL texts, on the other hand, the semantic relations of ‘reason’ (e.g., this is because) and ‘result’ (e.g., a result is that) are evenly distributed. That is, textual clauses are semantically more various in the ENL than in the EFL texts.

Another important difference in textual clauses is that in the EFL texts, most instances of the causal-conditional textual clauses are realized by because alone (5 out of 9 instances), which can be considered equivalent to this is because in the unfolding of the discourse (e.g., They think that they don’t learn anything in TEE classes. Because without understanding the instruction fully, the classes seem meaningless.)

Because-only clauses are characteristic of conversation (Schleppegrell, 1996), in which they can be used, for example, as answers to why-interrogatives. In formal writing, however, they are by and large deemed grammatically infelicitous or even wrong, though in some disciplines such as philosophy and linguistics, it is not impossible to find such sentence fragments (Chang & Swales, 1999). The existence of because-only clauses in the Korean EFL texts thus clearly indicates Korean EFL writers’ lack of understanding about mode differences between speech and writing. It is worth noting in passing that there are


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some other features supporting Korean EFL writers’ confusion between spoken and written mode: frequent use of contractions (e.g., that’s because) and commas following textual clauses (e.g., it’s like, you…; I mean, Korean students…); use of what Biber et al. (1999) calls ‘comment clauses’ as afterthoughts at the end of the sentence (e.g., …, I guess.).

As for spatio-temporal textual OTs, they are also considerably more frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts, as shown in Table 10. The table shows that spatio-temporal textual OTs are nearly three times more frequent in the EFL texts than in the ENL texts. In both corpora, most of the temporal textual OTs are realized by correlative internal temporal connectors (e.g., first, second, lastly…), which function rhetorically rather than experientially to arrange arguments in sequence (Martin, 1993, p. 178). Internal temporal connectors are nearly four and a half times more frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts. It has also been found that compared to Biber et al.’s results, they are proportionally well over twice as frequent in the EFL texts (23.19 instances per 10,000 words) as in Biber et al.’s academic writing corpus (about 1000 instances per million words). This shows that correlative internal temporal connectors are in general overused in the EFL texts.

TABLE 10

Frequencies of Spatio-temporal Textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL Texts Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts

High Mid. Low Total

High Mid. Low Total first,

second 10

(6.21%)11

(3.61%) 3

(1.68%)24

(3.72%)first,

second0

(0.00%)6

(1.88%)2

(0.64%) 8

(0.87%) 2 instances: then 1 instance: at the same time, in this context, in this situation, now, simultaneously Cf. Numbering: 1 to 8 in one middle text Cf. Endophoric markers: 7 instances

3 instances: in doing this 2 instances: from this, then 1 instance: afterwards Cf. Numbering: a, b, c in one low-ranked text Cf. Endophoric markers: 1 instance

Sum 12 (7.45%)

18 (5.90%)

8 (4.47%)

38 (5.89%)

Sum 3 (1.05%)

8 (2.50%)

6 (1.92%)

17 (1.85%)

Spatio-Temporal Discourse Adjuncts in Rheme No instance found. 4 instances: then (H2; M2)

1 instance: now (H1), soon (H1)

In the EFL corpus, interestingly, correlative internal temporal connectors are most frequent in the high-rated texts, with the frequency being over three and a half times higher in the high-rated than in the low-rated texts. This result may not be unexpected, since EFL/ESL writing teachers tend to put much emphasis on the explicit sequential connection between parts of discourse, or arguments. The high-rated EFL writers’ frequent use of internal temporal connectors may reflect the general tendency that advanced and skilful non-native writers tend to spend more time than less proficient ones planning and organizing their arguments. Interestingly, in the ENL corpus, no occurrence of internal temporal connectors is found in the high-rated texts. This may suggest that in essay writing,

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the explicit ordering or enumeration of arguments may not be as common or essential as EFL/ESL writing teachers often emphasize rather impressionistically.

3) Textual Orienting Themes of Elaboration

Of the three semantic types of textual OTs, elaborating textual OTs are least frequent in

both corpora. Elaborating conjunctions are divided into ‘apposition’ and ‘clarification’, each of which includes a range of sub-semantic conjunctive relations (Halliday, 1994, p. 324). Frequencies of the elaborating textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL texts are presented in Table 11. Though elaborating textual OTs are, overall, more frequent in the EFL than in the ENL texts, their frequency difference between the corpora, compared to those in extending and enhancing textual OTs discussed in the two preceding sections, is relatively small. Some frequency difference is found across the proficiency groups within each corpus: in both corpora, elaborating textual OTs are least common in the low-rated texts, which may suggest that the adequate elaboration of preceding arguments is considered important for university student essay writing.

