Chapter One Introduction
1.1Necessarily of the Study
To English majors，argumentative compositions are an important part of Test for EnglishMajors Band 4 (TEM-4). In terms of Teaching Syllabus for English Majors，writing teachingmainly intends to cultivate students' comprehensive abilities，including mechanical skills,language use，organizational skills，stylistic skills, judgment skills etc. Coherence and clarityare the important requirements for measuring the quality of compositions. One of thecommonly way to achieved this is logical or semantic relations between units of discoursewith logical connectors such as in addition，for example, however, because, therefore. Logicalconnectors can be said to function as cohesive "signal posts’，in discourse (Leech andSvaitvik, 1994: 177)，helping the students to relate continuing units to each other and thusmaking sense of the text. Vande Kopple (1985) believes that connectives can help readersorganize，classify，interpret, evaluate, and react to the information given. According to Biberet al. (2000a), logical connectors can explicitly signal the connections between passages oftext，therefore play a very important role in creating textual cohesion，alongside coordinatorsand subordinators. Besides, connectives serve what Halliday (1973) calls the textual andinterpersonal functions of language. According to Halliday (ibid.)，the textual functionenables the speaker to organize what he is saying in such a way that it makes sense in thecontext and fulfills its function as a message.
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1.2Significance of the Present Study
Previous studies lay a special emphasis on the use of logical connectors by non-Englishmajors and postgraduates, and yet seldom papers studies English majors' argumentations,moreover it have few study on English majors' students at independent institute. Furthermore,most researchers only lay on the daily writing without thinking the influence of environmentof the classroom where students having test. Third, criteria for judging whether logicalconnectors are used are only adopting quantitative method, and qualitative method are rarelyagetting. Therefore，this study intends to make the following contributions. However, many problems exist in English majors' argumentations especially in use oflogical connectors, such as lack of persity for logical connectors, certain logical connectors overused or underused in argumentations and so on.The main purposes of this present research in the following three aspects:(1)Describing the characteristics of the use of logical connectors respectively in Englishmajors' argumentations and Model argumentations(2)Examining the differences in use of logical connectors between English majors'argumentations and Model argumentations(3)Analyzing what factors influence English major's decision of logical connectors inargumentations
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Theories of Logical Connectors
The earliest research work about logical connectors may be traced to tbe studyconducted by Quirk (1973). About logical connectors，many different terminologies could befound in the relevant literature, for example linking adverbials (Biber et al.，2000a)，conjunctions (Halliday & Hasan, 1976)，conjuncts (Quirk & Greenbaum，1973)，connectives(Crewe, 1990) or logical connectors (Huang, 1988). In order to consistency, we use the termlogical connectors in this study. This part clarified the definition of logical connectors，andthen the classification and fimction of logical connectors, Logical connectors are some empty words which are used to join words，phrases, clausesor sentences together. They are one of more widely used cohesive devices in naturaldiscourses to signal the relationship between two discourse components，and therefore addingclarity and coherence to them. In fact，different linguists have different definitions. Biber et aL(2000a) used the term linking adverbials，which can state the speaker/writer's viewpoint ofthe relationship between two parts of discourse. Oshima and Hogue (1997) defined linkingadverbials as words and phrases that connect the idea in one sentence or clause with the ideain another. These cohesive devices have also been defined as conjuncts, which indicate "howthe speaker views the connection between two linguistic units; such an indication does notconversely entail the use of a conjunct” (Quirk et al.，1985: 631-647). According to Byme(1979: 18)，connectives are "words or phrases which indicate meaning relationship betweenor within sentences".
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2.2 Relevant Studies on Logical Connectors
In recent years, scholars and language researchers at home and abroad conductresearches into logical connectors use from different perspectives. Some of them areconcerned with logical connectors use in the writings composed by both Chinese learners andnative speakers to find out the major differences between them; others compare compositionswritten by learners with different English proficiency, logical connectors use being the focusto find out differences; still others employ both qualitative and quantitative to find outrelationship between logical connectors use and writing quality; among the researches intothe use of logical connectors, more cut-in can be found, such as the difference betweenEnglish majors and non-English majors or between different genders in the use of logicalconnectors. A brief review to their researches is made in the following paragraphs.Some of researches concerned with the use of logical connectors and other cohesivefeatures in argumentative writings of Chinese undergraduates, Liu and Braine (2005)analyzed 50 argumentative compositions by non-majors undergraduates for purpose offinding out the features of logical connector used in their argumentations.
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Chapter Three Methodology.........15
3.1Research Questions.........15
3.2The Corpora in the Study.........15
3.3Research Instruments.........18
Chapter Four Results and Discussion.........31
4.1Distribution of Logical Connectors in EMAC and MAC.........31
4.2Analyses of the Questionnaire Results.........51
4.2.1English Majors'Attitudes towards Argumentative Writing.........52
4.2.2English Majors' Knowledge of Logical Connectors in Argumentations.........53
4.2.3English Majors' Comments on Argumentative Writing Teaching and Learning... 55Chapter Five Conclusion.........59
5.1Summary of the Major Findings.........59
5.2Implications for Argumentative Writing Teaching.........60
5.3Limitations of the Study.........64
5.4Suggestions for Further Studies.........65
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Distribution of Logical Connectors in EMAC and MAC
The general characteristics of the use of logical connectors in the two corpora will bepresented in this chapter, where there are also further descriptions of features of logicalconnectors in the two corpora, including distribution of each different logical connector'scategories-listing, additive，appositive, causal, reinforcing, contrastive, transitional andsummative. There are two corpora investigated in the current study. In the corpus of English majors'argumentations (EMAC), 11750 words are used for analysis and the percentage of logicalconnectors in total words is 7.35%. In the corpus of model argumentations (MAC)，incontrast，11348 words similar to the total words in EMAC are analyzed. The percentage oflogical connectors in EMAC is 5.13%. See Table 4.1 for general features of the use of logicalconnectors in EMAC and MAC. In order to test whether there is significant difference in the use of logical connectors between EMAC and MAC, the author of this study transforms raw frequency into normedfrequency to conduct the chi-square test on the general frequency of logical connectors in thetwo corpora with the assistance of SPSS 16.0. The result is shown as Table 4.2.
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Conclusion
This research is conducted to find out the characteristics of logical connectors in majors'argumentations and the features peculiar to them in comparison with model argumentations.The findings are as follows: From the analysis of the overall feature of logical connectors in English majors’argumentations and model argumentations, it can be found that logical connectors account for7.35% of total words of EMAC and 5.13% of total words of MAC. During the process ofwriting, English majors have already known to use connector to express the logical relationsbetween sentences and paragraphs to reads consciously. However，it is known that Englishmajors know 狂 little about logical connectors on the basis of analyses of specific logicalconnectors in EMAC and MAC.Logical connectors，English majors use to make their argumentations more logicaland coherence. Most frequently logical connectors belong to three semantic types: listing，resultive and contrastive logical connectors, the percentage of which are respectively 42-79%,16.55% and 12.30%; appositive and summative logical connectors are moderately frequent;transitional, inferential and corroboration logical connectors are seldom used. In this aspect，there are no differences between English majors' argumentations and model argumentations.
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Reference (omitted)