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¶
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? Across the detailed item comparisons, L2 writers have a general tendency to overuse more DCs than underuse them, especially Hong Kong students who overuse 17 items but underuse only 7 among the 57 DCs listed. → Hu 2015
q2 i? 23 of the 80 selected DCs are used by neither L1 nor L2 writers, indicating both groups have a limited range of DCs at their disposal. → 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
Detailed item-level comparison across Tables 6-8 of individual DC frequencies in the four sub-corpora. The conclusion adds that of the 80 DCs chosen, "23 DCs are used neither by L1 writers nor by L2 writers, indicating that both L1 and L2 university students have a limit range of DCs at their disposal".
"L2 writers have the general tendency to overuse more DCs than underuse them. This observation is especially true of Hong Kong students who overuse 17 items but only underuse 7 ones among the 57 DCs listed in the above tables."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Hong Kong students overuse enumerating, resultive and summative discourse connectives relative to L1, Singaporean and Thai writers — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Hong Kong and Singaporean students are more formal in tone than L1 and Thai students when using adversative and resultive connectives — related
- Hong Kong and Singaporean L2 students underuse discourse connectives overall compared with L1 writers, while Thai students do not differ significantly — 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
- 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 |
l2-overuse-tendency-limited-dc-range |
title |
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 |
description |
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 |
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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