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Native speaker advantage in academic writing? Conjunctive realizations in EAP writing by four groups of writers

July 2017
Ampersand 4(C)

DOI:10.1016/j.amper.2017.07.001

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This paper joins the Native vs. Non-native writer dichotomy discussion of whether native speakers of English enjoy advantage in the academic writing context from the linguistic perspective by analyzing conjunctive realizations of four groups of writers: English L1 and L2 graduate students; English L1 and L2 scholars in applied linguistics. Fifteen essays from each group are compared on their explicit conjunctions and Logical Grammatical Metaphors (LGMs). Both graduate student groups employ explicit conjunctions more than the two scholar groups. For LGMs, not only do both graduate student groups differ from the two scholar groups, they also differ significantly from each other. In contrast, the two scholar groups show similar usage in explicit conjunctions and LGMs. Qualitative differences of conjunctive usage and lexical varieties are also found among the four groups. The study points out that writer experience overweighs their native-speaker status in academic writing. The findings question the native-speaker linguistic advantage to a certain extent and indicate complexity of this issue. As language for academic purposes is strikingly different from spoken language and cognitively more demanding, academic language needs to be learned and developed out of disciplinary studies with targeted instruction for all novice writers, regardless of their native or non-native speaker status.

Descriptive data of four groups of writers' conjunctive realizations.

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Native speaker advantage in academic writing? Conjunctive

realizations in EAP writing by four groups of writers

Jun Zhao

Department of English and Foreign Languages, Augusta University, USA

article info

Article history:

Received 7 November 2016

Received in revised form

6 July 2017

Accepted 11 July 2017

Available online 15 July 2017

Keywords:

Native vs. non-native writer dichotomy

EAP writing

Conjunctive realization

Logical grammatical metaphor

abstract

This paper joins the Native vs. Non-native writer dichotomy discussion of whether native speakers of

English enjoy advantage in the academic writing context from the linguistic perspective by analyzing

conjunctive realizations of four groups of writers: English L1 and L2 graduate students; English L1 and L2

scholars in applied linguistics. Fifteen essays from each group are compared on their explicit conjunc-

tions and Logical Grammatical Metaphors (LGMs). Both graduate student groups employ explicit con-

junctions more than the two scholar groups. For LGMs, not only do both graduate student groups differ

from the two scholar groups, they also differ signiﬁcantly from each other. In contrast, the two scholar

groups show similar usage in explicit conjunctions and LGMs. Qualitative differences of conjunctive

usage and lexical varieties are also found among the four groups. The study points out that writer

experience overweighs their native-speaker status in academic writing. The ﬁndings question the native-

speaker linguistic advantage to a certain extent and indicate complexity of this issue. As language for

academic purposes is strikingly different from spoken language and cognitively more demanding, aca-

demic language needs to be learned and developed out of disciplinary studies with targeted instruction

for all novice writers, regardless of their native or non-native speaker status.

license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

As a non-native English speaker (hereafter L2), I get “whoa”

many times when people know that I teach English writing. The

underlying assumption is that it is a daunting task for a non-native

writer, almost mission impossible. Is it true L2 writers are neces-

sarily and always disadvantaged in the complex academic writing

environment? Some scholars believe so [15,16,23,49], while others

[9,22,35] oppose this. Among the factors that could affect this

process such as writing experience [2,18,26,35], academic literacy

and genre knowledge [1,9,12], and language issues [7,13,14,24,

27,43,49], language seems to be easily blamable for L2 writers'

failures. Is this “stigma”[15,16] and “linguistic injustice”[22] to-

wards L2 writers justiﬁed? Are other factors equally or more

inﬂuential in this writing process? Is this a linguistic problem

phrased as a writing problem or otherwise [1]? Is academic literacy

equally challenging for English native (hereafter L1) and L2 writers

[35]? These questions have practical implications due to the

increasing power of English. The dominating status of English in

academia means publication in English will attract wider global

audience and receive more international recognition and fame,

which has encouraged scholars worldwide to submit their articles

in English. Thus answers to the above questions could shed light on

this complex, important issue.

The prestige of English publications in academia, as Ferguson

et al. [12] suggests, could disadvantage some English L2 writers, for

the English proﬁciency level of the researcher is an important factor

in the publication process. Language deﬁciency has negatively

affected academic productivity in some cases [23,49]. Flowerdew

[15] refers to this phenomenon as “stigma”and Hyland [22] refers

to it as “linguistic injustice”. However, not all L2 writers are chal-

lenged by this. Bocanegra-Valle [6] found that many manuscript

submitters (English L1 and L2 scholars) chose English as the sub-

mitting language for the multilingual European-based journal

Iberica, due to the important status of English and their English

academic writing experience. Experience and knowledge of aca-

demic writing rather than language-related (dis)advantage, as

Casanave [9] argues, plays an important role in this process.

Of the different factors affecting academic writings, this study

takes the linguistic approach to join the Native vs. Non-native di-

chotomy discussion by focusing on one particular language feature

E-mail address: juzhao@augusta.edu.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ampersand

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/amper

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amper.2017.07.001

Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e57

of conjunctive realizations in academic writing by four groups of

writers differing in native and non-native status of English and

academic writing experience. Academic writings show signiﬁcant

language differences from other types of writings [4,8,11], and rely

on verbs, nouns, prepositions or adjectives for meaning connec-

tions as well as conjunctions. Most studies on explicit use of con-

junctions by English L2 writers indicate that those writers'

conjunctions deviate from those by English L1 writers in multiple

ways [3,10,21,25,32,37,48,50]. However, the type of writing exam-

ined in most studies is not academic per se, and the focus is limited

to explicit conjunctions. Only a few studies [3,10] have investigated

conjunction usage in the academic setting, but still limited to

explicit conjunctions.

This study differs from previous studies on conjunctions in

several ways. Through examining conjunctive realizations of both

explicit conjunctions and Logical Grammatical Metaphors (here-

after LGM) in academic writings by four groups of writers who

differ on their native and non-native English speaker status and

academic writing experience, this study provides evidence to

question the myth of native speaker linguistic advantage in aca-

demic writing. Findings support Hyland [22] that the simple di-

chotomy of Native and Non-native status is too crude to reﬂect the

complexity of such an issue. The results indicate that both L1 and L2

graduate students signiﬁcantly differ from the two scholar groups

in explicit conjunctions. Not only do the two student writer groups

differ from each other in LGMs, their LGMs also signiﬁcantly differ

from those of the two scholar groups. Seasoned scholars, regardless

of their native or non-native speaker status, clearly show advantage

in embodying conjunctive relationship appropriately in the aca-

demic context for their experience in and knowledge of academic

writing.

2. Literature review

The literature review section addresses Native vs. Non-native

dichotomy in academic writing, features of academic language of

conjunctive realizations, and conjunction studies in second lan-

guage writing to lay the framework for this paper. Native speakers

are understood as those who grow up speaking English as the ﬁrst

and primary language, and Non-native speakers as those who ac-

quire English as an additional language after the establishment of

the ﬁrst language.

2.1. Native vs. Non-native academic writer dichotomy

Grammar seems to be a major concern in the Native vs. Non-

native academic writer dichotomy. Different aspects of grammar

in English L2 writings have been investigated, such as lexical

choices and language expressions [13,43]; idiomatic expressions

[31]; syntax [14]; time expressions [24]; and choice of modality to

modify or strengthen claims [14,27]. Grammar and lexical errors in

L2 writings could “impede their essential merit”[49, p. 255] to the

academic argument, and many L2 manuscripts receive professional

editing service of “spelling mistakes, grammar, verb tense, cohe-

sion, sentence order, lexical choice, strength of claims”[7, p. 228].

This does make many L2 writers feel disadvantaged, as Huang [23]’s

Taiwanese PhD students confess that they “made far more gram-

matical or stylistic mistakes”and could “never achieve native-level

proﬁciency”in writing (p. 37). Flowerdew [15,16] uses the term

“stigma”to describe this phenomenon and emphasizes that “EAL

[English as additional language] writers may need to write with

targeted attention and make considerable effort to comply with

existing norms”[15, p. 82]. One important question hence to be

addressed is the severity of this language issue and how L2 writers

view this issue in their own English academic writings.

