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The Educational Review, USA

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Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/er.2021.06.002

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Japanese EFL Learners’ Linking Adverbial Use

Shusaku Nakayama

Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan.

*Corresponding author: Shusaku Nakayama

Published: June 7,2021

Abstract

This research investigates to what extent Japanese EFL learners’ linking adverbial (LA) in writing is identical to that of native speakers from two different perspectives: frequency of use and the distribution of LAs toward three different sentence positions, namely, initial, medial, and final positions. To this end, the International Corpus Network of Asian Leaners’ English is adopted. Frequency analysis identifies that Japanese learners overuse LAs relative to native speakers at a level that is statistically significant. Looking at results at an individual LA level, it is found at a statistically significant level that Japanese learners overuse “second(ly),” “for example,” and “so” but underused “then” and “rather”. For results of LA placement analysis, Japanese learners statistically significantly overuse LAs in sentence-initial position but underuse LAs in sentence-medial/final positions. Research findings suggest that language teachers or teaching materials should provide learners with other equivalent expressions to LAs and expose learners to natural language patterns occurring in the real world in order to prevent Japanese learners from relying heavily on certain expressions to introduce their ideas or indicate relationships between two units of discourse and having a false impression that LAs rarely occur in sentence-medial/final positions.

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How to cite this paper

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Japanese EFL Learners' Linking Adverbial Use

How to cite this paper: Shusaku Nakayama. (2021). A Corpus-Based Analysis of Japanese EFL Learners' Linking Adverbial Use. The Educational Review, USA5(6), 164-171.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/er.2021.06.002