Connector Usage in Essays Written by
German Learners of English:
A Corpus-based Investigation
Bachelor Thesis
for the program
“Modern Languages, Cultures and Business Studies”
submitted by
Cathrin Hein-Becker
Department of English Language and Linguistics
Justus Liebig University, Giessen
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Susanne Göpferich
Cathrin Hein-Becker
Auf dem Boden 4
63683 Ortenberg
[email protected]
Matriculation number: 3050979
Date of submission: 24.06.2013
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
2
Table of Contents
List of figures …........................................................................................... 3
List of tables ………………………………………………………………. 3
List of abbreviations …................................................................................ 4
1
Introduction …............................................................................................. 5
2
Study design and methods of data analysis ….......................................... 10
3
4
2.1
Corpora ….......................................................................................... 10
2.2
Methodology …................................................................................. 12
Results and discussion ................................................................................ 16
3.1
Qualitative analyses …....................................................................... 17
3.2
Quantitative analyses …..................................................................... 24
3.2
Analysis of under- and overused items …......................................... 29
Pedagogical implications and outlook …................................................... 34
Works cited ….............................................................................................. 41
Erklärung zur Urheberschaft …................................................................ 44
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
3
List of figures
Figure 1. WordSmith Concord …............................................................................. 13
Figure 2. The DEE transfer model …....................................................................... 14
Figure 3 Frequencies of all connectors used by German learners …........................16
Figure 4. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in IL and NL ………..…. 24
Figure 5. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in ILa and Ilb …............... 26
Figure 6. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in TL and NL ….............. 27
Figure 7. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in IL and TL ………....... 28
Figure 8. Overview of the use of the three connectors in the four varieties …........ 28
Figure 9. Underused items in the learners’ texts compared to TL and NL .............. 29
Figure 10. Overused items in the learners’ texts compared to TL and NL ……...... 32
Figure 11. Connectives of result in Jordan (1999: 62) …......................................... 34
Figure 12. Use of discourse markers in Burns&Smallwood (1990: 110) …............ 35
Figure 13. Comparison of quantifiers in NS and NNS writing in Rundell (2007)... 37
Figure 14. Example for a corpus-based DDL exercise ……………………............ 38
List of tables
Table 1. Overview of the corpora used in the study …............................................. 10
Table 2. Error types in the connector usage of German learners of English …........ 18
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
List of abbreviations
BNC
British National Corpus
CA
Contrastive Analysis
CIA
Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis
DDL
Data-driven learning
DeReKo
Deutsches Referenzkorpus
EFL
English as foreign language
ELT
English language teaching
ICLE
International Corpus of Learner English
ICM
Integrated Contrastive Model
IL
Interlanguage
L1
First language / Mother tongue
L2
Second language
NNS
Non-native speaker
NS
Native speaker
SL
Source language
SLA
Second language acquisition
TL
Target language
4
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
5
1 Introduction
In our global and increasingly interconnected world, the knowledge of foreign
languages, especially English, is of growing importance. Therefore, making the
imparting of English language skills more effective has become a focal point of
interest in applied linguistic research in the last decades. With my bachelor thesis I
seek to contribute to the investigation of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) by
analyzing the use of connectors in essays written by German learners of English.
Connectors or conjuncts have the function of “signal[ling] logical or semantic
relations between units of discourse” (Altenberg/Tapper 2008: 80) and hence
significantly add to the coherence and comprehensibility of a text, aspects of writing
even advanced learners and native speakers typically struggle with. Since they are
used to different extents and in different ways in English and German, it can be
assumed that learners will have problems employing them, especially if transfer is at
play. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that transfer from German has been
shown to affect English text production by German learners of English with regard to
connector usage (cf. Granger&Tyson 1996:23) as well as other aspects of the
language negatively (cf. Nesselhauf's analysis of the use of collocations; Nesselhauf
2004: 235). Interestingly, other studies have challenged the negative influence of
transfer on connector usage in EFL writing, at least for learners from first language
backgrounds other than German (cf. Altenberg/Tapper 2008: 81). There are indeed
reasons to believe that the influence of transfer in EFL writing is not as significant as
hitherto assumed. This thesis examines these reasons.
As will be shown, German learners of English sometimes use connectors in
their L2 inappropriately. The analysis of German learners' connector usage is
expected to reveal problems with regard to the choice of connectors, their position in
the sentence, the semantic relationships they express as well as their register
appropriateness. Similar observations have already been made in previous studies (cf
Altenberg/Tapper 2008, Leńko-Szymańska 2008). However, the same studies also
suggest that these problems are not only due to transfer from the L1. Thus, other
possible explanations for the incorrect or inappropriate connector usage will have to
be found. One hypothesis is that the use of connectors as it is presented in textbooks
and taught in the EFL classroom is incorrect or misleading (cf Gilquin: 24f.) If this
hypothesis can be confirmed, the findings of the study are of immediate relevance to
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
6
the design of teaching methods and materials and will ideally make suggestions for
possible enhancements.
In contrast to most previous studies with similar objectives, the approach
taken will not only be quantitative in character, that is investigate frequencies and
over- and underuse of connectors, but add a brief qualitative analysis within the
realms of possibility of a paper of this scope. The material to be investigated will be
taken from three corpora: The essays by German and Spanish learners of English are
taken from the respective subsections of the International Corpus of Learner English
(ICLE). The native English control corpus is a selection of non-fiction texts from the
British National Corpus (BNC). Finally, the native German control corpus is taken
from the Deutsches Referenzkorpus (DeReKo). The samples are of roughly the same
size (approximately 100,000 words) and contain non-literary writing. Both the
German and the Spanish learners are university students. The native texts, on the
other hand, are taken from various non-fiction and newspaper articles and represent
standard formal language1.
The investigation of the SLA process on the basis of learner corpora has come
to be known as learner corpus research. This relatively young branch of linguistics
dates back to the late 1980s, when EFL researchers recognized the benefits of
computer-readable collections of learner production. Learner corpus research links
corpus linguistics and second language research and has the major advantage of
facilitating large-scale quantitative analyses of authentic, natural language that can be
used to gain insights into the SLA process and improve foreign language teaching
(cf. Granger 2002: 4). Before the availability of learner corpora, language learning
was investigated on the basis of the contrastive analysis of the source and the target
language; or by error analysis (cf. Hasselgård/Johansson: 34). While these
approaches have provided significant insights into possible causes of difficulty, they
relied on intuitive or elicited data and were limited in scale and range (cf. ibid: 36f.).
The main shortcoming of these early approaches to SLA research, however,
was that the learner output, which is in fact the ultimate interest of foreign language
teaching, had at best a peripheral position in the picture (cf. Granger 2002: 6). The
approaches rather concentrated on describing the target language, characterizing the
learner, and enhancing instruction (cf. ibid.). Not until the second half of the 20 th
century have linguists recognized the importance of studying learner language as a
1
The problem of choosing the native norm for the reference corpora will be dealt with in detail in
Section 2.1.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
7
separate linguistic system in its own right. Selinker (1972) coined the term
interlanguage to denote this system, which is “based on the observable output which
results from a learner’s attempted production of a TL norm” (Selinker 1972: 60). He
identified five processes which are supposed to influence and shape this system:
language transfer, transfer of training, strategies of second language learning,
strategies of second language communication and overgeneralization (cf. ibid.: 61).
As the learner tries to reach native-like proficiency, his or her interlanguage
constantly develops under the influence of these processes. Hence, the interlanguage
is of great interest to linguists interested in SLA processes. With the help of learner
corpora, it is now possible to investigate interlanguage on a large scale.
Computerized learner corpora are therefore a great advancement for the study
of interlanguage. One pioneering project was the compilation of the International
Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) coordinated by Sylviane Granger, from which the
samples of German learners' essays for this study are taken. It was Granger's aim to
move away from mere error analysis and intuitive hypotheses on the basis of
contrastive analyses of two languages to a more integrated investigation of the
learning process by examining the learner's actual production. She developed the
Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA), a methodological approach to carry out
“quantitative and qualitative comparisons between native (NS) and non-native (NNS)
data or between different varieties of non-native data” (Granger 2002: 12). This twostage comparison makes it possible to identify non-native features of learner writing
and make speculations as to whether possible problems are L1-dependent or
developmental (cf. ibid.: 13). For this purpose, Granger (1996) developed the
Integrated Contrastive Model (ICM). It consists of two components: The contrastive
analysis (CA) component, which compares the native language and the target
language; and the contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA) component, which
compares the native language and a non-native variety as well as different non-native
varieties of the same language (cf. Granger 1996: 46f.). The ICM is especially
suitable for the investigation of L1 transfer in the language learning process. The CA
component allows for a predictive hypothesis as to whether transfer from the mother
tongue is likely to occur by determining the degree of similarity between the two
languages. This hypothesis alone would not suffice to make legitimate assumptions
as to the likelihood of negative transfer, since discrepancies between L1 and L2 do
not necessarily lead to errors (cf. Gilquin 2002: 7). Therefore, the CA component is
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
8
complemented by the CIA component, which investigates the interlanguage and
returns to CA to explain L1-specific errors. If the comparison of mother tongue and
target language cannot account for these errors, other factors such as developmental
errors or teaching-induced factors might be at play.
