Adversative and Concessive Conjunctions in EFL Writing

Corpus-based Description and Rhetorical Structure Analysis

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  • © 2021

Overview

  • Presents a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of adversative and concessive conjunctions in native and non-native students’ writing under the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics
  • Includes high-frequency patterns of adversative and concessive conjunction usage in successful native student writing for EFL teachers and learners
  • Helps bridge the divide between corpus-based study and text-level analysis
  • Offers new insights into the relevance of adversative and concessive relations to text structure based on rhetorical structure theory

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About this book

This book explores the usage patterns of a group of adversative and concessive conjunctions in English texts written by Chinese EFL learners and their native speaker counterparts. Focusing on probability profiles and systemic potentials, the study encompasses three stages and combines the strengths of two research methods – the corpus-based approach and text-based analysis – to examine the conjunctions under the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics and rhetorical structure theory. Starting with an overview of seventeen conjunctions across two corpora in terms of overall frequency, positional distribution and distribution of semantic categories, the book then offers a more detailed discussion of three individual conjunctions, highlighting the interconnections between 1) syntactic positions and co-occurrence patterns and 2) semantic relations encoded by these conjunctions. Lastly, it presents a case study of one full-length text taken from the learner corpus, applyingrhetorical structure theory to provide new insights into the relevance of adversative and concessive relations to text structure. This comprehensive, in-depth analysis is both diagnostic and pedagogically informative.

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

Authors and Affiliations

  • East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Yan Zhang

About the author

Dr. Yan Zhang holds a Ph.D. in English Linguistics from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on corpus-based study of L2 writing applying systemic functional linguistics, and her recent work has been published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. Dr. Zhang is also an award-winning teacher, teaching EAP (English for Academic Purposes) courses with a focus on chemical and environmental engineering to undergraduate and graduate level students at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Adversative and Concessive Conjunctions in EFL Writing

  • Book Subtitle: Corpus-based Description and Rhetorical Structure Analysis

  • Authors: Yan Zhang

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7837-3

  • Publisher: Springer Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-15-7836-6Published: 02 October 2020

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-15-7839-7Published: 03 October 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-15-7837-3Published: 01 October 2020

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XVI, 234

  • Number of Illustrations: 24 b/w illustrations, 18 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Linguistics, general, Comparative Linguistics, Language Education

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