Overuse and underuse of English concluding connectives: A corpus study

Abstract

The use of connectives has always been a tough nut to crack for Second Language Learners of English. For example, the use of English concluding connectives like "all in all, in conclusion, last but not least, eventually, and ultimately", appears to be especially problematic. The study shows that there are significant overuses of "all in all, in conclusion, and Last but not least" for Chinese learners on the one hand, and under-uses of "eventually and ultimately" for them on the other hand. This may result from their lack of proper understanding of each concluding connective's functions in the discourse. The paper makes a study of the meaning and use of those English concluding connectives by studying BNC(British National Corpus) and SWECCL (Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners), also using definitions, and examples from Collins COBUILD Dictionary, as well as comparing native speakers' use with that of Chinese learners' English. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.