A corpus-based study of connectors

in student writing
Research from the International Corpus of
English in Hong Kong (ICE-HK)
Kingsley Bolton, Gerald Nelson, and Joseph Hung
The University of Hong Kong / The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper focuses on connector usage in the writing of university students in
Hong Kong and in Great Britain, and presents results based on the
comparison of data from the Hong Kong component (ICE-HK) and the
British component (ICE-GB) of the International Corpus of English (ICE).
While previous studies of Hong Kong student writing have dealt with the
underuse, overuse, and misuse of connectors, this study connes itself to
the analysis of underuse and overuse, and is especially concerned with
methodological issues relating to the accurate measurement of these
concepts. Specically, it takes as its benchmark of overuse and underuse the
frequency of connectors in professional academic writing, in this case the
data in the ICE-GB corpus. The results show that measured in this way, both
groups of students native speakers and non-native speakers alike overuse
a wide range of connectors. The results offer no evidence of signicant
underuse.
Keywords: connectors, student writing, ESL writing, academic writing,
cohesion, coherence
:. Introduction
This paper presents research ndings fromthe analysis of corpus linguistic data
generated by the International Corpus of English project in Hong Kong (ICE-
HK).
1
The research reported on in this paper focuses on the comparison of
the use of connectors in the writing of university students in Hong Kong and
Britain, and presents results derived from the comparison of data from ICE-
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics ,:: (:oo:), :o,:8i.
issx I,8oo,, v-issx I,o,,8II John Benjamins Publishing Company
:oo K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
HK to data from the British component of the International Corpus of English
Project (ICE-GB). Whereas previous studies of Hong Kong student academic
writing have dealt with issues relating to underuse, overuse, and misuse, this
present study connes itself to the analysis of underuse and overuse, and also
includes a detailed discussion of methodological issues. Such issues include,
rst, the identication of sets of connectors in written academic texts, and,
second, the quantitative units of analysis and comparison used in such studies.
A key argument here is that the methodological design of such comparison
studies has an important effect on determining validity and comparability of
the results.
i. Previous research
A substantial amount of previous research has been carried out on the anal-
ysis of patterns of connector (or connective) usage in student writing. Much
of this research has been evidently motivated by the need to teach English-
language learners in a second-language (ESL) or foreign-language (EFL) en-
vironment, while other research has also been carried out in the context of
rhetoric and composition teaching programmes in North America. A relatively
early study by Neuner (1987), for example, investigated the use of cohesive de-
vices in good and poor freshman essays at a US college. While his paper does
not deal exclusively with the use of connectors, Neuner highlights the ways
in which cohesion in essay writing is achieved through a variety of cohesive
devices, including chains of reference, conjunctions, and lexical ties (Neuner
1987: 101).
Much of the other research on this topic has been concerned with the writ-
ing of students of English as a second/foreign language. Three recent academic
papers have previously investigated the broad area of interest of this current
study, i.e. the use of connectives in academic writing by Hong Kong Chinese
students, for whom English is generally a language learned/acquired at school.
Crewe (1990: 316317) sets out to examine the misuse and overuse of logical
connectors through the study of the writings of ESL students at The University
of Hong Kong. Crewe notes that, in the Hong Kong context, expressions such
as on the contrary are frequently misused, and argues that such misuse may re-
sult from pedagogic practice in textbooks and teaching that relies on paradig-
matic lists of connectors. As signicant, if not more worrying, for Crewe is the
overuse of connectives, citing one student writer who packs a chain of expres-
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :o
sions such as moreover, indeed, as a matter of fact, in actuality, however, never-
theless into the space of just three short paragraphs of prose. Crewe observes
that the overuse of such devices might even be seen as a way of disguising
poor writing (Crewe 1990: 321). In his conclusion, he again focuses on overuse
noting that:
Over-use at best clutters up the text unnecessarily, and at worst causes the
thread of the argument to zigzag about, as each connective points it in a dif-
ferent direction. Non-use is always preferable to misuse because all readers,
native-speaker or non-native-speaker, can mentally construe logical links in
the argument if they are not explicit, whereas misuse always causes compre-
hensive problems and may be so impenetrable as to defy normal decoding.