The important status of English in academia generates a mixed

feeling towards English by L2 writers, as shown in several studies.

Tard y [46] surveyed some international graduate students as the

“future inﬂuential users of scientiﬁc English”(p. 253). The partici-

pants generally indicated low self-assessment of their English

competence and high need for English for professional develop-

ment. Though their difﬁculties in English communication and the

time spent in English writing made them feel disadvantaged at

professional activities, for many, English is the language of subject

matter learning and disciplinary development. Hence some prefer

English because it is “‘objective’, less ambiguous …and more ac-

curate than translation”for “its perceived conciseness, clarity and

‘strict grammar’” (p. 262). Despite acknowledged language difﬁ-

culties, those graduate students generally hold a positive attitude

towards writing in English in academia. This positive attitude is

stronger for experienced L2 scholars. Ferguson et al. [12] surveyed

English as additional language (hereafter EAL) academic writers.

Although writing in English poses additional grammar challenges

for EAL writers, 62% of them “feel more advantaged than disad-

vantaged in their work by the dominance of English”(p. 50). With

an increasing English proﬁciency, those academic writers feel more

advantages of English than disadvantages in their writing. This

perceived advantage would boost their conﬁdence in English aca-

demic writings and encourage this practice. This is echoed in

Bocanegra-Valle [6] when she investigated the submission prac-

tices to the multilingual European-based academic journal Iberica.

Despite the fact that Iberica accepts manuscript submissions in ﬁve

languages, English is the dominant language of submission

regardless of manuscript submitters' L1 or L2 English status. With

the understanding of English being the language of international

communication and of science and technology, those authors feel

their career beneﬁts more from such a practice. These studies

reveal that the non-native status may not disadvantage L2 writers

as imagined. The linguistic disadvantage felt by L2 writers may not

be as severe, and many of them hold a mixed “hate and love”

attitude: with the recognized linguistic challenges, they also feel

conﬁdent and beneﬁcial to write in English for academic purposes.

As a matter of fact, the challenges perceived by many L2 aca-

demic writers are not language related. It could, as Casanave [9]

views, be a result of “lack of familiarity with genre conventions”,

which includes “awkward and difﬁcult-to-process syntax and

inappropriate lexicon”(p. 266). Many of the problems experienced

by L2 academic writers are also seen among L1 writers due to their

“insufﬁcient control of the language, muddy thinking, inexperience

with writing in general and with scholarly genre in particular”[9,p.

266]. Studies [1,6,12,38] argue that compared with genre/discipline

knowledge and writer experience, native status is less essential for

success in academic writing. For example, Romer [38] compared

three groups of writers' phraseological features in academic

writing: advanced German L2 writers of English, L1 English novice

academic writers, and expert writers. The results indicate that L2

advanced writers use more of the phraseological items in this genre

than novice native writers, indicating L2 group's higher level of

academic writing ability, though both groups lack “very similar sets

of expert academic English phraseological items”(p. 99). The

overall phraseological differences between apprentice writers and

expert writers evidence that in “advanced-level academic writing,

we actually move beyond the native/non-native distinction and

that, in this context, experience or expertise is a more important

aspect to consider than nativeness”(p.99).

Many L2 writers, particularly novice student writers, still regard

grammar as their number one issue. One possible explanation is

their lack of awareness of genre and academic writing conventions.

Badenhorst et al. [1]’s case study of a graduate student's academic

writing on her identity development, voice construction and

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e5748

discourse development indicated that the student took her lan-

guage difﬁculties in research writing as her main writing problems.

However, her actual problems were “engaging with the history of

ideas, philosophical debates and language in this particular aca-

demic context”(p. 8). Clearly, “academic and research discourses,

disciplinary knowledge frameworks, rhetorical moves, genres,

disciplinary language, positioning in writing and critical engage-

ment in discourses”(p.5) are the types of “literacy practices of ac-

ademic”(p.2) that student writers need to develop. Lacking

experience and knowledge of university discourses inﬂuences

student academic writing ability more than their linguistic prob-

lems. Writers at different stages of academic writing may face

different challenges. For low-proﬁciency Romanian researchers in

Bardi [2]’s study, the lack of control in their English research article

is mainly “word order, syntactic sentence structure and redundant

writing”; for proﬁcient writers, the difﬁculties are mainly “a certain

lack of accuracy and limited ability to handle the academic register”

(p. 106). It is less likely that low-level writers do not face challenges

at the genre level. A possible explanation is their lack of awareness

of this more important higher-order concern of writing. Only with

increasing amount of reading and writing will one start to under-

stand the disciplinary and genre writing requirement.

Other than language issue, genre knowledge and writing

experience, the Native vs. Non-native dichotomy discussion is

further complicated across disciplines. The studies reviewed so far

view academic writing as one uniﬁed genre, without disciplinary

distinctions. Fine-tuned disciplinary analysis reveals strikingly

different attitudes and practices of academic writing across ﬁelds of

study. In general, L2 scholars in “hard-core”science ﬁelds need

more English publications and seem to be less disadvantaged than

“soft”science L2 scholars. Some experienced Spanish social scien-

tists in Gea-Valor, Rey-Rocha and Moreno [17] study published

more papers in Spanish than in English, as “more than half (68%)

think that their writing ability in English is below the standard the

journals require”(p. 52). In addition, social scientists address more

issues in local contexts, leading them to write more in Spanish. In

contrast, medical Spanish scholars submit more papers in English

for international recognition, and they are more experienced with

more exposure to research writing in English, which leads to their

higher publication acceptance rate. Social scientist’research paper

in English tend to be rejected for style, convention, content and

research design. Speciﬁcally, the introduction section is problem-

atic as those researchers fail to establish a critical attitude towards

other and own works to argue for signiﬁcance and contributions.

This is undoubtedly more than a language issue but a genre issue,

despite the fact that social science participants reported language

issue as the main obstacle in their English research article sub-

mission and publication. Less than half of them “reported to be

familiar with [stylistic] aspects”(p. 54) in English research writing,

which supports the claim that “familiarity with the discipline is

regarded as a higher priority”(p. 55), even for scholars.

Gnutzmann and Rabe [18]’experienced researcher participants

from four disciplines effectively showcase the disciplinary differ-

ences. In science disciplines such as biology, scholars feel that the

“rigid language patterns contributed to a certain ease in writing and

publishing in English”(p. 34). They feel easier to write in English

“since they can use and adopt most of the language needed from

existing articles as …nobody in their ﬁeld expects them to write

‘creatively’or in a varied manner”(p. 35). The scenario is different

for scholars in social science, as they work on language data and

there are more “native speakers of English participating in the

discourse”, in comparison with researchers from “disciplines with

experimental or statistical data”where “a larger number of non-

native English-speaking researchers [are] in gate-keeping posi-

tions”(p.39). Hence, science scholars are less linguistically

challenged and demanded in writing English research article. Ira-

nian science researchers in Karimnia [26]’s study share similar

understandings. To improve their writing, they read as much as

possible to gather phrases to “internalize set phrases to use when

writing a research article”with the realization that “the language in

a research article is heavily codiﬁed”(p. 907). In this sense, being a

native speaker does not guarantee good academic writing, as

preferred language expressions seem to follow a certain pattern,

which can be learned by reading research articles extensively in

those disciplines.

Over time, with more experience and expertise, language

challenges will become less formidable for L2 academic writers. A

common practice to improve academic literacy is through “partic-

ipation in research networks as a form of learning socialization into

the global research community”[2, p. 100]. Novice scholar

engagement with disciplinary community is the key to acquire a

good command of academic literacy “by means of engaging in the

actual task of writing …by paying attention to the rhetorical fea-

tures of the published output of professional authors”[35, p. 61].

Many scholars hold the view that “academic writing, or academic

literacy, is not part of the native speaker's inheritance: it is acquired

rather through lengthy formal education and is far from a universal

skill”[12, p. 42]. Native academic writers go through the same

process as L2 academic writers, and language is only part of the

problem for L2 research-oriented writing, as “English proﬁciency

alone is not enough to ensure research effectiveness”[2, p. 100].