Numerous researchers adapted Granger's approach in their own research and
carried out a multitude of studies within the framework of learner corpus research.
Most of them focused on the use of specific lexical or syntactical elements, as the
present study does. These studies were only quantitative in character and led to
ambiguous results regarding the role of transfer (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 95).
Altenberg & Tapper (1998), Granger & Tyson (1996), and Leńko-Szymańska (2008)
all observed instances of over- or underuse of certain connectors; and they all
attribute these at least partly to transfer from the mother tongue. Similarly,
Nesselhauf (2003), who investigated the use of collocations by German learners of
English, found that 56% of the mistakes made in the use of collocations can be traced
back to L1 influence (Nesselhauf: 235). There is extensive evidence that “transfer is
one of the major factors shaping the learner's interlanguage competence and
performance” (Kohn 1986: 2). However, the above-mentioned authors concede that
transfer cannot solely be held responsible for the erroneous production of learners of
English. They acknowledge the influence of other factors, above all teaching-induced
effects. Granger&Tyson, for instance, find fault with misleading “lists of
'interchangeable' connectors” (Granger&Tyson: 23); and Gilquin draws attention to
the “unsuitability of some pedagogical materials and/or reference tools” (Gilquin:
24f) .
In spite of legitimate counter evidence, the negative influence of L1 transfer
on the written production of learners of English remains the prevalent doctrine.
Researchers working with learner corpora have not reached consensus on other
possible explanations for the problems they observed; and the focus in learner corpus
research seems to have shifted towards investigations of the pragmatic and discourse
level with the emergence of the research-field of contrastive rhetoric (cf. Herriman &
Boström Aronsson 2009: 118). By analyzing the use of connectors by German
learners of English both quantitatively and qualitatively, I am going to revisit the
problem of transfer in my bachelor thesis and show that, although it might take place
in the written production even of advanced learners of English, it is not the only
reason for the misuse of connectors.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
9
In order to do so, I will conduct a corpus-based study of the three connectors used
most frequently in a corpus of essays written by advanced German learners of
English. The three corpora used for these investigations will be presented in Section
2.1. I will analyze qualitative errors the German learners make when using the
connectors in questions and compare the frequency of the connectors in the texts
written by German learners to that by Spanish learners and native speakers of
English, as well as to the frequency of their correspondents in native German
published writing. My analysis will be guided by the steps of Gilquin's (2002)
Detection – Explanation - Evaluation (DEE) transfer model, which will be explained
in Section 2.2. The results of the analyses will be presented and discussed in Section
3. Section 4 addresses some pedagogical implications of my findings and of learner
corpus research on the whole and show how they could help enhance teaching
materials and methodologies in the future. At the same time, I am going to show that
there is still great potential for SLA research to be exploited with the help of corpus
linguistic methodology, and I am going to name but a few possible areas of
investigation that might be worth looking into in future studies.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
10
2 Study design and methods of data analysis
The present study is based on a series of studies dealing with similar subject matter
in the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Section 1). These studies investigated the use
of connectors and other lexico-grammatical phenomena in a quantitative way. In
response to criticism leveled against at purely quantitative studies (cf. Granger 1998:
16), I will undertake a qualitative analysis as called for by Leńko-Szymańska (2008),
who expressed the need for such an analysis “in order to investigate whether linking
expressions are employed to indicate real semantic relationships between ideas or
whether they are used inappropriately” (Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 105). I will take a
closer look at certain connectors with regard to their frequency, but also qualitative
problems German learners seem to have when using them in their writing in English.
Of the studies mentioned, only Leńko-Szymańska (2008) analyzed a smaller
selection of connectors in more detail (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 99). She looked
at the ten most frequent connectors in a total of nine samples with sizes of between
50,000 and 75,000 words respectively. This was still too broad for a detailed
qualitative analysis, so the study also only yielded quantitative results. Therefore, in
the present study the use of only three connectors and their correspondents in
German will be investigated. This method will lead to more profound results, on the
basis of which some pedagogical implications and proposals for further research can
be formulated.
2.1 Corpora
The data samples to be investigated will be taken from the three corpora named in
the introduction. Table 1 provides an overview of these samples and their sizes.
Corpus
Subjects
Text type
ICLE-DE
ICLE-ES
DeReKo
German learners of English
Spanish learners of English
German professional writers
BNC
English professional writers
Argumentative essays
Argumentative essays
Published newspaper and
non-fiction articles
Published newspaper and
non-fiction articles
Size (number of
words)
108,540
177,350
105,240
105,390
Table 1. Overview of the corpora used in the study
The ICLE is a large compilation of advanced EFL learner writing by learners from
16 native language backgrounds. It is the outcome of a large-scale project launched
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
11
by Sylviane Granger at the Université Catholique de Louvain in 1990. Granger's aim
was to gather empirical data for the investigation of interlanguage. The corpus design
was strictly controlled with regard to the type of learners (EFL, not ESL), the stage
of the learners and the text type in order to make the samples comparable (cf Granger
& Tyson 1996: 18). All the learners are young adults in their twenties who study
English in a non-native context, and are university students of English Language and
Literature in their third or fourth year, which makes them 'advanced' learners (cf.
Granger 2002: 9f.). Their essays cover a variety of non-technical topics and are
comparable insofar as they represent argumentative as opposed to narrative writing
(cf. ibid.: 10). Granger argues that “[t]hese essays (…) are unabridged and so lend
themselves to analyses of cohesion and coherence” (cf. ibid.), which makes them
especially suitable for the present study. Beyond these basic design criteria, the ICLE
samples feature a number of variable attributes such as sex, mother tongue
background, experience in English-speaking countries and task settings. For the
present purpose, the German and Spanish samples where filtered in terms of mother
tongue (only German or Spanish as L1, respectively), and experience abroad (less
than 6 months in order to guarantee unaltered 'non-nativeness'). The German
subcorpus comprises 108,540 words, the Spanish one 177,346 words.
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of
samples of written and spoken British English2. It includes, amongst others, extracts
from newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals, academic books and popular
fiction, as well as school and university essays (cf. Burnard 2009). A sample of nonfictional published writing with a total of 105,390 words will be used in this study.
Criticism has been voiced against choosing expert writing as a reference: Granger
(1998: 13) argues that only corpora of the same genre and level of expertise are
directly comparable. Leńko-Szymańska (2008) confirms this by arguing that “the
observed differences will only reflect the disparities in linguistic systems and will not
be a result of discrepancies in the level of writing skill” (Leńko-Szymańska 2008:
96). Hasselgård and Johansson (2011), on the other hand, claim that
[f]rom an English Language Teaching (ELT) perspective, however, a
student corpus […] may be considered unsuitable as a reference corpus
because it does not represent the desired target norm for proficiency or
the type of language one would like to teach […]. Thus, if the aim is to
identify areas of argumentative or academic writing which learners need
2
British English was chosen as the native norm here because it is the variety of English usually
used as linguistic model in EFL teaching in Germany (cf. Lenko-Szymanska 2008: 98).
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
12
to improve, an NS corpora consisting, for example, of press editorials or
academic articles may be preferable. (Hasselgård/Johansson 2011: 39)
What EFL learners are usually exposed to and hence aspire to approach is indeed
published expert writing (cf. Gilquin 2008: 24). Furthermore, Leńko-Szymańska
(2008) points out that students of English as a foreign language usually receive more
explicit writing instruction than native speakers and are thus possibly more skilled in
writing techniques. This would of course distort the validity of native/non-native
comparisons
and
pedagogical
recommendations
based
on
them
(cf.
Hasselgård/Johansson 2011: 55). Hence, a control corpus of expert writing seems to
be a reasonable choice for the purpose of this study.
The native German texts are taken from the Deutsches Referenzkorpus
(DeReKo), a collection of texts compiled by the Institut der Deutschen Sprache to
represent present-day German. The corpus comprises texts from a multitude of
genres, including newspaper and journal articles, works of fiction, as well as
scientific, legal and political texts (cf. Institut der Deutschen Sprache 2002). The
samples used for this study are a selection of non-fiction and newspaper articles with
a total of 105,240 words. Here, too, published expert writing was chosen as a
reference for the reasons outlined above.
All three corpora are accessible in electronic form on CD-ROM (ICLE) or
online (BNC and DeReKo) respectively and are thus computer-readable with the
help of corpus-linguistic concordance software, which will be described in the next
section.
2.2 Methodology
In order to investigate the use of connectors, a working definition of 'connector' is
necessary. For the purpose of this study, I follow Quirk et. al.'s (1985: 631)
understanding of connectors (what Quirk et al. call 'conjuncts') as 'adverbials with
specific semantic roles conjoining independent units'. Accordingly, I will use their
extensive list of connectors (cf. ibid.: 634ff) as a starting point for my investigation.
This selection has already been proved useful in earlier studies on the subject (cf.
Granger&Tyson 1996: 19f; Altenberg&Tapper 2008: 81) and allows for
comparability between the results of these studies and my own findings.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
13
The three connectors from Quirk et al.’s list used most frequently in the texts by
German learners of English will be identified with the help of the corpus-linguistic
concordance software WordSmith Concord. Concord seeks a specified search item in
a chosen text sample and generates a concordance display, together with information
about the context in which the search item appears. Figure 1 depicts the concordance
lines for the inquiry of however in the German learners' texts.