(Crewe 1990: 324)
Field and Yip (1992) use an experimental approach to study internal conjunc-
tive cohesion in the ESL writing of senior secondary/high school students at
Form Six Level in Hong Kong. In this study they compare the use of connec-
tors and other cohesive devices in the essays of three groups of Hong Kong
students (67 students in all) with those used in the essay of L1 students from
Sydney, Australia (29 students). The working hypothesis for this study was that
Cantonese students writing in English use more conjunctive cohesive devices
in the organization of their essays than students at a similar educational level
who are native English speakers (Field & Yip 1992: 15). Following Halliday and
Hasan (1976), the authors adopt a four-way classication of cohesive devices in
terms of additive (also, and, furthermore, etc.) adversative (but, however, on the
other hand, etc.), causal (hence, thus, etc.) and temporal categories (next, etc.).
The results of Field and Yips analysis again suggest that L2 writers from
Hong Kong tended to overuse such devices compared with the L1 Australian
group, and they comment that:
The high frequency of devices in L2 and even in L1 scripts may be due to the
limited time provided for completion of the task. Content had to be devised
quickly and writers may have relied on organizational devices to shape the
essay rather than a strong development of their thought. The . . . educational
level of the writers, who would have little essay writing experience, may also
account for an overall high use. (Field & Yip 1992: 24)
They then note particular problems in the use of the connectors on the other
hand, moreover, furthermore and besides, among Hong Kong Chinese students.
In the rst case, they state that on the other hand is frequently used to make an
additional point, with no indication of an implied contrast, suggesting trans-
:o8 K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
fer from an approximate equivalent in the Cantonese L1 of student writers.
In the case of the other three connectors, moreover, furthermore and besides,
Field and Yip note that in their data these occurred only in the essays of Hong
Kong students and invariably in initial position. Besides was seen as a particular
problem, as an example of misuse rather than overuse. They suggest that be-
sides is common in (L1) English speech, but not in formal written English, and
propose that it would be best to discourage the use of besides in essay writing
(Field & Yip 1992: 26). They summarize ndings of their research as follows:
It has shown that Cantonese speakers use far more devices than their native
speaker counterparts, that many of them choose expressions that seldom ap-
pear in the writing of L1 students of a similar age and educational level and
that they tend to choose the initial paragraph and sentence position rather
than to place devices within the sentence. ESL writers in this study tended to
choose from a wider range of ICCs [internal conjunctive cohesion devices, i.e.
connectors] than those who acquired the language naturally. An awareness of
the variety of devices acquired from second language teaching led many writ-
ers to overuse them and sometimes to misuse them.
(Field & Yip 1992: 27)
The third Hong Kong study of this topic to appear in recent years is that of
Milton and Tsang (1993), who adopt a corpus-based approach to the study of
student writing, drawing on data which at that time formed part of a four-
million-word (now larger) corpus of learner English, the Hong Kong Univer-
sity of Science and Technology (HKUST) corpus of learner English. The par-
ticular subset of data used for their analysis comprised 2,000 assignments writ-
ten by around 800 rst-year undergraduates, together with 206 examination
scripts from the composition section of the Hong Kong Examination Author-
itys A level Use of English examination (the equivalent to a high-school exit
test in North America). Milton and Tsangs study attempts to compare the use
of connectors among Hong Kong students with that included in three native-
speaker corpora, i.e. the Brown Corpus, the London Oslo/Bergen (LOB) Cor-
pus, and another corpus of their own which consists of computer science
textbooks.
Following the categorization of Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983),
Milton and Tsang chose to study the occurrence and distribution of 25 single-
word logical connectors, which they classied as additive (also, moreover, fur-
thermore, besides, actually, alternatively, regarding, similarly, likewise, namely),
adversative (nevertheless, although), causal (because, therefore, consequently),
and sequential (rstly, secondly, previously, afterward(s), eventually, nally, lastly,
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :o
anyhow, anyway). On the basis of the comparison of results from the HKUST
corpus and the L1 corpora, the researchers identied 25 connectors which are
regularly overused by Hong Kong students, i.e.
also, moreover, furthermore, besides, regarding, namely, nevertheless,
although, because, therefore, rstly, secondly, lastly
Of these, they calculate that the connectors with the six highest rates of overuse
are lastly (used on average 17.4 times more frequently in the Hong Kong data
compared with that of the L1 corpora), besides (with a ratio of 16.8), moreover
(14.9), secondly (12.9), rstly (12.5), and consequently (11.2). Their analysis of
student difculties in this aspect of essay-writing suggests that there are two
main problem areas, i.e. redundant use (overuse), and misuse. By redundant
use they mean that the logical connector is not necessary; its presence does
not contribute to the coherence of the text. Misuse occurs when the use of
the logical connector is misleading; another cohesive device should have been
used; the logical connector is placed inappropriately . . . [which] is related to
loose organisation and faulty logic within the text (Milton & Tsang 1993: 228).