Bardi [2]’s participants develop strategies such as “assembling a

collection of collocations, phrases, and language used to express

certain rhetorical functions”(p. 107) from reading published

research writings. One of the researcher participants, through

“extended contact with English language literature”,ﬁnds it easier

“to write in English than in Romanian”as this is “the language in

which [he or she] encountered those ideas as reader”(p. 106).

Many empirical studies discussed here indicate that in academic

writing, framing “linguistics disadvantage in terms of a Native/non-

Native divide”is problematic [22, p. 61]. Challenges faced by L2

writers “can be either discursive (language-related) or nondiscur-

sive (nonlanguage-related)”[23, p. 34]. Native-writer status is not

the determining factor in academic writing as “English played only

a secondary role in scientiﬁc publication”to the research design

and “experimental data”[23, p. 38]. Be it L1 or L2 writers, the

chance is fair and “the experience or the lack of [academic writing]

…plays its part in determining just how difﬁcult research writing

might be”[35, p. 58]. As Hyland [22] argues, “a crude Native vs.

non-Native polarization not only draws on an outmoded respect …

but serves to demoralizes [sic] EAL writers and marginalize the

difﬁculties experienced by novice L1 English academics”(p. 58). A

“more nuanced, more circumspect view of linguistic disadvantage”

is needed as language can be “a hampering factor, not always or

necessarily a key one, but one that in combination with others can

amount to a signiﬁcant obstacle”[12, p. 43].

The success of academic literacy depends on multiple factors of

genre, style, disciplinary knowledge, writing experience and lan-

guage, and language is only one of the factors. To enter the Native

vs. Non-native dichotomy discussion, this study takes the linguistic

approach and compares the academic language features of mean-

ing connections by four groups of writers to investigate the extent

to which native vs. non-native status beneﬁts or disadvantages L1

and L2 writers with different academic writing experiences. Next

the literature review moves on to meaning connections in

academia.

2.2. Meaning connection in academic texts

Halliday [20, p. xix] sees language as a “meaning-making

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e57 49

resource and meaning can be presented as choice”. Hence, aca-

demic language has distinctive features from other types of writ-

ings, as academia “make [s] meanings in ways that are

informationally dense and authoritatively presented”[42, p. 44].

Key features of academic language [5,8,39,40,42,44] include high

frequency of nominalization, simple syntactic structure but com-

plex phrasal structure, reduced personal voice and high frequency

of passive voice. Conjunctive relations in academia tend to be

embodied in various forms such as verbs, prepositions, nouns and

adjectives, rather than merely relying on conjunctions. For

example, a sample sentence “I compared two pictures and found

out they are very similar to each other”is not as preferred as “A

comparison of two pictures shows similarities”in research articles.

Though those two sentences largely overlap in their meanings, they

are chosen for different genres. The second expression is cogni-

tively more demanding for novice academic writers due to incon-

gruency between structure and meaning as clauses are converted

to phrases and an explicit marker of relationship is not presented.

This implicit, embedded logical connection occurs more frequently

in academic texts.

Explicit markers of meaning connections include conjunctions

such as “and”,“but”,“however”, adverbs such as “consequently”,

“additionally”, and prepositional phrases such as “on the other

hand”,“in contrast with/to”between sentences or clauses. Implicit

semantic connections include verbs (mainly causative verbs),

prepositions, nouns and adjectives [34,37,41]. Some sample sen-

tences are provided here to show the preferred conjunctive re-

alizations in academic texts to express the idea “we must get

support from the institution so that the project can succeed”.

1. Institutional support enables the success of this project.

2. Without institutional support, this project can't succeed.

3. Institutional support is a determining factor for the success of

this project.

In the example sentences, a verb “enable”, a preposition

“without”, an adjective “determining”and a noun “factor”are used

respectively. The embedded causal relationship between “institu-

tional support”and “the success of the project”can be seen clearly

in those sentences even without an explicit conjunction “so that,

because, if”, etc. To do that, one has to ﬁrst convert clauses “we

must get support from the institution”and “the project can suc-

ceed”into phrases “institutional support”and “the success of the

project”. With this change, the two phrases can now be connected

by verbs, prepositions, nouns or adjectives, rather than by con-

junctions. From the functional perspective, Martin and Rose [34,p.

115] deﬁne conjunctive relationship as “interconnections between

processes-adding, comparing, sequencing, or explaining …logical

meanings that link activities and messages in sequences”. These

relations are broader and can be “between one part of a text to

another in terms of the natural logic of time, cause, comparison and

addition”[33, p. 163], including semantic links that combine “any

two textual elements into a potentially coherent complex semantic

unit”[47, p. 225]. This semantically-based relation is termed Logical

Grammatical Metaphor (LGM) in Systemic Functional Linguistics

(SFL), a functional approach to language study.

Halliday [20] explains that language can be divided into two

strata: semantics (meaning) and lexicogrammar (lexical and

grammatical choice) and they do not always correspond with each

other. Similar to the idea of metaphor which transfers the semantic

property of one thing to another, grammatical metaphor (GM)

transfers the grammatical property. That is, a congruent expression

“can be ‘decoupled’and replaced by a new ‘cross-coupling’in which

the meaning is now represented by a different form”[20, p. xxiv].

For example, the lexicogrammar choice of a noun phrase “the

comparison of two tables”differs from a clause “I compared two

tables”as it moves from a congruent relationship of using a clause

to represent a real event to an incongruent relationship of using a

noun to represent an event. Outside the SFL ﬁeld, this is referred to

as nominalization (though GM is more than nominalization), an

important feature in academic language.

As Halliday [20] describes, knowledge develops as “we move

from commonsense theories of everyday experience to technical

and scientiﬁc theories of knowledge”, together with language

change of evolving “ways of meaning …from the congruent to the

metaphorical, from the clausal to the nominal”(p. xv). Mohan and

Beckett [36] concur that “the grammar of speech …tends to use

grammar in congruent ways, and the grammar of writing …tends

to use grammar in ways that are non-congruent or grammatically

metaphorical”(p. 426). The ability “to control noncongruence/

grammatical metaphor is central to the construction of academic

discourse”[36, p. 426], but difﬁcult for learners “because it places

demands on their knowledge of academic and literate discourse …

and requires grammatical and lexical compactness”(p. 431). In this

sense, both L1 and L2 novice writers face this linguistic challenge.

As mentioned brieﬂy, Grammatical Metaphor encompasses

more than nominalizations to include any type of decoupling in

terms of semantic meaning and lexicogrammar choice. When the

logical connection between two clauses is not congruently

expressed as “and, but, additionally, on the other hand”, but as a

different grammar choice of verbs, prepositions, nouns and adjec-

tives, this is Logical Grammatical Metaphor (LGM). In the sentence

“drinking too much might lead to car accident”,“lead to”is an LGM

as this causative verb indicates a causal/temporal relationship be-

tween “drinking”and “car accident”. Many verbs have inherent

causative meanings in English and are frequently used as LGMs. A

few examples are provided here, “enable, result in, facilitate,

generate, lead to”. Many prepositions express “means”through

which a result is achieved; thus, showing causative relationship. A

few examples are provided here “with, without, by, via, through”.

Another choice of LGM is nouns such as “factor, reason, purpose,

aim, result”, which inherently indicate the causal relationship.

Adjectives can also be used to express Causation, Addition or

Comparison, such as “extra, opponent, additional”. A high fre-

quency of LGMs contributes to the compactness of academic lan-

guage, as the connection now occurs within clause rather than

between clauses.

For the differences between linguistic realizations of logical

relationship in spoken and written language, Schlepgrell [41]

forcefully explains that “spontaneous spoken language typically

employs clause chaining strategies, using adverbial clauses and

conjunctions to link segments of discourse”while “written lan-

guage …tends to use nominalizations, adjectives, complex verbs

and prepositional phrases to condense information and ideas into

single-clause structures”(p. 272). In spoken language, the presence

of an immediate interlocutor makes the discourse more interac-

tional, so the “discourse-structuring role of a conjunction is often

emphasized”(p. 280). The high information density of academic

texts means “conjunctions are important signals of the semantic

relationships between clauses and segments of text …to fore-

ground propositional meaning”(p. 280), which necessitates a

different type of semantic phrasal connections. This determines

that LGMs are the preferred means of meaning connections in ac-

ademic language. However, not many studies have investigated

LGMs in academic writings, and most L2 writing studies focus on

explicit conjunctions in a non-academic writing context.