Figure 1. WordSmith Concord
To determine the three connectors used most frequently in the sample of German
learner writing, all items on Quirk et al.’s list will be used as search items in Concord
and their numbers of occurrences will be compared. The three most frequent will
then be subjected to a qualitative analysis by assessing the correctness and
appropriateness of their semantic function, their position and their register suitability.
Subsequently, the three connectors will be used for further concordance queries in
the other text samples using the same method.
Once the frequencies have been determined using the corpus-linguistic
software in all four samples, they will be compared in order to determine in how far
the occurrences in learner writing can be explained by L1 transfer. Whereas in
previous studies this was done solely by comparing the frequencies of certain
connectors in learner writing with either their frequency in the mother tongue
(Evensen&Rygh 1988) or in native English (Granger&Tyson 1996), my quantitative
approach will compare mother tongue, interlanguage and target language. This is
achieved with the help of the Detection – Explanation - Evaluation (DEE)– Model
developed by Gilquin (2008). This model combines the methods of two earlier
models for the investigation of transfer in EFL writing, Granger's (1996) Integrated
Contrastive Model and Jarvis's (2000) unified framework for transfer research and
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
14
comprises a total of four3 comparisons. The DEE model comprises all three language
varieties involved in the SLA process (L1, interlanguage and L2) and aims to
determine when transfer is at work, what its origin is and whether it is pedagogically
relevant (cf. Gilquin 2008: 4). It hence “proposes a methodology which seeks to
apprehend transfer in a way that takes several of its factors into account, thus striving
for a comprehensive view of the phenomenon” (Gilquin 2008: 13).
Figure 2. The DEE transfer model based on Gilquin (2008)
Figure 2 depicts the three stages of analysis of the DEE model. In a first step (1), the
learner's interlanguage is compared to his or her mother tongue (NL/IL). This is a
classic case of contrastive analysis (CA). If a similarity between both can be
observed, it is plausible that transfer occurs (cf. ibid.).Yet, a congruity between the
mother tongue and the learner's interlanguage alone cannot account for the presence
of transfer, because the learner's behavior may not be restricted to learners with his or
her mother tongue but may well be common to learners with other native languages.
This is why, in addition, the learner's interlanguage will be compared to the
interlanguage of learners of English with a different mother tongue (ILa/ILb), that is,
3
The original model by Gilquin (2008) comprises six comparisons. In addition to the ones used in
this study, she also includes a comparison of source language and translated language (SL/TrL)
with the help of a parallel translation corpus. Furthermore, she adds an explicit comparison of the
interlanguages by learners with the same mother tongue (ILa/ILa, cf. Gilquin 2008: 5). For
convenience, the German and Spanish learners' interlanguages are each considered homogeneous
varieties in this study. Where necessary, however, an intra-group comparison will indirectly be
integrated in the analysis in cases where individual learners' productions stand out in the samples.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
15
a contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA) approach will be applied (2). Only if that
second comparison fails to reveal similarities between the interlanguages can the
researcher assume to have detected L1 transfer with some degree of confidence (cf.
ibid.: 14).
The detection stage is followed by an attempt to explain the occurrence of
transfer. This is done by assessing the “language distance”, i.e. the degree of
similarity between the mother tongue and the target language (cf. ibid.: 16). Again, a
contrastive analysis is conducted (3). The items under investigation in the learner's
native or source language (SL) are compared to the use of their equivalents in a
comparable control corpus of the target language (TL) with regard to their frequency,
function and stylistic appropriateness (SL/TL). If the two languages can be proved to
be similar with respect to the use of the respective connectors, the learner will most
likely be tempted to transfer from one to the other (cf. ibid.).
In the final stage of the DEE model, the interlanguage is compared to the
target native language (TL/IL) in order to determine whether the detected instances
of transfer are cases of negative or of positive transfer (4). This, in turn, is a CIA
approach again. If the transferred item or structure is absent in the target language,
the
mother
tongue
influenced
the
learner's
interlanguage
negatively.
Correspondingly, the production of a correct target form in the interlanguage as a
result of L1 influence indicates positive transfer (cf. ibid.: 18). Having evaluated the
learner's performance this way, Gilquin claims that “[g]iven the time constrains that
exist in the FLT classroom, it is best to focus on negative transfer […], showing
learners how to avoid it […], and let positive transfer […] make its way into the
interlanguage.” (cf. ibid.). Pedagogical implications will be addressed in Section 4.
In the next section, the use of three connectors used most frequently by German
learners of English will be analyzed in a qualitative way. Subsequently, the three
stages of the DEE model will be used to guide quantitative analyses of the connector
usage of German learners of English.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
16
3 Results and discussion
The analysis for the frequencies with which the connectors used as search items
occurred yielded the results depicted in Figure 3. The figure depicts the frequencies
of all the connectors that were used at least 0.5 times per 10,000 words in the
German learners' texts. Since the samples differed in size, normalized values of
tokens per 10,000 words will be used in what follows in order to ensure
comparability.
however
8,75
therefore
5,16
nevertheless
2,49
though
2,49
of course
2,49
on the other hand
1,75
for example
1,57
furthermore
1,57
besides
1,11
moreover
1,11
that is to say
0,92
by the way
0,83
on the contrary
0,83
for instance
0,83
otherwise
0,74
what is more
0,74
admittedly
0,64
at the same time
0,64
consequently
0,64
on the one hand
0,55
after all
0,55
hence
0,55
in addition
0,55
0,00
2,00
occurence per 10,000
words
4,00
6,00
8,00
10,00
Figure 3. Frequencies of all connectors used in the English essays written by German learners
As shown in Figure 3, the connector which occurred most frequently was the
contrastive however. The second most frequent was the summative therefore, and the
third place was occupied by the contrastive nevertheless. It has to be mentioned that
the ascertainment of the third most frequent connector was not as straightforward as
the first two, because there were two more connectors with the same frequency.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
17
However, for the others, namely of course and though, it was difficult to determine in
which cases they served as a connector in the sense defined by Quirk et al. (1985).
Of course, for example, can be used as a resultive connector in the sense of therefore
or so as in “I even was prepared to put up with certain disadvantages: I knew that the
walls between the different flats were very thin and that my neighbours - an elderly
couple - went to bed early: of course I would turn down the music after 8 o'clock”
(<ICLE-GE-AUG-0042.2>, my italics) or as a contrastive concessive in the sense of
although as in “ Of course, we know that this idea might cause difficulties in a big
city, but why shouldn't they have a try?” (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0007.1>, my italics)(cf.
Quirk et al. 1985: 638f.). Much more frequently (16 out of 27 occurrences) it was
used as an intensifier in the English essays written by German learners, as in “In the
groove of a record the sound-waves have their exact replica, the term analogue
recording implies this CD players try to counter this problem with oversampling, but
that is of course not as exact as analogue sound reproduction” (<ICLE-GE-SAL0009.2>, my italics).
Though is called a “marginal case” by Quirk et al. (Quirk et al. 1985: 642). It
only counts as a connector if it occurs in sentence-final position, as in “Having no
money left at all there was nothing left to do than hitchhike to the hamlet where she
said she was living. The wedding was brilliant, though” (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0082.3>,
my italics). In sentence-initial or middle position, on the other hand, it is not a
connector but as subordinator equivalent to although, as in “Though I was still a
small child, I felt that the skill of cycling would open the world, which was at that
time my village, to me” (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0056.3>, my italics)(cf. Quirk et al. 1985:
642). The German learners used though in the majority of cases (22 of 27
occurrences) in this latter sense in their English essays; that is, they did not often use
it as a connector. Therefore, nevertheless was the third connector that could
unambiguously be classified as such in the most occurrences. However, though will
be returned to later when taking a closer look at underused items.
3.1 Qualitative analyses
As regards the qualitative assessment of the use of however, therefore and
nevertheless, some problems with regards to the necessity, semantic function,
explicitness/implicitness of the statement and positioning of the connectors could be
observed. Table 2 provides an overview of the error types, their raw frequencies
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
18
within the total occurrence of however, therefore and nevertheless (178 occurences)
and their percentages. For each error type, random representative examples from the essays
written by German learners of English will be analyzed.
Error type
Occurrence
Percentage
Redundancy
6
3.37%
Semantic function
5
2.81%
Implicitness
4
2.25%
Sentence structure
1
0.56%
Punctuation
9
5.06%
Table 2. Error types in the connector usage of German learners of English
The fact that however, therefore and nevertheless were the most frequent connectors
in the learner texts is not surprising, since their semantic function to present
“contrastive matter in relation to what has preceded” (however and nevertheless) or
“to introduce and item that embraces the preceding ones” (therefore)(Quirk et al.
1985: 638) is familiar to the learners because similar structures exist in their mother
tongue (see the discussion of the German correspondents below). The problem seems
to be that learners are so comfortable with the use of these connectors that they tend
to overuse them, even when they are not necessary. One of the subjects, for instance,
used however four times in a thirty-sentence essay (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0089.3>). The
following examples are cases of redundancy.