As an example of redundant use, they cite the following example with moreover:
Any animal or insects need to generate their next generation with no excep-
tion. Moreover, the very rst step is to date an opposite sex.
(Milton & Tsang 1993: 228)
As an example of misuse, they focus on the use of therefore, which should, they
assert, be used as a causal logical connector . . . where the cause precedes the ef-
fect. Thus, the following example of misuse is an instance of faulty logic where
therefore is used to force a conclusion from unsupported assumptions:
In conclusion, beside the methods mentioned above, there are many other
methods of courtship and they are interesting. Therefore, its better for us to
contact more the nature. (Milton & Tsang 1993: 230)
In their conclusion, Milton and Tsang reiterate that, in the writing of Hong
Kong students [t]here is a high ratio of overuse of the entire range of logical
connectors in our students writing, in comparison to published English al-
though they also concede that distributional patterns may also be affected by
such factors as genre and variety (Milton and Tsang 1993: 239).
Another very relevant study that employed a corpus-based approach to this
issue is that of Granger and Tyson (1996). In this study, the researchers analysed
data from a large-scale corpus of learner English, the International Corpus of
:o K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
Learner English (ICLE), in an analytical approach to what they call contrastive
interlanguage analysis. Using corpus techniques, Granger and Tyson set out
to compare a sample of almost 90,000 words of the mother-tongue ICLE sub-
component (i.e. writing in French) to a 78,000 word sample of French students
writing in English. Their hypothesis was that their research would reveal that
their French learners would overuse connectors in their essay writing. Granger
and Tyson selected 108 connectors derived from Quirk et al.s (1985) identi-
cation and description of such cohesive devices. Using TACT concordancing
software, they then extracted all instances of these connectors in their data, and
then went on to calculate overall frequencies for these items, both raw frequen-
cies and frequencies per 100,000 words (Granger & Tyson 1996: 1920). On
the basis of frequency analysis, they were then able to proceed to the analysis of
stylistic, semantic and syntactic misuse.
The overall initial hypothesis concerning overuse was not supported by
their results, but a number of rather subtle patterns did emerge with reference
to particular groups of connectors. Their analysis suggests that overuse does
occur in the case of both corrobative (indeed, of course, in fact) and additive
(moreover) connectors. Conversely, they were also able to show that there was
an evident underuse of contrastive connectors such as however, though, and yet.
Instances of overuse involved the connectors actually, indeed, of course, more-
over, e.g., for instance, namely, and on the contrary. Instances of underuse were
found in the cases of however, instead, though, yet, hence, then, therefore, and
thus. Granger and Tysonthen proceed to argue that examples of overuse may be
plausibly related to patterns of transfer from French, substantiating this claim
by reference to the results from their German sub-corpus. Later in their paper,
they go on to look at issues relating to stylistic sensitivity, i.e. the [mis]use of in-
formal connectors such as anyway, anyhow in formal essays, as well as syntactic
issues, notably the tendency of learners to front such connectors to sentence-
initial position (Granger & Tyson 1996: 2024). Their paper ends with a plea
for much more research, and for research oriented towards contrastive inter-
language investigations, noting that contrastive explanations need to be sup-
plemented by analyses of universal factors. On a pedagogic note, the authors
end with the hope that heightened awareness of the semantic, stylistic and syn-
tactic properties of connectors will lead students to think more carefully about
the ideas these connectors are linking (Granger & Tyson 1996: 26).
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing ::
. Methodological issues
At least three major methodological issues arise from the previous research re-
viewed above. These are (i) the identication of linguistic items as connectors;
(ii) the calculation of the ratio of occurrence (or ratio of frequency) of logi-
cal connectors in corpus-based studies, and (iii) the measurement of overuse,
underuse and misuse of connectors using quantitative techniques.
With reference to the rst issue, i.e. the identication of linguistic items as
connectors, remarkably, most researchers in previous studies appear to take
the identication of such items as uncontroversial and given. For example,
Field and Yip (1992) base their analysis on Halliday and Hasans (1976) classi-
cation, while Milton and Tsang (1993) adopt a framework from Celce-Murcia
and Larsen-Freeman (1983), and Granger and Tyson (1996) avail themselves
of a list of connectors derived from Quirk et al. (1985). In the course of our
own research, it became clear that such lists of connectors were neither uncon-
troversial nor nite, and we were therefore moved to question a methodology
that relied purely on pre-existing categorizations.
