Chinese GFL-Learners’ Connector Usage: A Corpus-Linguistic Study of Argumentative Learner Texts

Connectors are linguistic elements that link statements between textual units (Duden, 2016, p. 1083) and function as conjunctions (Heringer, 1989, p. 353). Many scholars have studied English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ connector usage, but few studies have occurred in fields related to German, with deficiencies still present regarding issues such as the relatively limited classification of connectors, insufficient analytical dimensions, and lack of studies on learners at different levels.This study is based on the dynamic systems theory and uses 168 argumentative essays as its data basis, with 155 having been selected from Lerner Corpus and covering four learning stages and the rest from the FalkoEssayL1 corpus. The study uses frequency, diversity, and accuracy as three variables in the quantitative and qualitative analyses of Chinese German as a Foreign Language (GFL) learners’ acquisition of connectors. The results indicate Chinese GFL-learners’ acquisition of connectors to show a non-unidirectional, non-linear, and interactive developmental tendency. Their usage of connectors also shows certain characteristics compared to native German speakers. In addition, the phenomena of lexical plateau and fossilization are also observable among GFL-learners during certain specific learning stages. Accordingly, this study verifies and even enriches the dynamic systems theory with specific lexical data. Based on the obtained results, the influencing factors on the usage of connectors is attributable to four aspects: language input, linguistic interference, learning strategies, and thought patterns. The final section of the article discusses didactic suggestions based on these results.

Keywords:

connector, GFL-learner, frequency diversity, accuracy,

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