2.3. Previous L2 writing studies on conjunctions

In general, studies comparing conjunctions by L1 and L2 writers

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e5750

focus on explicit conjunctions and the type of writing investigated

are not academic in most studies. The results point out that L2

writers tend to overuse some and underuse other conjunctions and

use some conjunctions inappropriately in comparison with L1

writers. Lee [28] ﬁnds that Korean writers overuse and underuse

various connectors. Hinkel [21] indicates that L2 essays use “and,

but, yet, either, or, both”signiﬁcantly more than L1 essays. Li [29]

study of 20 Japanese EFL journal writings at the university level

reveals that the participants use “but”the most frequently and their

conjunction use is very similar to that in spoken language. Granger

and Tyson [19] add to this line of evidence in that their French

participants underuse some connectors such as “however, there-

fore, thus”but overuse “moreover, for instance, on the contrary”.

The Swedish learners of English in Tapper [45] study overuse

“moreover, for instance, on the contrary”but underuse “hence,

thus, therefore, however”. Another common ﬁnding is that L2

writers tend to use informal conjunctions in their formal writings

and misuse conjunctions. Tseng and Liou [48] suggest that this

inappropriate use of conjunctions by L2 writers occurs as a result of

learners transferring the feature of spoken language to written

language due to lack of contextual awareness. The misuse of con-

junctions by L2 writers is common too. For example, HK students in

Tseng and Liou [48] use “on the other hand”without an implied

contrast and use “therefore”without introducing a result or a

consequence. Hinkel [21] argues that the overuse, misuse and

inappropriate use of conjunctions in L2 writings “often result [s] in

confusing textual organization and a general sense of incoherence

because these coordinators are employed in contexts where other

types of cohesive devices are expected”(p. 144).

To answer the question of why L2 writers tend to use conjunc-

tions differently, we can look at Schleppegrell [41] with her focus

study on “because”in spoken and written language. This

conjunction has a high frequency in spoken language; however, L2

writers use it almost twice more than L1 writers in the same type of

writings, to provide elaboration and justiﬁcation for their asser-

tions, to introduce independent segments and to link utterances

that may not be logically cause/effect. L2 writers' usage reﬂects the

feature of spoken language of “interaction of interlocutors, and the

joint construction of discourse”(p. 280), which goes against the

requirement of written language in which “[s]entences are more

tightly constructed to exploit the ideational role of conjunctions in

establishing meaning relationship between clauses”(p. 280).

If L2 writers are at a higher proﬁciency level, will this affect their

conjunction usage? Yang and Sun [50]’s study is designed to answer

that question. They compare cohesive items, including conjunc-

tions, of 60 Chinese EFL English majors' college-level argumenta-

tive writings (30 sophomores as intermediate-level, 30 seniors as

advanced-level). The results indicate that many learners fail to

use cohesive devices properly in their writings. Both groups make

restricted choice of conjunctive items of “so, but”repetitively,

lacking depth and variety. Both groups make errors of redundant

use of conjunctions, unreasonable lack of conjunctions and misuse

of conjunctions. There is no signiﬁcant difference between the two

groups in most conjunctions (additive, causative, temporal) except

adversatives. Advanced-level students employ signiﬁcantly more

adversatives to illustrate counterarguments than intermediate-

level students. They explain that proﬁciency levels do not have a

signiﬁcant inﬂuence on EFL writers' conjunctive use other than

adversatives, but the differences found of adversative conjunctions

between the two groups may not lie in their English proﬁciency.

First, deﬁning students' language proﬁciency based on the years of

study is somewhat problematic. Second, seniors may use adversa-

tives more to introduce counterargument simply because they have

more disciplinary knowledge, making this an issue of knowledge

and experience rather than language.

Of the many conjunction studies on L2 writings, only a fewfocus

on writing for academic purposes. Chen [10] compares conjunc-

tions in ten MA TESOL EFL (English as a foreign language) students'

graduate-level writings with ten journal articles in Applied Lin-

guistics and pinpoints that learners overuse “however, therefore,

for instance/example, thus, moreover, besides, also, ﬁrst, then, in

addition”and underuse “thus, that is, furthermore, in fact, in other

words, on the other hand”. Povolna [37] analyzes ﬁfteen MA theses

to study novice academic writers' use of causal and contrastive

conjunctions, which are highly valued in academic discourse to

present and support arguments. Those participants used causal

markers “as, because, thus, therefore”more frequently, and

contrastive markers “but, however, although, on the other hand,

nevertheless, yet, while”frequently, but not “except, in spite of,

alternatively, conversely”. This suggests that even at advanced

level, L2 writers rely on a relatively limited repertoire of the com-

mon ones rather than resorting to a wider choice of conjunctions.

However, these two studies did not include LGMs. Basturkmen and

von Randow [3] extended their scope to LGMs. They examined

twenty L2 students' argumentative writings at doctoral level in

several disciplines. Conjunctions were more frequently used in the

lower-graded writing with some inappropriate choices. Concessive

relations were observed 68 times: 62 of the 68 times with explicit

usage, and the 6 instances without signaling were all found in the

higher-graded writings. Lower-graded writings particularly rely on

“but, however, though, although, even if”as concessive markers,

while higher graded writings show a wider range of concessive

markers.

Even though conjunctions have been extensively studied in L2

writings, many studies reviewed here have not included LGMs,

which, as explained, is preferred in the academic context. L2 writers

seem to be challenged to realize conjunctive relationship appro-

priately. Will L1 writers face the same issue in their academic

writing, or will they perform in similar ways to experienced

scholars in their linguistic choices? Many studies in the Native vs.

Non-native dichotomy debate relies on survey data of EAL writers'

attitudes towards academic writing without corresponding textual

analysis of linguistic features [2,12,17,18,23,46]. If we can show that

L1 writers in the academic context also deviate from the expected

academic language features, this can add evidence to a more

nuanced discussion of the Native vs. Non-native dichotomy. For this

purpose, the current study conducts a linguistic analysis of various

conjunctive realizations by L1 and L2 graduate student writers, and

L1 and L2 experienced scholars in applied linguistics.

3. Study

3.1. Research questions

To closely examine the Native vs. Non-native dichotomy and the

native-speaker advantage, four groups of writers' conjunctive re-

alizations are compared: Group 1: L1 English graduate student

writers; Group 2, L2 English graduate student writers: Group 3, L1

English scholars; and Group 4, L2 English scholars; all in the ﬁeld of

applied linguistics. The ﬁrst two groups are similar in that they are

novice academic writers but differ in L1 vs. L2 status. Group 3 and

group 4 are experienced academic writers who differ in L1 vs. L2

status. Group 1 and 3 are L1 English writers who differ in their

academic writing experience, and group 2 and 4 are L2 English

writers who differ in their academic writing experience. If any

cross-group comparison indicates signiﬁcant differences of their

conjunctive realizations, then the differing feature might explain

the discrepancy. This allows the researcher to examine the inﬂu-

ence of experience and language status on their academic writing

in terms of conjunctive realizations. Two research questions are

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e57 51

posed in this study:

1. How do advanced L2 graduate students (L2 novice writers), L1

graduate students (L1 novice writers), experienced L1 scholar

writers, and experienced L2 scholar writers express different

types of conjunctive relations in their academic essays in terms

of explicit conjunctions and Logical Grammatical Metaphors?

Do their linguistic choices of conjunctive relationship differ from

each other quantitatively and qualitatively? If so, what are the

differences?

2. Is it true that L1 English writers enjoy advantage than L2 English

writers in academic writing in terms of choosing proper forms

of conjunctive realizations in the academic context? Could their

academic writing experience overweigh the native-speaker

status in this respect?

3.2. Participants and data

The participants in this study are L1 and L2 graduate students of

Applied Linguistics and TESOL in an American university. Their

ﬁnal-term literature review papers are collected and analyzed.

Those participants are mostly in their 20's with a few in the 30's.