The second issue of the measurement of the ratio of occurrence of logi-
cal connectors in corpus-based studies also arose through our reading of the
literature. As indicated above, the Crewe (1990) paper eschews a quantitative
methodology completely, while it was evident that the other studies in this
eld showed a distinct mismatch of the analytical units of quantitative anal-
ysis used in corpus-based comparison studies. This is particularly true of the
methods adopted by various researchers to calculate the ratio of occurrence
of connectors in their linguistic data.
Field and Yips (1992) data-analysis relied on, rst, a raw frequency count
of the number of conjunctive cohesive devices or connectors in terms of in-
stances per L1 (English as a rst language) or per L2 (English as a second lan-
guage) group, and, second, the percentage of such connectors across the four
categories of additive, adversative, causal, and temporal. No ratio of occur-
rence facilitating comparison across individuals and groups is noted. In the
case of Milton and Tsangs (1993) study, the term ratio of occurrence is em-
ployed, although this is calculated simply by dividing the number of identied
connectors by the number of words in the corpus. Granger and Tyson (1996)
estimate a raw frequency count of the target connectors in a native-speaker
(L1) and a foreign/second language learner (L2) writing corpus, and then pro-
ceed to calculate a ratio of occurrence based on the frequency of occurrence
of connectors per 100,000 words of text.
:i K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
Of particular methodological interest here is the great variation in the
methods of calculating the ratio of occurrence of connectors in these pre-
vious studies. Both Milton and Tsang (1993) and Granger and Tyson (1996)
adopt a word-based calculation. In the former case, the ratio of occurrence is
calculated from the simple division of the number of logical connectors by the
total number of words in the corpus, while in the latter, it is calculated as the
number of logical connectors per 100,000 words. To the authors of the present
study, this method of calculating the ratio of occurrence appears fundamentally
awed. The primary function of connectors in academic texts is surely that of
relating linguistic units at the sentential level and beyond, and yet a word-based
method of calculation ignores this fact. For example, a sample which contains
100 sentences will offer at least twice as many opportunities to use a connector
than a sample with only 50 sentences, regardless of the number of words in
each sample. We would thus argue that it is illogical to base the calculation of
such a ratio on the fundamental unit of the word, and in the present study, it
was crucially decided to adopt the sentence as the basic unit of analysis (see the
next section below).
Following on from this, we were also concerned about the various mea-
sures previously adopted to arrive at calculations of the overuse, and under-
use of connectors. Crewes essential argument in his study is that in his data,
Hong Kong students overuse of connectors may be motivated by their try-
ing to impose surface logicality on a piece of writing where no deep logical-
ity exists but that the result is typically a clutter that makes the argument
extremely tortuous (Crewe 1990: 320). This is, however, an impressionistic
judgement, and no quantitative data is presented. Field and Yip (1992) do pro-
vide a quantitative analysis, but the basis of this is a comparison of a native
speaker group (Australian schoolchildren) with three groups of Cantonese
speakers (schoolchildren from Hong Kong). Milton and Tsang compare con-
nector usage in the academic writing of Hong Kong high school and university
students with that found in three native speaker corpora, i.e. the American
Brown corpus, the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus, and a Hong Kong
corpus of extracts from rst-year university computer textbooks (Milton &
Tsang 1993: 220). Granger and Tysons methodology relies on a comparison
of non-native against native corpus data, specically, a corpus of native es-
say writing compiled from the essays of British students (Granger & Tyson
1996: 1819).
On consideration, it seemed to the authors of this current study that these
last three comparative studies all had methodological problems. Milton and
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :
Tsangs study compares Hong Kong student academic writing against two gen-
eral corpora, Brown and LOB (containing texts from newspaper, literature,
popular writing, etc.), and against a very narrowly dened corpus of computer
textbooks. Both Field and Yip and Granger and Tyson compare non-native
student academic writing with native student academic writing. In this lat-
ter case, the assumption is that the best target model for non-native or ESL
students is the writing of other students, those from a native-speaking coun-
try (however that is dened). Again, we would challenge that assumption, and
would instead argue that a better set of control data would be provided by a
corpus of published academic writing in English. The target norm in academic
writing, for both native and non-native students is better dened as aca-
demic writing itself, and the best texts for comparison are clearly those already
published in international English-language academic journals.
|. The present study
In this study, our data consists of 10 untimed essays and 10 timed examina-
tion scripts written by undergraduate Hong Kong students. The data comprises
2755 sentences (46,460 words), and is part of the Hong Kong component of the
International Corpus of English (ICE-HK). In addition, we examine the cor-
responding data from the British component of the International Corpus of
English (ICE-GB), comprising 2471 sentences and 42,587 words.
With reference to the three methodological concerns identied above, i.e.
the identication of linguistic items as connectors, the measurement of the
ratio of occurrence of connectors in our data, and the calculation of overuse
and underuse of connectors, a number of measures were adopted in order
to avoid inconsistencies in the research method. First, the list of connectors
we chose to identify and investigate were not derived from pre-existing cat-
egorizations provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976), Quirk et al. (1985), or
similar pedagogic and reference grammars, but devised ourselves by analyz-
ing the subset of academic writing taken from the ICE-GB corpus. This con-
sists of 40 samples, taken from academic papers and books across a range of
disciplines, published between 1990 and 1993 inclusively. It comprises 85,628
words, in 4,507 sentences. Here, our approach was to initially identify the con-
nectors used by text authors in the academic writing component of ICE-GB as
a valid starting point for the analysis which followed. This approach had the
important advantage of giving us a reliable and non-arbitrary list of connec-
:| K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
tors to form the basis of our study. We found that the use of this more realistic
list of connectors greatly improves the accuracy of the analysis which followed,
as it was then possible to use this same list as a benchmark when calculating
instances of overuse or underuse.
Table 1 below shows a complete list of the connectors found in the aca-
demic writing data in ICE-GB, together with their raw frequencies, and their
frequencies per sentence (multiplied by 1000). The list contains a total of 54
connectors; we include the complete list here in order to show the wide va-
Table 1. All connectors in the academic writing category, ICE-GB corpus (The gures
in parentheses are raw frequencies. Total number of sentences = 4,507; total number of
words = 85,628)
Connector Frequency per sentence ( 1000)
however 20.4 (92)
therefore 10.6 (48)
but, then 8.6 (39)
thus 7.8 (35)
indeed 5.5 (25)
and, so 4.0 (18)
in fact 3.5 (16)
hence 3.3 (15)
moreover 2.4 (11)
consequently, rst, on the other hand 2.2 (10)
rather 2.0 (9)
instead 1.5 (7)
nevertheless 1.3 (6)
again, in other words, nonetheless, secondly, second 1.1 (5)
as a result, on the whole, though 0.9 (4)
at the same time, rstly, on the contrary 0.7 (3)
alternatively, conversely, furthermore, in contrast 0.4 (2)
above all, accordingly, also, at any rate, by comparison, 0.2 (1)
by contrast, nally, rst of all,
in any case, in effect, in short, in sum, in the event,
in the rst place, in total, in turn, lastly, or, overall, still, yet
TOTAL 107.8 (487)
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :,
riety of connectors that are available, although many of them have very low
frequency.
The other major methodological consideration we have is the calculation
of ratio of occurrence (termed ratio of frequency in this study). As may be
seen from Table 1, the base unit for our analysis is the sentence, for the rea-
sons we explain in the previous section of this paper. Therefore the frequency
of connectors per 100,000 words, as presented by Granger and Tyson, is, we
contend, not an appropriate measure of connector frequency. In all cases, our
frequencies per sentence are multiplied by 1,000, in order to eliminate very
low gures.
The next stage of our analysis was thus to compare the frequencies of these
connectors in the writing of Hong Kong students (from ICE-HK) and in the
writing of British students (fromICE-GB). For ease of comparison, Table 2 also
reproduces the data in Table 1 for academic writing.
2
With reference to Table 2 below, we can see that in both of the student
datasets, 19 of the connectors that are used in academic writing have a score of
zero. The following connectors are not used at all by the students:
on the whole, on the one hand, in contrast, in sum, in the event, in total, or,
still
Both groups of students use a smaller number of different connectors than
their academic counterparts, so we would expect some overuse of these. The
total gures in Table 2 show that this is indeed the case. Both the Hong Kong
students and the British students overuse these particular connectors. How-
ever, this overuse is much greater on the part of Hong Kong students, who use
these connectors more than twice as much as academic writers (239.6 per 1,000
sentences, compared with 107.8).