[1] Obviously everyone is familiar with the horrible pictures of crying
mothers who lost their men and children in the second world-war. But
recently there have been, and there are still fierce battles, like in Iraq or
in the former Yugoslavia. However, no war is the same, as they have all
different causes and objectives. So, one should ask himself the
question, whether a war is justified or whether peace is a good thing at
any price. There is no doubt, a war with all its consequences, has to be
in any cases only the final and last solution of problems. But nobody
can deny that a war is sometimes the most effective solution, when
other methods like economic sanctions are useless. (<ICLE-GE-AUG0038.1>, my italics)
The connector however is not exactly redundant here, but not necessary either. The
statement that “no war is the same” is not in contrast to what has been said before
and could therefore stand on its own. The author should have left however out in this
case because in this relatively short passage, he starts nearly every sentence with a
connector, which makes his style appear forced and unprofessional. Furthermore, in
addition to the sentence introduced by however, he used but twice. But signals a
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
19
contrast as well, which means that in an essay of six sentences, the author included
three contrasts and hence shifted direction in his argumentation three times. Instead
of creating coherence, the exaggerated use of connectors confuses the reader and
reduces the quality of the text. This is also true for example [2]:
[2] Even students or workers sometimes have to drive by high speed,
as they are late for work for several reasons, e.g. not having heard the
alarm-clock and therefore having got up too late. <ICLE-GE-AUG0027.1>
It is evident that the person in the example got up too late because they had not heard
their alarm. Emphasizing this causal relationship with the help of the connector
therefore is not wrong, but it is not necessary either. The sentence is already
complicated because of the intricate use of the infinite verb forms with the past
participle, and the redundant connector worsens this complexity. In order to avoid a
clumsy style due to the exaggerated use of connectors, the author should have left it
out in this case. The following excerpt is another example for redundant connector
usage:
[3] And even though at Apuleius' time a novel seemed to be an unusual
means of moral education - this was his major concern. Like Rabelais
he obviously found that popular tales gave him a wider field for his
descriptions of contemporary morals and manners punctuated by
philosophical asides, than any more respectable literary form at his
time. Therefore the entertaining frame is just an instrument for other
purposes such as social satire and literary parody. <ICLE-GE-SAL0010.2>
The author of this passage provides arguments for her claim that “the entertaining
frame” of Apuleius' novels was “just an instrument”. The quoted passage leads to
ther central hypothesis. The summative function of the last sentence is achieved
through discursive strategies, and the connector therefore is not needed to clarify it.
In fact, it is considered professional style to achieve this kind of cohesion without
the use of connectors. (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 104) Hence, the learner actually
would have produced a professional text, had they not spoiled it with the
unnecessary connector. Once more, they unnecessarily clung to their 'lexical teddy
bear'. This is confirmed by the fact that this learner used therefore five times in their
two-page essay. There were also cases where nevertheless was used redundantly, as
in example [4]:
[4] Despite her social criticism the authoress nevertheless does not
mean to shock her readers - on the contrary. <ICLE-GE-SAL-0010.2>
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
20
In this example, nevertheless is redundant because the contrastive relationship
between the mentioned authoress' actions and her intention is already sufficiently
made clear by despite. Nevertheless and despite have the same semantic function.
Hence, only one of the two is needed. The cooccurrence of conjuncts is, according to
Quirk et al. (1985: 642), “stylistically questionable” and “more characteristic of
loose informal talk”. Besides this redundant use of nevertheless, the learner used this
connector two more times in their essay, which may be taken as a sign of overuse.
The next example is a case of semantically incorrect use. The semantic relation
however expresses is not appropriate in the context of this passage:
[5] As we already know, Neofascism is a dark part of our history that
is accompanied by cruelty, discrimination and crime. Many crimes
commited [sic] in recent years go back on neofascist tendencies;
tendencies that seem to be legal and becoming stronger. However, if
the government does not limit the influence of neofascism we will find
no way out of this problems. (<ICLE-GE-DRE-0026.1>, my italics)
The sentence “if the government does not limit the influence of neofascism we will
find no way out of this problems” is not a contrast to but a conclusion from what has
been stated before. Therefore the connector however must be replaced by a
concluding connector. Similarly, in example [6] the author used a resultive connector
where he should have used an adverb of manner.
[6] They'll be around you when you're not in a good mood, they're glad
when you go outside for a walk with them, they say hello with their
tale, the eyes and their voice "wau, wau", and therefore show you how
excited they are to see you. <ICLE-GE-AUG-0059.1>
What the author wants to say is not that a dog shows its excitement because it wags
its tale and barks, but they show it by doing so. Hence, therefore is wrong in this
context. The sentence should read “... and thereby show you how excited they are”.
The learner presumably confused therefore and thereby due to their formal similarity.
Another frequent error type in the connector usage of German learners of
English was implicitness. This describes cases when authors use a connector that
signals an explicit semantic relation such as contrast or consequence to refer to a
statement they only implicitly made. Example [7] is a case in point:
[7] [C]hildhood, associated with myths of unspoilt nature, frankness
and freedom. Nevertheless these myths need to be corrected. <ICLEGE-AUG-0004.3>
Nevertheless is a concessive contrastive like however (cf. Quirk et. al. 1985: 636).
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
21
But while however expresses a simple contrast and is semantically coinciding with
but, nevertheless is used in statements that are true in spite of something that has
been said before. Thus, it does not only contrast two units, but requires an explicit
counter-statement. The phrase “childhood, associated with myths of unspoilt nature,
frankness and freedom” indeed implies that the myths associated with childhood
have been commonly accepted for a long time, and the author wants to challenge
these myths now. Hence, the semantic relationship for nevertheless is given, but it is
not explicitly stated. The first unit is only a noun phrase and lacks a predicate for
nevertheless to refer to. This is why nevertheless appears odd in that sentence. The
author of the following excerpt also misused the explicit contrastive function of
nevertheless:
[8] Being an "ecologist" costs much more, more money, more nervs
[sic], more time. But nevertheless they are better people! Whereelse
[sic] should we start than with us? (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0033.1>, my
italics).
This is another case of objectionable implicitness. The author's argumentation is that
pending money, nerves and time on environmentally friendly behavior, though, does
not contrast with being a better person in the learner's argumentation. Rather, it is a
proof of a person's benevolence. The author does not explicitly state this claim with a
statement like environmentally friendly behavior takes a lot of effort but it is worth it
or but it is necessary. Hence, he cannot draw an explicit contrast with nevertheless
between two units the contrast between which he has only implicitly stated. A similar
error is at hand in the following example:
[9] Certainly this first ride had been followed by many others, and after
a time I began to travel longer distances as well. At that time, I however
also had to cope with several problems which cycling naturally brings
about. (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0054.3>, my italics)
In this example, the use of however is not correct either. The author wants to express
that riding a bike is not only pleasure, but also carries problems. However, they do
not explicitly verbalize that pleasure and thus cannot explicitly contrast it with the
problems introduced by however.
The extensive and often problematic use of however, therefore and
nevertheless in the learner texts can be explained by Hasselgren's concept of 'lexical
teddy bears' (Hasselgren 1994: 237). She found that learners overuse words that are
familiar and that they feel safe with and cling to them even in cases where they are
unnecessary or where other lexical choices would be semantically more precise, as
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
22
well as in cases where they are actually wrong (cf. ibid). The three connectors in
question can be said to be such 'lexical teddy bears' for many German learners of
English because they use them extensively in their essays even when they are
redundant or incorrect. They seem to think that the more connectors they use, the
better the quality of their texts gets (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 105). In reality,
though, the opposite is the case. Herriman & Boström Aronsson's (2009) conclusion
from their comparable analysis of Swedish learner's writing in English also applies to
the present study:
[T]he NNS [non-native speakers][…] appear to lack sufficient
knowledge of textual organization in English. This is suggested by their
overuse of explicit expressions of cohesion, such as conjunctive[s]
which express relationships between ideas and parts of the text, which,
in turn, may result in a clumsier style in their essays. This overuse may
be due to an insecurity among the NNS as regards the creation of
cohesive ties when writing in a foreign language. (Herriman&Boström
Aronsson 2009: 117)
The exaggerated use of connectors will be returned to in Section 4. Other aspects
that need to be considered when assessing the quality of connector usage are
sentence structure, position and punctuation. All three are formal rather than contentrelated aspects of connectors. Since this study is more interested in the discursive
function of connectors, they will be addressed only briefly. The analysis of the
structure of sentences with connectors in the English essays by German learners is
especially interesting because German, in contrast to English, allows for a variable
word-order. The use of a connector often leads to a rearrangement of the sentence
(e.g. Er ist krank, er kommt heute nicht zur Arbeit versus Er ist krank, daher kommt
er heute nicht zu Arbeit). Such a rearrangement is not legitimate in English. Some
learners seem to be unaware of this difference, as the following example shows:
[10] It was proved that TV commercials have a large impact on our
subconciousness [sic] and that we can easily be brought to by [sic] things
by such psychological tricks. (…) Therefore should TV commercials be
banned. (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0083.1>, my italics)
Here, the learner clearly transferred the German sentence structure 'Daher sollte
Fernsehwerbung verboten werden', while a restructuring of the sentence to
something like 'This is why TV commercial should be banned' would have been a
better choice. However, the example just quoted was the only case of such
syntactical errors. English structure in sentences with connectors does not seem to be
a major problem for German learners. The position of the connector was even more
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
23
unproblematic. According to Quirk et al., the clause-initial position is the most
common position for connectors. In addition, some can also occur in the middle or at
the end of a sentence. However, therefore, and nevertheless can all occur in clauseinitial and middle position (cf. Quirk et. Al 1985: 643). In their cases the positioning
does not cause problems because the German equivalents are used in the same
positions. The learners did not once use them in the sentence-final position. Only the
use of commas really posed a problem to the learners. Connectors in the sentenceinitial position are usually followed by a comma (cf. ibid.), and those in the middle
position can be separated by commas if the semantic role of the connector, e.g. a
contrast, should be emphasized. The learners, however, often used the connectors
without commas, as in the following examples:
[11] Consulting a dictionary about the different meanings of the word
"queer" however, made me change my mind: maybe being queer really is
a prerequisite for challenging society.(<ICLE-GE-AUG-0065.3>
[12] I have all duly respect for womanly beauty, intelligence and charm
and I have been known to courtsey [sic] to any female showing respect
for male dominance. However I can't put up with the condescending
arrogance ever more of today's liberal women apply to treat today's
newly oppressed men.