Their major in language and language teaching typically puts a

higher demand on their language use. These L2 English partici-

pants' L1s include Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and

Korean. The relatively small number of participants does not allow

aﬁne-tuned analysis according to their L1s, nor is the purpose of

this study to do so. The scholarly data are published journal articles

in applied linguistics, selected from their course readings. Both L1

and L2 English writers are included in the scholarly data. Alto-

gether, 15 L2 academic papers, 15 L1 academic papers, 15 L1

scholarly articles and 15 L2 scholarly articles serve as the data for

this study. For comparison purposes, only the introduction and

literature review parts of published journal articles are analyzed, as

graduate students' papers do not contain sections of study, meth-

odology, data analysis, etc.

3.3. Data analysis

The researcher went over the data twice over a six-month

period for intra-rater reliability, with 92.4% instances in agree-

ment. For those instances of disagreement, another scholar was

consulted and the ﬁnal decision from the two scholars was used in

data calculation. Following Martin and Rose [34, p. 144], conjunc-

tive relations are categorized into Addition, Comparison, Time and

Consequence. All instances of conjunctive realizations are indicated

as explicit use or Logical Grammatical Metaphor. LGM, as explained

by Martin &Rose [34]; Povolna [37]; and Schleppegrell [41], in-

cludes verbs (drinking leads to accident), prepositions (achieve a

better understanding via reading), nouns (the purpose of this study

is) and adjectives (a different point of view argues …). In cases of

more than one linguistic means employed in one sentence, each

incidence is counted. For example, in the sentence “In addition,

scholars from the opponent camp counter this claim”(L2 student

6), “in addition”is counted as Explicit Addition. “Opponent”and

“counter”both indicate an argument different from a previous one,

so they are counted under the category Comparison twice, once as

LGM adjective, once as LGM verb.

To calculate the frequency of conjunctive realizations, one can

adopt a word-based method (the total number of conjunctive re-

alizations divided by the total number of words). Such an approach

is problematic since conjunctions function as cohesive ties mostly

beyond the word level. One could also choose a sentence-based

method (the total number of conjunctive realizations divided by

the total number of sentences). Chen [10]’s word-based analysis

indicates her L2 writers overuse conjunctions but her sentence-

based approach fails to show that. One possible explanation is L2

writers tend to write many shorter sentences, rather than fewer

longer and complex sentences. Due to this concern, this study

adopts a clause-based calculation, as a sentence might contain

more than one clause. To illustrate this method, one L2 student

example without any grammar correction is provided here. There

are six clauses in this example but only one sentence.

“The reasons I chose the topic for research (1) is (2) because I

have been informed (3) that some English speaking learners of

Japanese had misunderstandings with native Japanese speakers (4)

because they pronounced words differentially, (5) although their

proﬁciency level in Japanese is quite high (6)”. [L2 student 9.

The bolded word “reason”is an LGM, and the three underlined

words are explicit conjunctions. For this example, the frequency of

explicit conjunctions is 50% (3 divided by 6) and that of LGM is

16.67% (1 divided by 6).

3.4. Findings

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Conjunctive Re-

alizations by the Four Groups:

All four groups of writers employ explicit conjunctions and

LGMs for meaning connections of Addition, Comparison, Time and

Consequence. L2 graduate students use explicit conjunctions the

most, which is in agreement with previous studies. The second

highest group of explicit conjunctions is L1 graduate students,

followed by L2 scholars and L1 scholars. Scholars use LGMs the

most, with no signiﬁcant difference between L1 and L2 scholars. L2

graduate students employ LGMs the least. L1 graduate students

employ LGMs more than L2 graduate students but less than the two

scholar groups. Of the different conjunctive meanings, Addition is

used the most and Time is used the least, with Consequence and

Comparison in the middle. This general pattern is in alignment with

the purposes of academic argument to compare/contrast different

views and to explain causes/consequence with less focus on tem-

poral sequence of events. Liu [30]’s corpus study pinpoints that

Addition, Comparison, Consequence are used more frequently in

academic writings and Time is used the least. All groups of writers'

conjunctive realizations serve the purpose of academic argument

to move discipline forward by addressing different ideas and

providing explanations. The ﬁnding that L2 and L1 graduate stu-

dent writers use more Consequence than Comparison while L1 and

L2 scholar groups use more Comparison than Consequence might

indicate that both groups of graduate student writers value ex-

planations and cause/effect more in academic argument, and the

two scholar groups value presenting different views, incorporating

different voices, or challenging others more in academic argument.

This could relate to the writers' disciplinary knowledge and critical

thinking ability, as experienced scholars typically read more

extensively in the ﬁeld and understand different perspectives of a

disciplinary debate better than graduate student writers who are

new to the ﬁeld.

Table 1 presents the speciﬁc quantitative differences of explicit

conjunctions and LGMs by the four groups, and the four types of

conjunctive relationships in terms of total number and percentage,

to provide a sketch of the descriptive quantitative data comparison.

Table 1 lists detailed descriptive data of the four groups'

conjunctive usage. L2 graduate student writers show the highest

number and frequency of explicit conjunctions, followed by L1

graduate students, L2 scholars and L1 scholars. For LGMs, the

pattern is reversed: L2 graduate student writers show the lowest

number and frequency, then L1 graduate students, and the two

scholar groups. T-test for cross-group comparison is then

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e5752

conducted for any statistical difference in their explicit conjunctives

and LGMs. Table 2 presents detailed comparison of LGMs of the four

groups. Table 3 presents detailed comparison of explicit conjunc-

tions of the four groups.

For LGMs, the statistical analysis indicates that both L1 and L2

graduate students differ signiﬁcantly from the two scholar groups;

the two graduate student groups signiﬁcantly differ from each

other, and the two scholar groups are not signiﬁcantly different

from each other. Despite their different native vs. non-native writer

status, the two scholar groups are similar in their employment of

LGMs, the preferred means of conjunctive realizations in the aca-

demic setting. What seems to be the more inﬂuencing factor here is

their writing experience and disciplinary knowledge, rather than

native-speaker status. In contrast, L1 graduate student group

signiﬁcantly deviates from the L2 scholar group in LGMs, though

one group is native writers and another group is non-native

writers. This further provides evidence to challenge the view that

non-native writers are necessarily disadvantaged in academic

writing. The picture is further complicated when we compare the

two graduate student groups: though both student groups deviate

from the two scholar groups, they also differ from each other in

LGMs, with L1 graduate students perform signiﬁcantly better than

L2 graduate students. This suggests that for writers lacking expe-

rience and disciplinary knowledge in academic writing, native

writers do enjoy certain linguistic advantage than non-native

writers, though this advantage is not sufﬁcient to ensure their

success in employing the preferred meaning connections in

academia. For meaning-making resources that are less familiar and

more cognitively demanding, native speakers might beneﬁt from

their L1 status linguistically to a limited extent.

For explicit conjunctions, the statistic analysis reveals that both

graduate student groups differ signiﬁcantly from the two scholar

groups, and there is no statistical difference between the two

graduate student groups, nor between the two scholar groups.

Explicit conjunctions are frequently employed in spoken language,

hence a form easier and more familiar to both groups of student

writers. Quantitatively speaking, the two student groups rely on

explicit conjunctions for meaning connections similarly, most likely

due to their lack of experience in academic writing and lack of

understanding that academic language relies on different meaning-

making resources. For language features that are familiar to stu-

dents and are used more frequently, the native-writer advantage

does not exist any more from the quantitative perspective. In

contrast, the two scholar groups employ explicit conjunctions in

similar pattern, signiﬁcantly lower than the two student groups. In

conjunction with the analysis of LGMs, it can be inferred that the

scholar groups, regardless of their L1 or L2 writer status, under-

stand features of academic language and employ diversiﬁed lin-

guistic resources for meaning connections. This further proves that

compared with academic writing experience and genre knowledge,

native-writer status is a less inﬂuencing factor in the academic

writing context.

To examine the linguistic differences by different groups of

writers in meaning connections, we need to look more than

quantitative information. The following section discusses the

qualitative differences of the four types of conjunctive relations

(Addition, Time, Consequence, Comparison) and use of LGMs. The

general ﬁndings indicate that all writers use Addition the most and

Time the least. L2 graduate student writers use Time primarily to

indicate the chronological sequence of events, which differs from

the primary function of Time as information organization strategy

by L1 and L2 scholars. L1 graduate student writers' usage shows

both functions. Though all groups rely on very similar conjunctions,

L2 graduate student writers do use some conjunctions inappro-

priately when compared with the other groups and rely on a few

high frequency words. In their choices of LGMs, L2 graduate student

writers also demonstrate a limited lexical choice.