The Hong Kong students show much greater differences, in terms of fre-
quency, from the academic norm. The most overused connector in the Hong
Kong data is so, with a difference of +31.6 from the academic norm. In the
British data, however is most overused, with a corresponding difference of
+20.5. In the case of other overused connectors, the differences from the aca-
demic norm are comparatively high for Hong Kong students, and compara-
tively low for British students. This can be seen in Table 3, which shows the
top ten most overused connectors from each dataset, together with the differ-
ence fromthe academic norm, and the mean difference fromthe norm. For the
top 10 rank positions, the Hong Kong data shows a mean difference from the
academic norm of +11.8 almost twice that for the British data (+6.7).
:o K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
Table 2. Connectors in students writing, in comparison with academic writing (The
+/ columns show the difference between the relevant value and the value in academic
writing; a positive value denotes overuse, a negative value denotes underuse. Rf = Ratio
of frequency)
Hong Kong Great Britain Academic
Freq. Rf per 1000 (+/) Freq. Rf per 1000 (+/) Freq. Rf per 1000
sentences sentences sentences
however 65 23.6 +3.2 101 40.9 +20.5 92 20.4
therefore 52 18.9 +8.2 47 19.0 +8.4 48 10.7
but 47 17.1 +8.4 14 5.7 3.0 39 8.7
then 45 16.3 +7.7 28 11.3 +2.7 39 8.7
thus 50 18.1 +10.4 36 14.6 +6.8 35 7.8
indeed 4 1.5 4.1 11 4.5 1.1 25 5.5
and 77 27.9 +24.0 11 4.5 +0.5 18 4.0
so 98 35.6 +31.6 40 16.2 +12.2 18 4.0
in fact 22 8.0 +4.4 9 3.6 +0.1 16 3.6
hence 8 2.9 0.4 9 3.6 +0.3 15 3.3
moreover 28 10.2 +7.7 1 0.4 2.0 11 2.4
consequently 3 1.1 1.1 2 0.8 1.4 10 2.2
rst 8 2.9 +0.7 1 0.4 1.8 10 2.2
on the other hand 20 7.3 +5.0 0 0.0 2.2 10 2.2
rather 3 1.1 0.9 2 0.8 1.2 9 2.0
instead 1 0.4 1.2 2 0.8 0.7 7 1.6
nevertheless 5 1.8 +0.5 3 1.2 0.1 6 1.3
again 0 0.0 1.1 4 1.6 +0.5 5 1.1
in other words 5 1.8 +0.7 1 0.4 0.7 5 1.1
nonetheless 1 0.4 0.7 2 0.8 0.3 5 1.1
secondly 8 2.9 +1.8 4 1.6 +0.5 5 1.1
second 6 2.2 +1.1 0 0.0 1.1 5 1.1
as a result 9 3.3 +2.4 5 2.0 +1.1 4 0.9
on the whole 0 0.0 0.9 0 0.0 0.9 4 0.9
though 1 0.4 0.5 8 3.2 +2.4 4 0.9
at the same time 0 0.0 0.7 1 0.4 0.3 3 0.7
rstly 13 4.7 +4.1 13 5.3 +4.6 3 0.7
on the contrary 2 0.7 +0.1 0 0.0 0.7 3 0.7
on the one hand 0 0.0 0.7 0 0.0 0.7 3 0.7
alternatively 0 0.0 0.4 1 0.4 0.0 2 0.4
conversely 0 0.0 0.4 1 0.4 0.0 2 0.4
furthermore 10 3.6 +3.2 15 6.1 +5.6 2 0.4
in contrast 0 0.0 0.4 0 0.0 0.4 2 0.4
above all 1 0.4 +0.1 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
accordingly 2 0.7 +0.5 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :
Table 2. (Continued.)