[13] So I can't see the argument for driving at high speed. Therefore I
plead the case for introducing a speed limit on German motorways.
(<ICLE-GE-AUG-0028.1>)
[14] My italian [sic] cousin is not familiar with bavarian [sic]
civilisation, and so he asked me why the local population stood on the
tables instead of sitting on their chairs. Nevertheless he has enjoyed this
exotic behaviour (...). (<ICLE-GE-AUG-0059.3>)
The omission of commas is legitimate in the cases of therefore and nevertheless,
where the comma is optional and would only be necessary “when the conjunct would
have a separate intonation nucleus in speech or when it can be misinterpreted” (Quirk
et al. 1985: 643). However, on the other hand, has to be separated by commas
because the contrast it signals requires accentuation and a pause in speech. Without
the comma, however could be read as an adjective, as in the sentence “As a matter of
fact, however marvellous [sic] computers are said to be they simply cannot replace
humans talking to one another.” (<ICLE-GE-SAL-0003.2>). The punctuation, or
rather its absence, in examples [11] and [12] is therefore erroneous.
Overall, qualitative problems, both formal and functional, occurred in more
than 14 per cent of the instances of the usage of however, therefore and nevertheless
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
24
by German learners of English. In addition, they often used their favored connectors
where others would have been more appropriate. Hence or thus, for instance, would
have been more formal alternatives to therefore. The underuse of more sophisticated
alternatives will be addressed later in this section. In summary it can be said that this
brief qualitative assessment of problems with the use of the three most frequent
connectors in German learner writing revealed some problems with the explicitness
of the connectors, as well as considerable uncertainty as to their necessity, meaning
and register-appropriateness.
3.2 Quantitative analyses
In a subsequent step, the frequencies of the three determined connectors were
compared to the frequencies of the respective functional equivalents in German. As
correspondents, jedoch, aber and allerdings for however, daher, folglich, demzufolge,
somit, mithin and deshalb for therefore, and trotzdem, nichtsdestoweniger, trotz
alledem, (dessen) ungeachtet and dennoch for nevertheless were chosen. Two works
of reference were consulted for the determination of the equivalents: The Oxford
German Dictionary and the seventh edition of the Duden. It is hardly ever possible to
determine the exact equivalent of a given word in a foreign language, and translation
studies have moved away from such attempts towards a more functionally oriented
paradigm. Thus, some of the chosen German equivalents do not belong to the same
grammatical category as the English connectors, but they serve the same function
and should therefore be considered in the analysis. The chosen German words were
queried in the German corpus and compared to the frequency to their correspondents
in the German learner texts (Step 1 of the DEE model) with the results shown in
Figure 4.
11,4
12
10
8,75
8
6
4
5,16
3,61
2,49
3,32
2
0
however vs.
jedoch/allerdings
therefore vs. deshalb,
daher, also, folglich,
demzufolge, somit, mithin
nevertheless vs.
Trotzdem/dennoch
Figure 4. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in IL and NL
IL
NL
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
25
Added together, jedoch and allerdings occurred much less frequently in native
German. The difference to the frequency of the use of however in the learner texts
may be explained by the problem of finding an equivalent. Where English uses
however, German often does not use an adverbial connector. Instead, aber (but) is
used. When looking at functional equivalence, aber has to be considered, as well. It
occurred 38.67 times per 10,000 words. However, if aber is considered in the native
German texts, the frequency of but in the English essays written by German learners
is also interesting. It occurred 62.37 times per 10,000 words. Hence, both the
comparison of the frequencies of contrastive connectors only as well as that of all
items serving a contrastive function show a much higher frequency in the
interlanguage than in native German. The functional correspondents to therefore
occurred at a sum of 11.40 times per 10,000 words, which is not in accordance with
the frequency in the learner texts, either. Even if the functional equivalents to
therefore in English, namely hence, thus and consequently, are taken into
consideration, connectors signaling results or consequences in learner English still
only amount to 8.57 occurrences per 10,000 words as opposed to more than 11
occurrences per 10,000 words in native German. Items with this function, then, seem
to be more frequent in German. The German equivalents of nevertheless, on the other
hand, exhibited more similar frequencies to that of their English counterpart in the
learner texts. The function of nevertheless is similar to however. The similarity of its
frequency in the English essays written by German learners and in native German
can thus not be explained by functional reasons, because for however the figures
were very different. Nevertheless, in two of three cases, the German learners seemed
to be using connectors for the same semantic relations at disparate frequencies in
their interlanguage as they are used to in their native language. This suggests the
unlikelihood of transfer.
The IL/NL comparison is complemented in the DEE model by a comparison
of German learners' IL to the IL of learners with a different mother tongue (Step 2 of
the model), in order to ascertain whether possible problems are L1-specific and
hence a result of transfer or if they are common to all learners. Therefore, the three
most common connectors in the essays by German learners were inquired in the
sample of texts produced by Spanish students. The frequencies of the connectors in
these texts in comparison to the German sample are shown in Figure 5.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
26
10
9
8
8,75
7,1
7
6
5,16
5
4,7
German learners
Spanish learners
4
3
2,49
1,8
2
1
0
how ever
therefore
nevertheless
Figure 5. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in ILa and Ilb
Interestingly, with the exception of nevertheless, the use of the connectors by
German learners was more similar to that of the Spanish learners than to the use of
the correspondents of these connectors in native German. According to the DEE
model, in which such similarities between the interlanguages of learners from
different language backgrounds point to the unlikelihood of transfer, this indicates
that transfer from German does not have a significant impact on the use of
connectors by German learners. Rather, their behavior in that respect, be it correct or
not, is in-line with what other learners with the same level of proficiency in English
do. The two comparisons at the first stage of the DEE model, hence, lead to the
assumption that transfer from German is not a major influence on the quantitative
connector usage by German learners of English.
The subsequent explanation stage (Step 3), where the model intends to trace
possible reasons for transfer, should bring clarity to the matter. It aims to determine
whether English and German are two languages between which transfer is likely to
occur with regards to connector usage. For this purpose, the DEE model establishes
the 'language distance' between the native and the target language. When comparing
the frequencies of the connectors in question in native German and native English,
divergent values can be observed both when only considering connectors a well as
when taking all functional correspondents into account (Figure 6).
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
27
Figure 6. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in TL and NL
The considerable deviation in the frequencies of however and its correspondents once
more points to the necessity of factoring in but and aber. They occur at similar rates
in the English and the German texts, namely 42.41 versus 38.67 times per 10,000
words. Apparently, contrast is expressed at similar frequencies in German and
English, but it is not done by using a connector in German (jedoch, allerdings) as
much as it is in English (however).
Therefore, in contrast, occurred much less frequently in the native English
texts than its functional correspondents in native German. This supports the
observation made earlier, that therefore is only one possible item to express a
resultive relation but it may also indicate that consequence is left implicit more
frequently in English than in German. This difference makes transfer implausible and
rather implies that the learners need to be introduced to the different discourse
conventions of German and English
The third connector, nevertheless, also occurred only about half as much in
native English as did its correspondents in German. This might again point do
different discourse conventions. In sum, English and German seem to be working
differently with regards to the frequency of the connectors under investigation and
the discursive functions they serve. The distance between them is obvious in this
respect. This suggests, according to the DEE model, the unlikelihood of transfer and
may be referred to as a possible argument against the phenomenon.
In order to evaluate any possible instances of transfer, in a last step the frequencies of
the connectors in non-native English (IL) and native English (TL) are compared
(Step 4). As can be seen in Figure 9, the figures were strikingly analogous.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
10
8,75
28
8,35
8
5,16
6
6,17
4
IL
2,49
2
TL
1,8
0
however
therefore
nevertheless
Figure 7. Comparison of the use of the three connectors in IL and TL
The German learners' interlanguage was closer to the native target than to their
mother tongue. For all three connectors, the frequencies in the essays written by
German learners of English were closer to those in native English than to the
correspondents in German. This also seems to disprove the influence of transfer.
Figure 8 provides an overview of the results that the four comparisons of the
DEE model yielded.
