Author(s)

Huang Wei

Corresponding Author

Huang Wei

Abstract

To map writing logic through micro-level cohesive devices and serve curriculum development and assessment, this study focuses on Applied English students at a vocational undergraduate university in Guangdong. A self-built student academic writing corpus was constructed, with a sub-corpus of the British Academic Written English (BAWE) Corpus as a reference. The research addresses three core questions: Are there differences in frequency? Is there evidence of misuse, overuse, or underuse? How can teaching practices be improved? Using Sketch Engine, 14 conjunctive adverbs were retrieved. Normalized frequency counts (per 10,000 words) were used for Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA), supplemented by error analysis to conduct qualitative semantic and pragmatic evaluations. The results indicate that the four categories of conjunctive adverbs—causal, adversative, additive, and sequential—exhibit significantly lower overall frequencies among the students. The most pronounced gaps were found in the use of "and", "however", "so", and "then". Common errors include: mistaking coordination or trend for causality, confusing congruent relationships with adversative ones, mixing opposing logics within a single move, mismatched enumeration hierarchy and register, and the frequent use of conjunctive adverbs as "formatted signals" at the beginning of paragraphs. Based on these findings, the study proposes the following: Students should implement a concept-evidence-expression closed loop and engage in small-step rewriting. Teachers should adopt an explicitation-taskification-visualization approach to facilitate error example comparison, frequency benchmarking, and corpus-in-class practice.

Keywords

Applied English, British Academic Written English, Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis