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Conjunction in Spoken English and ESL Writing
University of Calilfornia Davis
This paper compares strategies for conjunction in spoken English and English as a Second Language (ESL) writing Using the conjunction because as a focal example, the paper illustrates how ESL writers use because clauses to indicate the knowledge base for their assertions, to introduce independent segments, and to display links between sections of discourse While spoken English commonly uses because clauses for these functions, they are typically realized in different ways in academic writing Recognizing such uses as inappropriate register choices identifies them as transfer of strategies common in spoken English into a genre of written English in which other strategies for clause combining are expected This situates these infelicitous choices at the discourse rather than sentence level, showing that ESL writers' lack of experience with the lexical and grammatical resources of academic registers manifests itself even in conjunction and clause combining strategies For ESL writers, developing their skills in new genres requires knowledge about how grammatical resources are typically used in realizing those genres This studv contributes to our understanding of the role of conjunction in the structuring of spoken and written texts, and of the role of register differences in shaping ESL writing
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