Figure 8. Overview of the use of the three connectors in the four varieties
The NL/IL analysis (Step 1) revealed few similarities in the usage of connectors in
German learners' interlanguage and native German. In nearly all cases the learners'
use of connectors was very different from the use of the correspondents in their
mother tongue. Therefore, L1 interference is unlikely to have occurred. The
comparison of the interlanguage of German learners with that of Spanish learners
(Ila/ILb, Step 2) furthermore showed that the latter use the connectors in question to
similar extents. Hence, definite instances of language-specific transfer from German
to the interlanguage have not been detected. In the next step (Step 3), the fact that the
language distance between German and English with regard to the frequencies of
however and therefore is quite considerable added to the impression that transfer
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
29
does not play a major role in the connector usage of German learners of English.
Finally, the comparison of the frequencies of however, therefore and nevertheless in
IL and TL (Step 4) yielded almost analogue values. Negative transfer can therefore
be excluded from possible factors affecting the quantitative usage of the three
connectors under investigation. The problems they do seem to concern functionality
rather than frequency. This implicates that learners have some connectors in their
English lexicon, but they lack the ability to use them correctly, which cannot be
explained by L1 transfer, either This confirms the hypothesis formulated at the outset
of this study.
3.3 Analysis of under- and overused connectors
In order to find out what, if not transfer, is the cause of the problems for German
learners of English, it is necessary to find more connectors they have difficulties
with. This is why it is worth looking at some more connectors that stood out when
first inquiring the most frequent connectors in the text samples. Some connectors that
were significantly underused by the German learners could be noticed. Figure 9
displays the four connectors underused by German learners with their frequencies in
native English (TL)learner English (IL) and native German (NL).
11,4
12
10
8
8,16
6,64
TL
4,93
6
3,32
4
2
0,65
1,931,8
IL
4,46
2,3
2,582,28
NL
0
yet
for example
thus
though
Figure 9. Underused items in the learners’ texts compared to the TL
The most striking case of underuse is the contrastive connector yet. Native speakers
used it an impressive 6.64 times per 10,000 words. The German learners, by contrast,
used yet as a contrastive connector no more than 0.65 times per 10,000 words. Like
that of nevertheless, the contrastive function of yet would be realized in German as
trotzdem or dennoch, which occurred 3.32 times per 10,000 words in the native
German sample. Transfer, thus, cannot be the reason for the underrepresentation of
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
30
yet in German learners' interlanguage. Rather, it might be due to their sheer
ignorance of that use of the word. Contrastive yet is a formal alternative to the much
more common and familiar however, and learners might simply not be aware of that.
This assumption is supported by the fact that Leńko-Szymańska (2008), who studied
the connector usage by learners from seven different mother tongue backgrounds,
and Altenberg&Tapper (2008), who did the same for Swedish learners, also observed
an underuse of yet in all the learner texts (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 103,
Altenberg&Tapper 2008: 87). This might point to inadequate teaching of the use of
connectors in Europe in general. Here, then, is first proof for the hypothesis put
forward earlier, that the teaching of connectors in the EFL classroom is inadequate.
The use of the appositive connector for example and its abbreviation e.g. is
similarly diverging in the texts by German learners and by native speakers of
English. Native speakers used it 4.93 times per 10,000 words, the learners only 1.93
times. The learners' use of this connector is more similar to that in their native
language: In the native German texts, zum Beispiel/z.B. occurred 1.8 times per
10,000 words. This suggests the influence of negative transfer, because in formal
German, examples are often paraphrased and not introduced directly. In English, on
the other hand, connectors such as for example or also for instance are acceptable
and common even in formal texts. Quirk et al. include them in their lists without any
annotation that would indicate their belonging to more informal genres (cf. Quirk et
al. 1985: 636). Learners might simply be unaware of this difference in discourse
conventions and therefore rely too much on their mother tongue. This, then, would
again not so much be a problem of transfer but of inadequate teaching. Transfer of
German conventions can definitely be said to take place here. However, it is not the
cause but the result of the problem, which really is that learners were not taught how
to use for example correctly.
The third underused connector is the summative thus (used 4.46 times per
10,000 words by native speakers, 2.3 times by German learners). Thus can be used as
a formal alternative to therefore (cf. Quirk et. al.: 635), which is the second mostused connector in the sample of German learner writing. This implies that the
learners do express results and consequences in their English essays, they are aware
of that function. They simply do not know the alternative thus and that it is more
appropriate that therefore in formal genres. The functional German equivalents
daher, deshalb, also, folglich, demzufolge, somit and mithin occur 11.40 times per
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
31
10,000 words in the native German sample. The strikingly low representation of thus
in German learners' interlanguage compared to its commonness in native English and
the high frequency of the resultive function in native German rules out the likelihood
of transfer. Instead, I would once more suspect learners' general ignorance of
alternatives because the information they received and the materials they were
provided with were inadequate.
A fourth case of underuse that needs to be mentioned is though. As pointed
out earlier, though was also amongst the connectors used most frequently by the
German learners, albeit it was not always used as a connector in Quirk et. al.'s sense.
To them, though is only a connector or conjunct when it is used as a concessive
contrastive, that is, when connecting two units of which “one unit is seen as
unexpected in the light of the other” (ibid.: 639). But even if all instances of a
contrast expressed by though by German learners, both as a connector and as a
subordinator, would have been counted (2.49 occurrences per 10,000 words), it is
used far more often by native speakers of English, namely 8.16 times per 10,000
words. Again, transfer from German cannot account for this difference. In native
German, the equivalent obwohl, which is used 2.28 times per 10,000 words in the
sample, cannot serve as a reliable reference for the use of though in English because
it corresponds to sentence-initial though, only. Where though occurs in the middle or
at the end of a sentence, however, it could be translated as, for example,
allerdings,and jedoch. But even if we consider all functional correspondents
expressing the contrastive function of though in German (obowhl, allerdings, jedoch
and trotzdem), they still occur less frequently (5.89 times per 10,000 words) than
though does in native English. Transfer from German cannot account for the low
representation of though, since it occurs even less frequently in the learners'
interlanguage than in native German, and is underused by Altenberg & Tapper's
Swedish subjects as well (Altenberg&Tapper 2008: 87). Apparently many learners
are not aware of the appropriate usage of though, and this might once more be due to
teaching-induced factors.
The analysis of overused connectors leads to similar findings. Figure 10
shows the two connectors which the German learners used far more often than the
native English speakers.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
3
32
2,56
2,5
2
TL
IL
NL
1,5
0,82
1
0,5
0
0
0,57
0,09
by the way
0,09
anyway
Figure 10. Overused items in the learners’ texts compared to the TL
The most striking case of overuse was the connector anyway. The German learners
use it 2.56 times per 10,000 words, whereas the native speakers use it only 0.09
times. It is implausible that this overuse is a result of transfer, as the most probable
German correspondents, sowieso and ohnehin, also occurred only 0.57 times per
10,000 words. The problem seems to stem from learners' unawareness of the registerappropriateness of the connector. Anyway is listed in Quirk et al.'s list of connectors
with the annotation <informal>(cf. Quirk et. al.: 635). Since German learners are
often exposed to informal English in their private lives, in popular music, movies,
television shows and the internet, for instance, they may confuse registers. Registerunawareness as a cause for misuse is also suggested by Altenberg & Tapper (2008:
87, 92). It is the task of teachers to counter this by raising student's awareness of
different registers and genres and providing them with alternatives for the respective
styles. This task was apparently not performed sufficiently in the case of the German
learners.
The second overused connector is by the way. The frequency in the learner
texts, 0.82 times per 10,000, is not very high but is nevertheless noteworthy, because
in the native English texts by the way does not occur at all. The German equivalent
übrigens is not used frequently, either: only 0.09 times per 10,000 words. Again,
learners cannot have been influenced by their mother tongue when they overused by
the way. Instead, this seems to be yet another case of teaching-induced misuse.
According to Quirk et al, “transitional conjuncts” like by the way “serve to shift
attention to another topic or to a temporally related event” (Quirk et al.:636). The
very point of argumentative writing, however, is usually to concentrate on one topic
and not deviate from it. Professional writers avoid side notes and digressions. They
are more of a characteristic of spontaneous talk. If the learners had been made aware
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
33
of this stylistic distinction, they would not use by the way as often in their written
production.
The analysis of those connectors which proved problematic for German
learners of English showed that difficulties cannot be attributed to transfer from their
mother tongue. Instead, a general unawareness of register-appropriateness and
discourse conventions and an ignorance of alternative connectors for distinct
registers can be assumed. This assumption is in line with observations made in
previous studies on the topic (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008, Altenberg&Tapper 2008,
Gilquin&Paquot 2008). Inadequate teaching materials and inappropriate methods to
convey the correct use of connectors seem to have a greater impact on the written
production of German learners of English than transfer from their mother tongue.
Didactic approaches therefore urgently require revision in that respect. The following
section will investigate to what extent the results of this study can be used to draw
conclusions for EFL teaching and inform the development of more adequate teaching
methods and materials.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
34
4 Pedagogical implications and outlook
The analysis of the connector usage of German learners of English has revealed that,
to all appearances, L1 interference is not a major cause for the problems learners
seem to have with this discursive device. Rather than misusing individual connectors
because of a negative influence of their mother tongue, the learners seemed to have
only a limited repertoire of connectors at their disposal. This repertoire does not
suffice to meet the requirements of all genres, in the present case academic writing.
