Hong Kong and Singaporean L2 students underuse discourse connectives overall compared with L1 writers, while Thai students do not differ significantly¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2020: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Hong Kong and Singaporean students use significantly fewer DCs overall than L1 writers, whereas Thai students' overall frequency shows no significant difference from L1 students. → Hu 2015
Evidence¶
Hu 2015¶
Hu, C., & Li, Y. (2015). Discourse Connectives in L1 and L2 Argumentative Writing. Higher Education Studies. https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v5n4p30
q2 · i? · the article prints no effect size for this finding · associational · r2
Corpus comparison of DC frequencies per 50,000 words across HKG_B1_2, SIN_B1_2, THA_B1_2 and ENS1 sub-corpora using the log-likelihood ratio test; Table 3 marks the HKG (1155) and SIN (1100) totals as highly significant versus ENS1 (1350), with THA (1422) not marked. The study reports "no significant difference in the overall frequencies between Thai students and L1 students".
"while there is no significant difference in the overall frequencies between Thai students and L1 students, Hong Kong and Singaporean students underuse DCs than do their L1 counterparts."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Hong Kong students overuse enumerating, resultive and summative discourse connectives relative to L1, Singaporean and Thai writers — related
- Hong Kong and Singaporean students are more formal in tone than L1 and Thai students when using adversative and resultive connectives — related
- Thai students overuse the causal connective because, a pattern the article attributes to L1 influence — related
- L1 and L2 writers share a core set of high-frequency connectives but with strikingly different frequencies, and is nearly three times more frequent in L1 essays — related
- L2 writers tend to overuse more discourse connectives than they underuse, and both L1 and L2 students have a limited range of DCs at their disposal — related
- The connective and is multifunctional in L1 essays, functioning as resultive and other relations, which may explain its lower frequency in L2 writing — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
hk-sin-l2-underuse-dcs-overall |
title |
Hong Kong and Singaporean L2 students underuse discourse connectives overall compared with L1 writers, while Thai students do not differ significantly |
description |
Hong Kong and Singaporean L2 students underuse discourse connectives overall compared with L1 writers, while Thai students do not differ significantly |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2015 |
recheck_by |
2020 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-09-26 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — hu-2015 |
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