also 43 15.6 +15.4 7 2.8 +2.6 1 0.2
at any rate 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
by comparison 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.4 +0.2 1 0.2
by contrast 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
nally 11 4.0 +3.8 4 1.6 +1.4 1 0.2
rst of all 1 0.4 +0.1 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in any case 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.4 +0.2 1 0.2
in effect 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.4 +0.2 1 0.2
in short 2 0.7 +0.5 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in sum 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in the event 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in the rst place 2 0.7 +0.5 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in total 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
in turn 0 0.0 0.2 4 1.6 +1.4 1 0.2
lastly 2 0.7 +0.5 4 1.6 +1.4 1 0.2
or 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
overall 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.4 +0.2 1 0.2
still 0 0.0 0.2 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
yet 5 1.8 +1.6 0 0.0 0.2 1 0.2
TOTAL 660 239.6 +131.7 395 159.9 +52.0 486 107.8
Table 3. The top 10 most overused connectors, with their differences from the aca-
demic norm
Rank Hong Kong Great Britain
1 so (+31.6) however (+20.5)
2 and (+24.0) so (+12.2)
3 also (+15.4) therefore (+8.4)
4 thus (+10.4) thus (+6.8)
5 but (+8.4) furthermore (+5.6)
6 therefore (+8.2) rstly (+4.6)
7 moreover (+7.7) then (+2.7)
7 then (+7.7) also (+2.6)
9 on the other hand (+5.0) though (+2.4)
10 in fact (+4.4) nally, in turn, lastly (+1.4)
Mean difference = +11.8 Mean difference = +6.7
The connectors so and and are particularly overusedby the Hong Kong stu-
dents. The British students also overuse so, though the majority of the British
overuse is attributable to the frequency of however. At 40.9 instances per 1,000
:8 K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
sentences, the British students use however about twice as much as academic
writers (20.4). In contrast, the Hong Kong students (23.6) are quite close to the
academic norm in the use of this connector. Both groups of students overuse
therefore and thus. The gures for but, moreover and on the other hand are also
worth noting. These connectors are overused by the Hong Kong students, and
slightly underused by the British students. Instances of connector overuse are
illustrated in the following excerpts from ICE-HK (Excerpt 1) and ICE-GB
(Excerpt 2). Spelling errors are in the originals.
Excerpt 1: Student writing from ICE-HK
(ICE-HK-W1A-014: Timed examination script in Music, by a student in a
Hong Kong university)
<#98:1> So, we can see that the British opera now become more human-
ity, not only reects the king or Queen.
<#99:1> And, in the hamony, the development is the mostly use with
tonality.
<#100:1> (i.e. with Center key).
<#101:1> Besides also use with the Aeolian Dolian and Phygian mode for
the hamony.
<#102:1> And modulation is also fully used.
<#103:1> However, the techniques of the 20th century such as the atonal-
ity, bitonality, are also used.
<#104:1> And in Britten operas one technique he has used is interesting
i.e. reconile the hostile key by enharmonic mean.
<#105:1> In the Peter Grimes, the last Prologue, Peter and Ellen rst meet
and sing in the F minor and E major.
<#106:1> However, later, Peter sing in A at and G sharp and as a result
they sing in the unison.
<#107:1> On the other hand, the using of orchestra is developied.
Excerpt 2: Student writing from ICE-GB
(ICE-GB-W1A-020: Timed examination script in Geology, by a student at a
British university)
<#42:2> Intrusive igneous rocks include such formations as sills.
<#43:2> These are generally concordant to the rocks.
<#44:2>(However on distinguishing between sills ands and lava ows sills
may transgress the bedding planes).
<#45:2> Sills generally form along bedding planes, and may extend for
many miles.
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :
<#46:2> Therefore on erosion of the rocks after uplift and the various
processes of denudation resulting in the topography, the sill may be ex-
posed as a linear feature.
<#47:2> It may also be exposed as a wide plane.
<#48:2> However this is rare as generally rocks are deformed after depo-
sition and rarely remain horizontal.
<#49:2> Dykes are another igneous intrusion which generally form from
sills.
<#50:2> They are a vertical, discordant feature which cut across the bed-
ding planes.
<#51:2> Therefore on a horizontal plane they are linear features at prac-
tically 90

to the surface.
The connectors which have a score of zero in the student datasets are instances
of non-use, rather than underuse (see Table 2). Most of them also have fairly
low frequencies in academic writing. A notable exception to this is on the other
hand, which is not used at all by the British students, but is overused by the
Hong Kong students. In the Hong Kong data, the gures for indeed, conse-
quently, and again indicate some underuse. However, across the entire range
of connectors, the gures for underuse are noticeably lower than those for
overuse. In summary, Table 2 shows considerable levels of overuse and much
smaller levels of underuse, on the part of all the students.
What is also signicant is the fact that the results of this present study
conrm a number of ndings from the two earlier Hong Kong based studies,
but contradict many more. For example, our results do agree with Field and
Yips (1992) nding that on the other hand and besides
3
occur only in the Hong
Kong student data, and that moreover is somewhat overused by the Hong Kong
group. The results for Hong Kong student writing indicate a Rf (ratio of fre-
quency) of 10.2 compared to an Rf of 0.4 for the ICE-GB student group, and an
Rf of 2.4 for the ICE-GB academic writing group (see Table 2 above). However,
there is no support for their contention that furthermore is overused by Hong
Kong students in comparison with a native speaker group of students. In fact,
in our data, the Rf for this connector is 3.6 occurrences per 1,000 sentences, in
comparison with a gure of 6.1 for the British students in ICE-GB, and a g-
ure of 0.4 for the ICE-GB academic writing group. More signicantly, perhaps,
Field and Yips earlier study also fails to clearly prole the high frequencies of
the top ve connectors used by Hong Kong student writers (Table 3), i.e. so
(Rf, 31.6), and (24.0), also (15.4), thus (10.4), and but (8.4). Our results in Ta-
ble 3 also directly contradict those of Milton and Tsang (1993: 226), whose rank
:8o K. Bolton, G. Nelson, and J. Hung
ordering of overused connectors gives the following result: lastly (1), besides
(2), moreover (3), secondly (4), and rstly (5).
,. Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented the results of a systematic analysis of connec-
tors in the writing of students in Hong Kong (as represented in the ICE-HK
corpus), and students in Britain (ICE-GB), using a corpus of published aca-
demic writing fromICE-GB as a benchmark against which to measure overuse
and underuse.
The results presented here indicate clearly that the overuse of connectors
is not conned to non-native speakers, but is a prominent feature of students
writing generally. Both non-native (Hong Kong) students and native (British)
students use a considerably smaller number of different connectors in their
writing than professional academics. As a result, both sets of students tend
to overuse those connectors within their repertoire, and this overuse is much
greater in the corpus of Hong Kong student writing, particularly with items
such as so, and, also, thus, and but. In the British data, overuse is most marked
with the items however, so, therefore, thus, and furthermore. Our analysis raises
a number of critical issues concerning the methodology used in corpus-based
studies related to the identication of target norms of linguistic behaviour, and
the measurement of ratios of occurrence (or ratios of frequency). A central
argument in this paper is that the precise methodology of studies of this kind
has a direct effect on the validity and comparability of the results attained. The
methodological inconsistencies of previous studies, as indicated above, may
well explain why the results presented in this study tend to directly contradict
those obtained by previous researchers in Hong Kong.
Notes
:. The ICE Hong Kong project has been supported by a grant from the Research Grants
Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKU
7174/000H). The ICE Hong Kong project aims to collect, computerize, and analyze one
million words of spoken and written Hong Kong English from the 1990s. Each word will
be labelled for its wordclass (noun, verb, etc.) and sample speech recordings will be dig-
itized and aligned to the transcriptions. The ICE corpus will be the most comprehensive
database of Hong Kong English ever compiled. This research is being conducted in parallel
Connectors in Hong Kong student writing :8:
with nineteen other national or regional varieties of English from around the world, includ-
ing Australia, Canada, East Africa, Great Britain, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, the
Caribbean, the Philippines, and the United States (Greenbaum 1996: 35).
i. Unlike the ICE-GB corpus, the Hong Kong corpus has not yet been POS-tagged, so all
results for Hong Kong are based on a manual examination of the data. In order to ensure
consistency with the results from ICE-GB, the following procedures have been followed:
(a) And, but, and or are counted as connectors only when they occur in sentence-initial
position.
(b) In the case of then, we distinguish between adverbial then, which expresses temporal
sequence, as in [1], and connector then, which is used to develop the argument, as in
[2] and [3]:
[1] The simple sugar formed is then fermented by yeast to form alcohol.
[ICE-HK-W1A-016]
[2] According to the above evidence, we nd that women usually are under mens
control in working sphere. Then how about the role taking of women in family?
[ICE-HK-W1A-008]
[3] The result of these injunctions, then, was to promote the constant accumulation of
capital [...] [ICE-HK-W1A-003]
. In the ICE-HK data, on the other hand occurs 20 times (7.2 per 1000 sentences). In each
instance, it occurs without the corresponding connector on the one hand. This conrms Field
and Yips (1992) observation that it is misused and not simply overused by Hong Kong
students, who use it to add information, without any expresssion of contrast. In the same
data, besides occurs 30 times (10.9 per 1000 sentences), in each case in sentence-initial posi-
tion, and often in paragraph-initial position, again with no apparent expression of contrast.
The following example illustrates the misuse of this connector:
<#92:1> For example, in Britten operas A Midsummer Nights Dream and Tip-
petts Midsummer Marriages are the subject from Shakesperian The Midsummer
Nights Dream.
<#94:1> Besides, Tippetts The knot Garden also from Shakesperians All wells that
end wells </p>
<p> <#95:1> Besides they also deal with the contrast between the collective activities
and the loneliness and misery of discontented individual e.g. Peter Grimes.
[ICE-HK-W1A-014]
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