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On Adverbial Conjuncts in Chinese English Majors`Dissertations and Theses: A Corpus-based Investigation

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DOI: 10.23977/curtm.2021.040626 | Downloads: 8 | Views: 1115

Author(s)

Wenbin Hua 1

Affiliation(s)

1 School of Foreign Languages, Hubei University of Science and Arts, Xiangyang, 441000, China

Corresponding Author

Wenbin Hua

ABSTRACT

 As a subset of cohesive devices, adverbial conjuncts contribute to form a coherent structure of units of discourse. It is inevitable for Chinese English majors to write a dissertation or thesis at the end of their study. Their preferences of choosing adverbial conjuncts and the overuse, underuse and misuse of those adverbial conjuncts result in some features of Chinese English. Based on Quirk`s theory of adverbial conjuncts, by analyzing the occurrence frequencies of adverbial conjuncts in a self-built corpus, which consists of 0.4 million words of dissertations and theses from English majors of 20 different universities in China, the writer found out some features of China English in utilizing adverbial conjuncts, in which listing conjuncts are the most frequently used category, while transitional and inferential adjuncts are the least frequently used ones. The features in turn will give teachers and students inspiration of improving their academic writing.

KEYWORDS

Adverbial conjuncts, China English, dissertations and theses, corpus

CITE THIS PAPER

Wenbin Hua, On Adverbial Conjuncts in Chinese English Majors`Dissertations and Theses: A Corpus-based Investigation. Curriculum and Teaching Methodology (2021) Vol. 4: 139-150. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/curtm.2021.040626.

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