Addition: Addition is used the most frequently by all groups of

writers. The mere function of Addition means more information is

presented, which makes it a frequent feature in all types of writ-

ings. The following words are found in this study: “and, in addition

to, not only …but also, for example, additionally, moreover, that is

to say, also, that is, furthermore, in other words, either …or, in

conclusion, to sum up, besides”. L2 student writers rarely use

“additionally, that is, in other words, to sum up”in comparison with

the other groups. L2 graduate students use “besides”frequently but

L1 and L2 scholars are not seen using this conjunction, and L1

graduate student writers use that word infrequently. This study

ﬁnds very few instances of LGMs in the Addition category. Exam-

ples of the few instances are: “An additional study investigates”[L1

student 3], “Further analysis reveals …”[L1 Scholar 7], and “It adds

to the line of argument”[L1 Scholar 1].

Time: The least frequently-used category in this study is Time.

The major function of Time conjunction is to introduce sequence of

events, which is expected in narration, news event and procedure

Table 1

Descriptive data of four groups of writers' conjunctive realizations.

L1student % L2student % L1scholar % L2scholar %

Total 1444 1427 881 975

LGM 159 11.01 88 6.17 311 35.3 310 31.8

Exconj. 1285 88.99 1339 93.83 570 64.7 665 68.2

Addition 520 36.01 595 41.7 269 30.53 314 31.31

Comparison 321 22.23 279 19.55 239 27.13 280 28.72

Consequence 379 26.25 354 24.81 222 25.2 236 24.21

Time 224 15.51 199 13.95 151 17.14 145 14.87

Note. LGM ¼Logical Grammatical Metaphor. Exconj. ¼explicit conjunctions.

Table 2

Cross-group analysis of statistical signiﬁcance of LGMs by the four groups.

G1 vs. G2 G1 vs. G3 G1 vs. G4 G2 vs. G3 G2 vs. G4 G3 vs. G4

T value 3.083 3.61 4.12 5.408 6.192 0.01994

P value 0.0046 0.0012 0.0003 <0.001 <0.001 0.9842

Note. P value needs to be lower than 0.05 for any statistical signiﬁcance. G1 ¼L1

student group; G2 ¼L2 student group; G3 ¼L1 scholar group; G4 ¼L2 scholar

group.

Table 3

Cross-group analysis of statistical signiﬁcance of explicit conjunctions by the four

groups.

G1 vs. G2 G1 vs. G3 G1 vs. G4 G2 vs. G3 G2 vs. G4 G3 vs. G4

T value 0.2392 3.59 5.215 5.248 7.19 0.8499

P value 0.8127 0.0012 <0.0001 <0.0001 <0.0001 0.4002

Note. P value needs to be lower than 0.05 for any statistical signiﬁcance. G1 ¼L1

student group; G2 ¼L2 student group; G3 ¼L1 scholar group; G4 ¼L2 scholar

group.

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e57 53

report rather than in academic texts. All groups of writers tend not

to use Time conjunctions much in their academic writings. The

Time conjunctions found in this study are: “when, ﬁnally, ﬁrst,

second, third, before, until, once, after, ﬁrst of all, whenever, at the

same time, as soon as”. The three underlined conjunctions occur

more in L2 student writings, and almost non-existent in L1 grad-

uate students and the two scholar groups, as they highlight the

chronological occurrence of two events, which are not generally

valued in academic argument. Of these temporal conjunctions,

experienced L1 and L2 scholars use “ﬁrst, second”, etc. more

frequently in the sense of textual organization (84.5%), while L2

graduate writers tend to use temporal conjunctions to show the

occurrence of real events (91.7%) and L1 graduate writers show a

combined pattern of both temporal sense (36.9%) and textual or-

ganization (63.1%). Some examples are provided here.

“This study is a good example to reduce the tension of non-

native speakers who feel inferior when they communicate

with native speakers”.eL2 student 11

“Politeness theory can explain a number of ﬁndings on reactions

to advice about problems. First …Second, …Third, …”.eL1

Scholar 2

No instance of LGMs in the Time category is found in this study.

However, a causal and temporal meaning can be simultaneously

embedded in one LGM. For example, in “The completion of this

project is only possible with institutional support”,“with”includes

both “because”and “after”, since the occurrence of “institutional

support”has to precede “the completion of the project”as a cause.

In this study, LGMs of this nature are only counted once in the

Consequence category as this seems to be the main function in the

context of academic explanation.

Consequence and Comparison: These two types are frequently

used by all groups of writers though the two student writer groups

use slightly more Consequences than Comparisons and the two

scholar groups use slightly more Comparisons than Consequences.

Comparisons and Consequences are important in academic writing

as they help organize discourses “in harmony with their commu-

nicative intentions”to reﬂect “the writer's need to present and

support his/her arguments to an academic audience in a straight-

forward and comprehensive way”[37, p. 133]. Consequences are

highly expected in academic discourse which values clear argu-

ment and support of author's own standpoints [37, p. 146]. Hinkel

[21, p. 135] explains the importance of Comparison in academic

writing as they introduce opposing views, provide evidence of the

writers' credibility and show contrast ideas to advance argument.

Basturkman and von Rondow [3, p. 17] concede that Comparison is

“a key resource that writers of academic texts use to interact with

their readers”when they “introduce [s] and concede [s] the validity

of a projected reader's view”. More experienced writers in the ac-

ademic context are “expected to negotiate with readers projected

to hold contrary points of view”, and to include “other views in the

surrounding discourse and to juxtapose and adjudicate between

alternative opinions”(p. 17).

The following conjunctions of Comparison are common in this

study: “but, however, whereas, while, although, in contrast, in re-

ality, conversely, instead, rather, otherwise, nevertheless, on the

other hand, despite, even though, still, anyway”, with “still”and

“anyway”only found in L2 student data. L2 student writers use “in

reality, conversely, despite”at a very low frequency. L1 graduate

student writers use “conversely”at a low frequency. The following

conjunctions of Consequence are found in this study: “so, because,

in order to, so that, thus, therefore, for, if, as, consequently, given,

hence, since, as a result, then”, with “then”occurring only in L2

graduate student data as Consequence. L2 student writers do not

use “given”to show Consequence and seldom use “thus, hence”for

the same function and L1 graduate student writers use “given”at a

low frequency.

In all, for explicit conjunctions, though the four groups rely on

similar sets of words to a great extent, the qualitative differences

among them reveal that L2 graduate student writers do use some

informal conjunctions in formal writing, indicating their lack of

contextual awareness of linguistic choices. They also show a nar-

rower choice of conjunctions, indicating their limited linguistic

repertoire. L1 graduate student writers do not show noticeable

differences from the two scholar groups in using conjunctions

appropriately for the proper context other than the fact that they

use several conjunctions at a very low frequency.

Since most LGMs found in this study are Comparison or

Consequence, a detailed qualitative discussion of LGMs in these two

categories is presented here. Prepositions, causative verbs are used

more than nouns. Adjectives occur at a very low frequency. Some

examples are provided here:

“The non-observance here emanates from imperfect linguistic

performance rather than from …”- - L1 Scholar 2

“Expressing their ideas both linguistically and culturally led to

connecting with other learners …”eL2 Student 4

“Through their language use, they also come to understand the

potential of …”-L1 Student 4

“Facebook and Twitter could be one of causes of a lack of F2F

communication”.eL2 Student 8

Prepositions are used frequently as LGMs. All four groups of

writers use the following prepositions “with, by, without, through,

for, in”to introduce a cause or a means. Preposition is a closed class

with limited choices, typically high-frequency words introduced to

L2 English learners at their early stage of language study. The

sentence structure of “a preposition þa‘doing’word/a noun”is

common in English. This might explain the high frequency of

preposition as LGMs.