Similar observations have already been made by Altenberg&Tapper (2008), LeńkoSzymańska (2008), and Gilquin&Paquot (2008), who all note that learners seem to
lack knowledge of register-appropriate alternatives to the few connectors they
frequently use. What is interesting is that these studies worked with corpora of texts
produced by learners from native language backgrounds other than German and
nevertheless achieved analogous results. This suggests that the problems with
connector usage are not restricted to German learners, but are a general problem for
EFL students.
If L1 transfer as a possible cause for problems can be excluded, other
explanations have to be found. The studies quoted above concordantly offer
teaching-induced factors as one source of problems. They criticize that not enough
attention is paid to familiarizing students with different registers and training them in
academic writing in the EFL classroom (cf. Altenberg&Tapper 2008: 92). Learners
apparently have not been adequately taught how to create coherence in their texts (cf.
Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 104). There is ground for the assumption that the teaching
of connectors in the EFL classroom in Europe (where all of the subjects in the studies
quoted above come from) is inadequate. Both Gilquin & Paquot (2008) and Milton &
Tsang (1993) adduce evidence for this from EFL textbooks. The respective excerpts
are reproduced in Figures 11 and 12.
Figure 11. Connectives of result in Jordan (1999: 62) as reproduced in Gilquin&Paquot (2008)
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
35
Figure 12. Use of discourse markers in Burns&Smallwood (1990: 110)
as reproduced in Milton&Tsang (1993: 232)
Gilquin&Paquot argue that such “undifferentiated lists of connectors” as the one in
Figure 13 have a “pernicious influence” on learner output. (Gilquin&Paquot 2008:
54). They give the misleading impression that the connectors were synonymous,
interchangeable, and equally valid in different genres and registers. Similar criticism
is expressed by Milton & Tsang, who find fault with lists like the one in Figure 14
because they ignore syntactic and semantic differences and do not provide enough
examples (cf. Milton&Tsang 1993: 17). Furthermore, they, too, criticize that such
lists suggest that a given connector could simply be replaced with any other from the
same category (cf. ibid.: 18). In a different paper, Milton sums up the problem as
follows:
Students are drilled in the categorical use of a short list of expressions –
often those functioning as connectives or alternatively those which are
colorful and complicated (and therefore impressive) – regardless of
whether they are used primarily in spoken or written language (if needed
at all), or to which text types they are appropriate. (Milton 1998: 190).
The conclusion to be drawn from this criticism is that connectors are evidently
imparted in an insufficient and misleading way in many cases. However, this does
not mean that connectors are given too little attention in the EFL classroom. On the
contrary, Leńko-Szymańska (2008) claims that connectors are often presented as a
kind of panacea to improve learners' writing style and are hence treated extensively
in class (cf. Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 104). Learners are therefore made believe that
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
36
“if their essays contain a large variety and number of connectors, they will receive
higher marks, which can lead to the forced and unnatural use of linking expressions”
(ibid: 105). The often redundant use of however, therefore, and nevertheless by some
of the German learners observed in Section 3 backs up this assumption. Learners
seem to feel obliged to use connectors in their writing, while indeed forgoing them
would in many cases make their writing more professional and native-like. LeńkoSzymańska (2008) compared the students' essays to professional writing in her study
and found that the experts used significantly less connectors. She conjectures “that
professional writers achieve coherence in their texts without an abundant use of
linking expressions. […] [T]hey choose and structure their arguments more
effectively than do inexperienced writers; thus the reader does not need many overt
markers to follow the reasoning of the writer” (ibid: 104). The “abundant use of
connectors”, then, seems to be “a general characteristic of novice writing” (ibid.) that
is enforced by misleading teaching materials.
There seems to be no doubt among learner corpus researchers that EFL
teaching as it is practiced in many places at present is not in accordance with what
corpus linguistics revealed about actual language use (both by native and by nonnative speakers) and problem areas (cf. Kaszubski 1998: 175, Römer 2006: 126).
Thus, nearly all research papers in learner corpus research end with a section devoted
to 'pedagogical implications'. Based on their respective findings, the authors pass
criticism on current teaching methods and formulate a multitude of proposals to
improve the imparting of the linguistic phenomenon under investigation. However,
these well-intentioned proposals rarely make it into actual teaching practice. The
supposed “direct link between uncovering differences between learner and native
data and designing remedial pedagogical tools and methods” (Granger 2009: 22)
insinuated in such proposals does not exist. Corpus linguists acknowledge that their
findings “have not yet exerted such a strong influence on EFL textbooks” (Römer
2009: 90). A survey conducted by Mukherjee (2004) amongst practicing English
teachers in Germany revealed that 79,4% of them did “not know anything about
corpus linguistics” (Mukherjee 2004: 241f). He concludes that
there is, at present, a large gap between the wealth of applied corpuslinguistic research and the teaching practice in Germany, which so far has
only been affected to a very limited extent by this research. Closing this
gap is a challenge to applied corpus linguists and, perhaps more
importantly, to those who are involved in teacher training (ibid.: 247).
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
37
Recently, corpus linguists have started to put the general call for a corpus-driven
revision of EFL teaching into practice by designing concrete methods and materials.
The general trend is to move from the previous “Present – Practise- Produce
paradigm” to the “Observe – Hypothesise – Experiment paradigm” (Granger 2007:
62). This is achieved by the implementation of data-driven learning (DDL). This
method uses authentic NS and NNS corpus data to familiarize learners with the
differences between the respective varieties, common uses of specific items and
typical mistakes in a ‘hands-on’ manner. One example of this approach as adapted in
the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (Rundell 2007) can be
seen in Figure 13. By drawing attention to the respective frequencies in native and
non-native writing, the learners’ awareness of inappropriate overuse is raised (cf. De
Cock & Paquot 2009: 200).
Figure 13. Comparison of quantifiers in NS and NNS writing in
Rundell (2007) as reproduced in De Cock&Paquot (2009: 200)
After already having made their way into the design of dictionaries and grammars,
corpus-linguistic findings are very slowly starting to be implemented in the creation
of teaching materials and exercises, as well. ‘Fill-in-the-gap’ exercises based on real
concordance lines generated by corpus-linguistic software (see Figure 14) are one
example of how to familiarize learners with authentic language use.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
38
Figure 14. Example for a corpus-based DDL exercise as reproduced in Römer (2006: 125)
The use of connectors is one area where such exercises could be perfectly suitable.
Whereas traditional textbooks have learners practice the use of connectors with
unnatural and decontextualized examples (cf Römer 2009: 90), exercises based on
language as it is actually used can be expected to lead to a more profound
understanding of which connector is appropriate in which context. As to the
repertoire of connectors to chose from, the proposal formulated by Kaszubski (1998)
for the enhancement of materials for Polish learners of English is also applicable to
the case of connector usage by German learners. Future teaching materials about
connectors should include more exhaustive “lists of synonymous items, accompanied
with frequency band information, register/style description, and (gradable)
overuse/underuse/misuse warnings”, and supplemented with NL/TL contrasting
samples (Kaszubski 1998: 183). The main challenge, however, is not equipping the
learners with the appropriate connectors, but teaching them when not to use them and
how to create cohesion in their essays without them. Leńko-Szymańska's proposal is
to continue teaching connectors, but to de-emphasize their importance in the
construction of coherent discourse and focus on alternative ways of creating
coherence (Leńko-Szymańska 2008: 106) She admits that “[s]uch a skill might be
much more difficult to teach, but as a result, essays written by English learners may
be not only more native-like, but also more expert-like” (cf. ibid.). The shift of focus
in learner corpus research from lexical to more discursive phenomena just dispraised
in the introduction of this paper comes now just at the right time, as the requested
revision of teaching cohesion in EFL writing needs to be based on the findings of a
corpus-based discourse analysis rather than a quantitative inquiry of connectors in
learner writing.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
39
This study has shown that the analysis of German learners’ interlanguage and the
comparison of it with their mother tongue, their target language and the
interlanguage of learners with different native languages provides valuable insights
into the problems and insecurities the learners have with respect to the use of
connectors in their English essays. These problems could not, in contrast to what is
frequently claimed in literature, be attributed to transfer from the mother tongue but
to the inadequate teaching of connector usage in the EFL classroom. The findings of
the corpus-linguistic analysis did not only help to detect this problem, they can also
be used to find a remedy. For one thing, samples and excerpts from the corpus data
or even the corpora themselves can physically be brought into the classroom (cf.
Römer 2006: 124). In addition, the findings can be used to revise current teaching
materials, considering the newly-gained insights about over-, under-, and misuse of
specific connectors as well as the exaggerated frequency of connectors in learner
texts in general, factors which had hitherto been disregarded in the majority of
textbooks (cf. ibid.: 177). However, corpus linguistics can only make these valuable
contributions to SLA and ELT research if studies like the present one continue to
clear up prevalent misconceptions about learner language and the learning process
that are reflected in many of the teaching materials on the market. For this purpose,
more studies that combine a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of learner
language are needed. The scope of this study was admittedly limited. Future studies
should work with larger corpora and analyze more than three connectors. Working
with parallel corpora that contain translations of the same texts would allow for a
more accurate comparison of source and target language (cf. Gilquin 2008: 15).