TABLE 11

Frequencies of Elaborating Textual OTs in the EFL and the ENL Texts Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts

High Middle Low Total High Middle Low Total Apposition 4

(2.48%) 11

(3.61%) 3

(1.68%)18

(2.79%)5

(1.74%)11

(3.44%)6

(1.92%) 22

(2.39%) Clarification 4

(2.48%) 5

(1.64%) 2

(1.11%)11

(1.71%)2

(0.70%)1

(0.31%)1

(0.32%) 4

(0.43%) Frequencies of Individual Elaborating Textual OTs

textual clauses

3 (1.86%)

5 (1.64%)

0 (0.00%)

8 (1.24%)

2 (0.70%)

4 (1.25%)

4 (1.28%)

10 (1.09%)

for example

1 (0.62%)

2 (0.66%)

2 (1.12%)

5 (0.78%)

3 (1.05%)

5 (1.56%)

2 (0.64%)

10 (1.09%)

4 instances: in other words 3 instances: it (that/this) means that, in conclusion 2 instances: as a matter of fact, that is 1 instance: above all, in fact, in short, rather, I mean, what I mean is that, that says to us that, the question is whether, this is an evidence which suggests that, to say conclusionally (sic.)

5 instances: this means that 3 instances: this shows that 2 instances: that is, in conclusion 1 instance: in simpler terms, specifically, an example would be, this is shown by the fact that

Sum 8 (4.97%)

16 (5.25%)

5 (2.79%)

29 (4.50%)

7 (2.44%)

12 (3.75%)

7 (2.24%)

26 (2.83%)

Table 11 shows that in both corpora, in particular in the ENL corpus, elaborating textual

OTs expressing the semantic relation of apposition are considerably more common than those marking clarification. Of the connectors marking apposition, for example is found to


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be more common in the ENL than in the EFL texts. Research has suggested that for example is in general deemed relatively common in formal academic writing. In Biber et al.’s (1999) study, for instance, it was found to be the most frequent elaborating linking adverbial in their academic writing corpus (about 600 times per million words). Biber et al.’s result is proportionally similar to that in the ENL texts (6.00 instances per 10,000 words), and slightly higher than that in the EFL texts (4.83 instances). In Biber et al.’s academic writing corpus, however, some appositional stylistic variants of for example, such as for instance (approximately 100 instances per million words) and e.g. (approximately 200 instances), are also found, while no instance of such variants is found in the EFL or the ENL texts.

Some difference between the corpora is also found in ‘elaborating textual clauses’ marking the semantic relation of apposition. Many of the appositional textual clauses in the EFL texts show some interpersonal flavour, in particular using the first person pronoun (e.g., what I mean is that). Such expressions are in general deemed relatively common in colloquial language rather than in formal writing (Chafe, 1984). In the ENL texts, none of the appositional textual clauses use the first person pronouns; instead, they tend to be objectively guised (e.g., this means that). Though there are also some objectively oriented appositional textual clauses in the EFL texts, most of them are found in the high-rated texts, with no occurrence found in the low-rated texts. The findings here may suggest that the stylistically appropriate use of elaborating textual clauses seems to have positive effects on the quality of university student essay writing.

2. Placement of Discourse Adjuncts

Of the various types of textual OTs discussed thus far, discourse Adjuncts need some

further consideration, since unlike coordinators (and most textual clauses), they are relatively free to move around in the t-unit structure. From a textual perspective, the placement of discourse Adjuncts can be said to be determined by the writer’s choice to make them thematically prominent or not. In discussing the syntactic positioning of discourse Adjuncts, also is not taken into account since unlike other discourse Adjuncts functioning to connect individual messages irrespective of their positioning, also “cannot be moved without affecting [its] meaning in the clause” (Biber et al., 1999, p. 781). In addition, as Martin and Rose (2003, p. 128) pointed out, also typically occurs in medial position in the clause, rather than in initial position, in particular next to the finite verb, as in it might also be true. Table 12 below first presents overall frequencies of thematic and rhematic discourse Adjuncts in the corpora, and then go on to show frequencies of individual rhematic discourse Adjuncts.

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TABLE 12 Frequencies of the Matic and Rhematic Discourse Adjuncts in the EFL and the ENL Texts

Korean EFL Texts Australian ENL Texts High Middle Low Total High Middle Low Total

Thematic DAs

30 (18.63%)

70 (22.95%)

24 (13.41%)

124 (19.22%)

19 (6.62%)

40 (12.50%)

31 (9.90%)

90 (9.78%)

Rhematic DAs

0 (0.00%)

1 (0.33%)

0 (0.00%)

1 (0.16%)

12 (4.18%)

5 (1.56%)

1 (0.32%)

18 (1.96%)

Frequencies of individual rhematic discourse Adjuncts however 0 0 0 0 5 2 0 7

then 0 0 0 0 3 2 0 5 1 instance: above all 1 instance: now, thus, soon, for this

reason, in contrast, therefore Cf. 2 instances of therefore in thematic, but non-initial, position in the ENL corpus

As seen in the three preceding sections, thematic discourse Adjuncts are in general far

more common in the EFL than in the ENL texts, with their overall frequency being nearly twice as high in the former as in the latter. This is in marked contrast to the rare occurrence of rhematic discourse Adjuncts in the EFL texts. Of the 125 instances of discourse Adjuncts found in the EFL texts, only one (above all) occurs in Rheme, while in the ENL texts, 18 instances (i.e., 16.67% of the 108 discourse Adjuncts found) are found in Rheme. This finding partially supports previous studies (e.g., Granger & Tyson, 1996; Green et al., 2000) showing that non-native university student writers, compared to their native counterparts, tend to overuse initial thematic position for connectors.