Causative verbs are used the most frequently as LGMs by all

groups. L2 student writers rely on a limited number of causative

verbs, mostly “lead to, indicate, result from, result in, relate”in

contrast with a wider range of causative verbs by L1 student writers

and the two scholar groups “engender, enable, accompany, arise,

promote, originate, coincide, ascribe, contribute to, facilitate,

challenge, prompt, entail, emerge, substantiate, motivate”, etc.

Compared with prepositions, there are more verbs or verb phrases

with embedded cause/consequence meaning that can be used as

LGM. Hinkel [21, p. 105] lists some verbs commonly used to show

logical semantic relationships in academic language: “accompany,

alternate, arise, cause, complement, conﬂict, constitute, distinguish,

follow, lead, occur, precede, resemble, result in”for their innate

causative meaning of causes, proofs, knowledge construction and

concepts. L2 student writers seem to be constrained by their

limited lexical knowledge, as they heavily rely on several high

frequency verbs to indicate the cause/consequence meaning. L1

graduate student writers do seem to demonstrate certain advan-

tage here in the variety of causative verbs in their writings.

Nouns are the third choice of LGMs by all groups. The following

nouns are used more often by L2 graduate student writers “pur-

pose, reason, cause, function”. L1 graduate student writers and L1

and L2 scholars use a wider variety of nouns “correlation, connec-

tion, result, rationale, aim, relationship, attempt, contribution,

predictor, determinant, hindrance, outcome”, etc. Similar to the use

of causative verbs, L2 graduate student writers also suffer from a

limited lexical repertoire to diversify their noun choices as they

prefer simple, high-frequency nouns. L1 graduate writers' lexical

advantage is seen in the noun category again.

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e5754

Adjectives, though a feasible option of LGM, is used the least

frequently by all groups of writers (2.9%). The primary function of

adjectives is to modify nouns by adding detailed information such

as category, shape, size, color, feature, rather than to conceptualize

a linking relationship. Compared with verbs, nouns, there are not

many adjectives showing meaning connection of addition, con-

troversy, time sequence and causality in English. This might explain

the relatively low and limited choice of adjectives used in this study

as LGMs. These four words “additional, opposite, different,

controversial”are found in the current study to show Addition or

Comparison. All four groups of writers use them at a low frequency,

and this does not allow some meaningful comparison in this

category.

3.5. L1 linguistic advantage and L2 linguistic disadvantage in

academic writing?

For novice writers in the academic context, being a L2 writer

does seem to put them at a disadvantaged position linguistically.

The data analysis of the current study renders this interpretation

less controversial, as the L2 graduate student novice writers differ

from the expected meaning connection resources in academic

writing both quantitatively and qualitatively. Not only do they use

some conjunctions, which should be used in informal context, in

the formal context of academic writing inappropriately; they also

rely primarily on explicitly indicating the meaning connections

rather than using LGMs as implicit semantic connections. Their

LGM usages are also lexically limited to high-frequency words. They

differ in multiple ways from L1 graduate student writings and L1

and L2 scholarly writings in terms of conjunctive realizations. Their

novice status in academia aggravates the linguistic issues they

encounter in academic context.

The answer to native linguistic advantage in academic writing

for novice L1 writers is more complicated and less clear-cut. L1

student writers, use explicit conjunctions quantitatively similar to

L2 graduate student writers. Though they use LGMs more than L2

student writers, they use LGMs signiﬁcantly less than experienced

L1 and L2 scholars. As academic language is quite distinctive from

the language native speakers are familiar with when they grow up

acquiring the language, being a native speaker does not grant them

too much advantage in this sense. However, the qualitative analysis

indicates that their lexical choices of explicit conjunctions, causa-

tive verbs and nouns are more diversiﬁed than L2 graduate student

writers, and they also do not show inappropriate use of informal

conjunctions in the formal context. These position them closer to

the two scholar groups. For the function of Time connections, L1

student writers differ from the other groups: L2 student writers

primarily use Time to show the chronological sequence of events,

which goes against the purposes of academic writing; the two

scholar groups use Time primarily to show information organiza-

tion. L1 student writers are in between and they use Time to show

both functions fairly frequently. Being native speakers does give

them certain advantage over non-native writers in academic

writing when both groups lack academic writing experience and

knowledge, but that advantage is not enough for them to produce

academic texts at ease and to produce language as expected in this

genre. They also need to learn the conventions of academic

language.

For experienced academic writers, the native vs. non-native

status distinction is unimportant. The experienced L2 scholar

group is homogeneous to experienced L1 scholar group in this

study, in terms of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of their

explicit conjunctions and LGMs. The experienced L2 scholar group

also outperforms the L1 graduate student group in the sheer

number of explicit conjunctions and LGMs, suggesting that they are

more skillful at using expected linguistic forms in the academic

context. This presents convincing evidence that academic writing

experience and genre and disciplinary knowledge of writing is

more essential to the success of academic writing than the status of

being a native speaker. Native vs. Non-native dichotomy loses

practical values for experienced scholars in the ﬁeld of Applied

Linguists.

The crude distinction of Native vs. Non-native dichotomy and

native speaker advantage in academic writing, in essence, is an

overly simpliﬁed view to conceptualize problems encountered by

L2 and L1 writers in this context. The pattern is complicated for

writers at different stages of academic writing. For L2 novice

writers in the academic context, their non-native status does

negatively affect their writing in that they are limited in their lin-

guistic choices and present inappropriate linguistic choices. With

increasing expertise in academia, the non-native linguistic disad-

vantage decreases to the point of being non-existent for experi-

enced scholars. Their experience and familiarity with academic

genre has deﬁnitely helped them realize ideas more properly as

expected in the academic context. It is also clear that native-writer

status does not guarantee success in academic writing. Although

compared with non-native writers at the same stage of academic

writing development, L1 novice writers show certain linguistic

advantage, this limited advantage is insufﬁcient. Eventually, the

understanding of the genre of academic writing and disciplinary

knowledge and their experience is what matters for the success of

academic writing in English. Scholars, comprising both L1 and L2

writers, normally teachers/researchers, are more skillful in making

meaning connections with diversiﬁed linguistic choices. Their fa-

miliarity and experiences in academic writing seem to matter more

in their linguistic choices for academic purposes than their L1 or L2

status.

4. Discussions, conclusions and implications

In sum, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of this study

indicates similarities and differences among the four groups of

writers. All groups show a similar pattern of conjunctive relation-

ships in the order of Addition, Comparison/Consequence, and Time,

indicating their understanding of the communicative purposes of

clear argument, explanation, support and inclusion of opposing

views to advance discussions. All groups rely on explicit and im-

plicit meaning connections. However, differences outnumber sim-

ilarities. L2 graduate student writers use conjunctions the most and

LGMs the least. They also use some conjunctions inappropriately

and lack varieties in their meaning connections as they show the

least range of linguistic choices and mainly rely on high-frequency

words and explicit expressions. Though L1 graduate student

writers show lexical diversity of conjunctions and LGMs, they do

employ LGMs signiﬁcantly less than L1 and L2 scholars. In LGMs,

quantitatively speaking, L1 and L2 graduate student writers are

closer to each other due to their low frequency of this feature, in

spite of the many qualitative differences between them. This

complex picture necessitates a closer examination of the Native vs.

Non-native dichotomy.

The ﬁnding that both student groups strikingly differ from the

two scholar groups in LGMs suggest that genre, knowledge and

experience in academic writing developed out of disciplinary

learning is more important than their native speaker status, as the

scholar groups include both English L1 and L2 scholars. It is worth

mentioning that L1 and L2 student writers do not go through the

same revision and editing processes as published academic articles.

This might partially explain the discrepancy among the four groups

in this study to a certain degree. Despite that, ﬁndings in this study

urge us to comprehend the complexity of the native speaker vs.

J. Zhao / Ampersand 4 (2017) 47e57 55

non-native speaker issue in academia. In certain aspects, novice L1

student writers do seem to beneﬁt from their lexical knowledge of

the language, which hinders novice L2 student writers. However,

with increasing experience in disciplinary writing and long-term

exposure to genre and stylistic knowledge of academic argument,

the L1 lexical advantage minimizes, and the L1 status is no longer

essential in determining academic writing abilities, which include

multiple factors such as organization, presentation, explanation,

argument, analysis, and corresponding language features.