Similarly, the use of corpora containing texts of different genres and by people with
different proficiency levels and expertise would lead to more comprehensive results
(cf. Hasselgård/Johansson: 56). Furthermore, the analysis of a longitudinal corpus
would be a great interest for the investigation of interlanguage. Such an analysis
would offer substantial insights into the development of learner language over time
and under specific circumstances (cf. ibid). In any case, the realization of such
studies requires the availability of resources. Many of the necessary corpora are only
commercially available or even need to be specially compiled for specific research
purposes, which is an extremely expensive and time-consuming endeavor. Such
projects will thus only be supported and funded if their usefulness is acknowledged
by the respective authorities of education. It is necessary to convince practitioners
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
40
and policy makers of how much they can benefit from learner corpus research.
Römer (2006) suggests that this is best achieved by “foster[ing] communication
among and improv[ing] the exchange between researchers on the one side and
practitioners (teachers, teacher trainers and trainees, and materials writers) on the
other side, so that more people see that corpora are immensely valuable tools in a
language learning and teaching context” (Römer 2006: 129). Extensive publishing
and fruitful international exchange has taken place amongst corpus linguists in the
last twenty years, but outside of their circle their research has not attracted much
interest. Yet, the transfer of academically achieved research findings onto real life
problems and purposes is what the very discipline of applied linguistics is in essence
about. Studying language for its own sake undoubtedly has its justification, but in
effect language, and a lingua franca like English even more so, is usually studied in
order to be taught, learned, and, most importantly, used in the global environment. I
hope that with my bachelor thesis I could make a small contribution to “bridging the
gap between applied corpus linguistics and the reality of ELT in Germany”
(Mukherjee 2004) and demonstrate one possible way of bringing intention and
implementation in applied linguistic research a little bit closer to one another.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
41
Works cited
Altenberg, Bengt and Tapper, Marie (1998): “The Use of Adverbial Connectors in
Advanced Swedish Learners' Written English”. In: Granger, ed. (1998): pp.
80 – 93.
Burnard, Lou (2009): What is the BNC?. Official Website of the British National
Corpus. University of Oxford. Accessible at: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk
/corpus/index.xml. Last Access: 10.06.2013.
De Cock, Sylvie and Paquot, Magali (2009): “The Monolingual Learners' Dictionary
as a Productive Tool: The Contribution of Learner Corpora”. In: Campoy, M.
C., Bellés-Fortuno B., and Maria Luisa Gea-Valor, eds. (2009): CorpusBased Approaches to English Language Teaching, London & New York:
Continuum. pp 195-204.
Evenson, Lars S. and Rygh, Irmgard L. (1988): “Connecting L1 and FL in
Discourse-level Performance Analysis.” In: Papers and studies in Contrastive
Linguistics, 22. pp. 133-178.
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle (2008): “Combining Contrastive and Interlanguage Analysis to
Apprehend Transfer: Detection, Explanation, Evaluation”. In: Gilquin G.,
Papp S. & Díez-Bedmar M.B., eds. (2002): Linking up Contrastive and
Learner Corpus Research. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. pp. 3-33.
Gilquin Gaëtanelle, and Paquot Magali (2008): “Too Chatty: Learner Academic
Writing and Register Variation”. In: English Text Construction 1 (1). pp. 4161.
Granger, Sylviane (2002): “A Bird's-Eye View of Computer Learner Corpus
Research”. In: Granger S., Hung J. and Petch-Tyson S., eds. (2002):
Computer Learner Corpora, Second Language Acquisition and Foreign
Language Teaching. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. pp. 3-33.
Granger, Sylviane, ed. (1998): Learner English on Computer. London & New York,
Addison Wesley Longman.
Granger, Sylviane (1998): “The Computerized Learner Corpus: A Versatile New
Source of Data for SLA research”. In: Granger, ed. (1998): pp. 3 – 18.
Granger Sylviane (1996): “From CA to CIA and Back: An Integrated Approach to
Computerized Bilingual and Learner Corpora”. In: Aijmer K., Altenberg B.
and Johansson M., eds. (1996): Languages in Contrast. Text-based Crosslinguistic Studies. Lund: Lund University Press. pp. 37-51.
Granger ,Sylviane and Tyson, Stephanie (1996): “Connector Usage in the English
Essay Writing of Native and Non-native EFL Speakers of English". In: World
Englishes, 15. pp. 19-29.
Hasselgård, Hilde and Johansson, Stig (2011): “Learner Corpora and Contrastive
Interlanguage Analysis”. In: Meunier, Fanny, Sylvie De Cock, Gaëtanelle
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
42
Gilquin and Magali Paquot, eds. (2011): A Taste for Corpora: In Honour of
Sylviane Granger. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 33–62.
Hasselgren, Angela (1994): “Lexical Teddy Bears and Advanced Learners: A Study
into the Ways Norwegian Students Cope with English Vocabulary”. In:
International Journal of Applied Linguistics 4 (2). pp. 237-258.
Herriman, Jennifer and Böstrom Aronsson, Mia (2009): “Themes in Swedish
Advanced Learners' Writing in English”. In: Aijmer, Karin, ed. (2009):
Corpora and Language Teaching. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp 101–120.
Institut für Deutsche Sprache (2002): Das Deutsche Referenzkorpus – DeReKo.
Official DeReKo Website. Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim.
Accessible at: http://www.ids-mannheim.de/allgemein/impressum.html. Last
Access: 10.06.2013.
Jarvis, S. (2000): “Methodological Rigor in the Study of Transfer: Identifying L1
Influence in the Interlanguage Lexicon”. In: Language Learning, 50(2). pp.
245-309.
Jordan, R.R. (1999): Academic Writing Course. Study Skills in English. Third
Edition. Harlow: Longman.
Kaszubski, Przemysław (1998): “Enhancing a Writing Textbook: A National
Perspective”. In: Granger, Sylviane, ed. (1998). pp.172-185.
Kohn, Kurt (1986): “The Analysis of Transfer”. In: Kellerman, E., and Sharwood
Smith, M., eds. (1986): Crosslinguistic Influence in Second Language
Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press. pp. 21 – 34.
Leńko-Szymańska, Agnieszka (2008): “Non-native or Non-expert? The Use of
Connectors in Native and Foreign Language Learners’ Texts”. In: Acquisition
et Interaction en Langue Etrangère 27. pp. 91-108.
Milton, J. and Tsang, E.S.C. (1993): “A Corpus-Based Study of Logical Connectors
in EFL Student's Writing: Directions for Future Research. In: Pemberton, R.
and Tsang, E.S.C., eds. (1993): Lexis in Studies. Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press. pp. 215-246.
Milton, J. (1998): “Exploiting L1 and Interlanguage Corpora in the Design of an
Electronic Language Learning and Production Environment”. In: Granger,
Sylviane, ed. (1998). pp. 186-198.
Mukherjee, Joybrato (2004): “Bridging the Gap between Applied Corpus Linguistics
and the Reality of English Language Teaching in Germany”. In: Connor, Ulla
and Upton, Thomas A., eds. (2004): Applied Corpus Linguistics. A
Multidimensional Perspective. Amsterdam: Rodolpi. pp. 239-250.
Nesselhauf, Nadja (2003): “The Use of Collocations by Advanced Learners of
English and Some Implications for Teaching”. In: Applied Linguistics 24 (2).
pp. 223-242.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
43
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik (1985): A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London/New York: Longman.
Römer, Ute (2006): “Pedagogical Applications of Corpora: Some Reflections on the
Current Scope and a Wish List for Future Developments.” In: Zeitschrift für
Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54 (2). pp. 121-134.
Römer, Ute (2009) “Corpus Research and Practice: What Help Do Teachers Need
and What Can We Offer?” In: Aijmer, Karin, ed. (2009): Corpora and
Language Teaching. Amsterdam: Benjamins. pp. 83-98.
Rundell, M., ed. (2007): Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
(second edition). Oxford: Macmillan Education.
Selinker, Larry (1972): “Interlanguage”. In: International Review of Applied
Linguistics, 10. pp. 209-241.
Scholze-Stubenrecht, Werner, ed. (2008): The Oxford German Dictionary. Third
Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scholze-Stubenrecht, Werner, ed./Bibliographisches Institut (2011): Duden.
Deutsches Universalwörterbuch. Seventh Edition. Mannheim: Dudenverlag
2011.
Connector Usage in Essays Written by German Learners of English
44
Erklärung zur Urheberschaft
Hiermit versichere ich, dass diese Arbeit von mir persönlich verfasst wurde und dass
ich keinerlei fremde Hilfe in Anspruch genommen habe. Ebenso versichere ich, dass
diese Arbeit oder Teile daraus weder von mir selbst noch von anderen als
Leistungsnachweis andernorts eingereicht wurden. Wörtliche oder sinngemäße
Übernahmen aus anderen Schriften und Veröffentlichungen in gedruckter oder
elektronischer Form sind gekennzeichnet. Sämtliche Sekundärliteratur und sonstige
Quellen sind nachgewiesen und in der Bibliographie aufgeführt. Das Gleiche gilt für
graphische Darstellungen und Bilder sowie für alle Internet-Quellen.
Cathrin Hein-Becker
Gießen, den