An Investigation of Cause-Result Discourse Markers in Chinese EFL Learners' Written English——A Corpus-based Research

This study adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the acquisition of cause-result discourse markers in Chinese EFL Learners' Written English.It turned out that 1) both overuse and underuse of cause-result discourse markers are co-existing among Chinese EFL learners,they overuse those cause-result markers that appear earlier in textbooks and underuse those that are regularly used in native speakers' written English,showing that the acquisition of cause-result markers in Chinese EFL Learners' Written English is characterized by oversimplification and oralization.2) with the improvement of learners' language ability,the using frequency of cause-result markers can be improved greatly.But there still exists some pragmatic 'fossilization'.