This study focuses on one speciﬁc aspect of language features:

idea connections in academic writing. The detailed investigation of

this particular linguistic feature echoes Hyland [22]; Ferguson et al.

[12] and Martin et al. [35] in that a simpliﬁed linguistic distinction

based on L1 and L2 writer status in academia is not justiﬁed. Nor is

it supported empirically. A more ﬁne-tuned, feature-based, dy-

namic view is needed to change the “linguistic injustice”[22]

imposed upon L2 academic writers, with the understanding that

academic writing is nobody's ﬁrst language. In order to become

proﬁcient writers, we all have to familiarize ourselves with the

genre of academic writing, be it L1 or L2 writers. Experience in

writing with enhanced understanding of genre, disciplinary

knowledge eventually will overweigh the concerns of insufﬁcient

syntactical and lexical knowledge in academic writing. The writers'

novice status in academia seems to affect their writings more than

their non-native writer status.

With this ﬁne-tuned and dynamic view to conceptualize prob-

lems in academic writing encountered by novice writers or grad-

uate students, EAP (English for academic purposes) practitioners

and researchers could guide themselves better to help novice

writers or junior scholars both in L1 and L2 status. Pedagogically,

Romer [38, p. 99] argues that L1 and L2 students “may need similar

training or help with their academic writing …to becoming more

proﬁcient writers”. This training, as this study indicates, is to pri-

marily enhance novice writer knowledge of how and why academia

chooses meaning representations different from spoken language

and other types of writing. This can be achieved via “experience-

based learning on …disciplinary enculturation”[49, p. 260].

However, in this study, the selected academic essays are from those

graduate students' course reading package, and students are ex-

pected to read those articles as assignment. We could thus infer

that “exposure to substantial amounts of reading …in the relevant

context does not ensure that learners become aware of discourse

and sentence-level linguistic features of writing and acquire the

necessary writing skills”[21, p. 53]. Students might focus on un-

derstanding theory, study, argument and controversies and ignore

the linguistic expressions. As EAP instructors, one should not

expect L1 and L2 novice student writers to be able to “socialize in

the disciplinary culture with minimal or no assistance”[49, p. 260].

Instead, one should provide “constructive and dialogic mentoring

relationships”regularly [49], p. 260. This constructive mentoring

should include directing student attention to distinctive features of

academic writing to encourage them to seek the reasons behind

those linguistic choices. This also means individualized feedback

and instruction based on students' actual writing issues, rather

than lumping them under the two umbrella groups of native and

non-native writers. This support should go beyond “exposure …

mainly but not exclusively through reading academic literature in

their disciplines”to include writing practices “as the best way to

improve and reﬁne ability to write”[2, p. 106]. Ample writing

practices will reveal issues that novice writers already conquered

and are still challenged, which should prepare us for the next round

of reading/explanation/instruction with a better ﬁne-tuned focus

on problems to be solved.

This study clearly questions the Native vs. Non-native di-

chotomy and native writer advantage in writing. Though L1

graduate student writers enjoy certain linguistic advantage in lex-

ical diversity, they, like L2 graduate student writers, also deviate

from preferred means of idea connections in academia. The simple

opposition of L1 and L2 English writers “marginalize [s] the difﬁ-

culties experienced by novice L1 English academics”[22, p. 58], and

rejects the importance of academic writing experience and genre

knowledge in this process. L1 novice academic writers share similar

needs as L2 novice writers of learning the genre, stylistic knowl-

edge of academia and rationale for such linguistic choices. More

importantly, the L1 and L2 novice writer needs of instruction and

improvement are not identical. In this study, L1 graduate student

writers use LGMs signiﬁcantly less than scholars, indicating their

lack of awareness of how and why academia chooses to present

meaning connections: semantically and implicitly rather than

structurally and explicitly. For word choices of verbs and nouns as

LGMs, instead of relying on a few familiar words like L2 graduate

writers, L1 graduate students' lexical knowledge enables them to

present a wider variety. So their primary needs of instruction is the

rationale of academic language features and general knowledge of

alternative means. In contrast, L2 graduate student writers not only

use LGMs signiﬁcantly lower than the other groups, they also show

a limited range of lexical choices, hence, they are dually challenged:

awareness and understanding of academic language features and

limited linguistic repertoire. Not only do they need the general

instruction of rationale and alternative means, such awareness

needs to be combined with more detailed linguistic instruction and

support to enrich and diversify their lexical choices.

Unfortunately, from the program curriculum perspective, not

many universities offer writing classes at the graduate level, with

either the expectation that graduate students should develop good

writing skills before they start the program, or the mentality that

exposure to large amount of disciplinary readings and the multi-

tude of writing practices will help students become better writers

magically. In reality, exposure to reading doesn't necessarily help

every novice writer, including L1 writers. Most L2 students lag

signiﬁcantly behind in their conjunctive realizations in multiple

ways, and many L1 student writers deviate from the expected lin-

guistic means for such a purpose, despite the numerous readings

assigned to them and the multiple writing assignments for

different courses. This study clearly indicates that L1 graduate

students need speciﬁc, targeted help in this area too, and L2

graduate students need help urgently in multiple ways. Offering a

graduate-level writing course, or incorporating the genre and lin-

guistic knowledge into a regular graduate-level course, or offering

regular writing workshops on this topic should be considered as

some possible ways to help the students.

Though this study conducts analysis of conjunctive realizations

by L1 and L2 graduate student writers and experienced L1 and L2

scholars, due to the relatively small data set, the results of this study

should be taken with caution. Future studies might increase the

sample size to avoid possible small sample effect, and include ac-

ademic writings by L1, L2 students and scholars in other disciplines

for disciplinary differences in conjunctive realizations.

Declaration of competing interest

There are no conﬂicts of interests.

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J SECOND LANG WRIT

Ken Hyland

Academic publication now dominates the lives of academics across the globe who must increasingly submit their research for publication in high profile English language journals to move up the career ladder. The dominance of English in academic publishing, however, has raised questions of communicative inequality and the possible ‘linguistic injustice’ against an author's mother tongue. Native English speakers are thought to have an advantage as they acquire the language naturalistically while second language users must invest more time, effort and money into formally learning it and may experience greater difficulties when writing in English. Attitude surveys reveal that English as an Additional Language authors often believe that editors and referees are prejudiced against them for any non-standard language. In this paper, I critically review the evidence for linguistic injustice through a survey of the literature and interviews with scholars working in Hong Kong. I argue that framing publication problems as a crude Native vs non-Native polarization not only draws on an outmoded respect for ‘Native speaker’ competence but serves to demoralizes EAL writers and marginalize the difficulties experienced by novice L1 English academics. The paper, then, is a call for a more inclusive and balanced view of academic publishing.

Geometric orbit determination of CHAMP satellite and dynamic models' compensation during orbit smoothing

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Jan 2004

Co-Constructing Academic Discourse from the Periphery: Chinese Applied Linguists' Centripetal Participation in Scholarly Publication

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Jan 2004

J. Liu

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

A meaning-based approach to the study of complexity in L2 writing: The case of grammatical metaphor

Article

Jun 2015
J SECOND LANG WRIT

Marianna Ryshina-Pankova

This article argues for an alternative approach to complexity in L2 writing that foregrounds the link between aspects of linguistic complexity and its discourse-semantic function of constructing particular types of meanings in written texts. To illustrate a meaning- and form-integrating approach, the paper focuses on nominalizations as a linguistic form recently identified as a potentially significant indicator of complexity of advanced L2 writing. In line with the linguistic theory of meaning making, systemic functional linguistics (SFL), nominalizations are explored as realizations of grammatical metaphor (GM), a concept that helps capture the complexity of the semantic dimension of these linguistic forms. Furthermore, exploring nominalizations as GMs helps explain their discourse function as meeting the demands of more complex communicative tasks typical of advanced literacy contexts. Application of such conceptualization of complexity is illustrated by an analysis of an advanced L2 writing task that demonstrates precisely how nominalizations as GMs enable the L2 writer to meet the complexity of these demands through conceptual refiguration of experience and configuration or development of concepts in texts. The paper concludes with the implications of such an approach for L2 writing research, curriculum construction, and L2 writing pedagogy.

Native speaker advantage in academic writing? Conjunctive realizations in EAP writing by four groups of writers

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