Though discourse Adjuncts, by all accounts, typically occupy initial thematic position, research has shown that considerable frequency variations can be found in their syntactic positioning across genres and registers. Biber et al. (1999, pp. 890-892), for example, found that in academic prose, about 40 percent of the linking adverbials were found in medial position, though final position was rarely used for linking adverbials. In conversation, on the other hand, final position (approximately 40%) was relatively frequently used for linking adverbials, with medial position rarely used. Compared to Biber et al.’s results, the frequencies of rhematic discourse Adjuncts in the ENL texts are deemed still relatively low. This shows that it is difficult for both native and non-native student writers to place discourse Adjuncts syntactically appropriately in formal writing.

Table 12 also shows clear frequency differences in rhematic discourse Adjuncts across the three proficiency groups within the ENL corpus: in general, more proficient ENL student writers tend to place discourse Adjuncts in medial position considerably more frequently than less proficient ones. Interestingly, the frequency of medial discourse Adjuncts in the high-rated ENL texts (38.71% of the discourse Adjuncts found) is strikingly similar to that in Biber et al.’s academic writing corpus (approximately 40%). This suggests that the appropriate syntactic distribution of discourse Adjuncts may play an


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important role in distinguishing not only native and non-native essay writing, but also proficient and less proficient native essay writing.

Korean EFL writers’ almost exclusive tendency to place discourse Adjuncts in initial thematic position only may be attributable to their learning of English connectors in Korea. Korean learners of English tend to focus simply on the semantic meanings of English connectors in relatively short reading passages, without taking into account of their syntactic mobility and stylistic appropriateness. Korean EFL writers’ excessively frequent thematization of English discourse Adjuncts may also be influenced by their native language. Korean equivalents of English connectors are syntactically required to occur in initial position in the form of conjunctive adverbs, or in final position in the form of conjunctive particles; that is, Korean conjunctive adverbs are not allowed to occur in medial position. Such variation in the syntactic positioning of discourse Adjuncts between Korean and English provides good reason for teaching Korean EFL university students discourse structures of formal English explicitly.

V. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS It has been demonstrated in this study that Korean EFL writers, in particular less proficient

ones, compared to their Australian ENL counterparts, tend to overuse connectors in Theme, especially those marking the semantic relation of ‘extension’. The overthematization of connectors in the EFL texts, it has been argued, results mainly from Korean EFL writers’ lack of command of formal written English discourse features. In particular, Korean EFL writers have been found to have insufficient knowledge about mode differences between speech and writing. Accordingly, they tend to fail to employ stylistically appropriate connectors in formal English essay writing. They instead have a strong tendency to rely on relatively common connectors, in particular simple coordinators such as and, but and so, which are readily available within their existing repertoire. Many of such connectors are found to be characteristic of informal writing and spontaneous conversation (e.g., because-only clauses, sentence-initial and and but, and other connectors with interpersonal flavor). Korean EFL writers’ overthematization of connectors has also been found to stem partly from their lack of understanding of the syntactic mobility of English connectors.

Korean EFL writers’ lack of control over formal written genres and registers noted above seems to be clearly influenced by the main focus of Korea’s current tertiary English education. In tertiary English language teaching in Korea, English speaking still tends to be prioritised, with writing only marginally attended to (Oryang Kwon, 2003). Also, English teachers and students alike in Korea tend to pay little attention to higher-level contextual features such as genres and registers. For example, much attention still tends to be paid to

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basic semantic meanings of connectors, rather than to their rhetorical effectiveness and appropriateness in the context. Korean EFL students are thus often told to memorize semantically interchangeable connectors together, without being provided with sufficient explanation about relevant discourse contexts in which connectors are used. As Granger and Tyson (1996) emphasized, this type of teaching should be avoided; instead, connectors need to be taught as genre- and register-sensitive discourse features. In sum, tertiary English language teachers in Korea should give due weight to the teaching of formal written English, focusing more serious attention on the interrelationship between genre, register, and linguistic features.

The findings of the present study are all expected to make some contribution to future discussions amongst Korean ELT scholars on Korean university students’ English essay writing. Given the relatively small size of the texts analyzed, which were all produced by students from only one top-ranked Korean university, however, it may be difficult to make sound generalizations. It is therefore suggested that future research make a more extensive examination of Korean EFL university student writers’ connector usage in formal English essay writing, analyzing a large corpus of English texts, desirably a computerized corpus, written by a wide range of Korean students from various universities.

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Applicable levels: Tertiary students Key words: connectors, themes, textual orienting themes Seong-Woo Lee Language Education Center Chonnam National University 300 Yongbong-dong, Buk-gu Gwangju 500-757, Korea Fax: (062) 530-3629 Email: [email protected] Received in November, 2006 Reviewed in December, 2006 Revised version received in February, 2007

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