A corpus-based study of connectors in students’ academic writing: A comparison between L1 English speakers and L1 Arabic speakers

Abstract

This dissertation is comparing the frequency and the use of connectors in the academic writing of L1 English speakers and L1 Arabic speakers by using BAWE corpus. After a brief description of the connectors, the methodology will be explained, in which there will be a definition of the corpus in general and how to use the BAWE corpus also there will be an overview of the Sketch Engine which is the corpus tool that is going to be used to collect the data, also the corpus technique is going to be included. The connectors that are going to be in this comparison are the connectors that are taken from Halliday & Hasan (1976: 238-239) categories, they are about 20 connectors. The results of this research show that L1 Arabic speakers have used the connectors (and, therefore, then) more than L1 English speakers, while (because, so) have been founded in L1 English speakers more than in L1 Arabic speakers in the academic writing. Also, the connectors (nor, thus, as a result) are founded more used in L1 Arabic speakers than L1 English speakers. On the other hand, the connectors (and also, not, but, yet, hence, consequently) are used in L1 English speakers more than L1 Arabic speakers. However, the connector (in consequence of that) have not been founded in both L1 English speakers and L1 Arabic speakers.