The Use of AdverbialConjunctions 1THE USE OF ADVERBIAL CONJUNCTIONSHandoyo Puji WidodoDepartment of English, Politeknik Negeri Jember (Vocational College), East Java, [email protected] Short BiographyHandoyo Puji Widodo teaches at Politeknik Negeri Jember (State Polytechnic of Jember). He haspublished refereed articles/book reviews in ELT journals (e.g., English Teaching: Practice &Critique, Reflections on English Language Teaching, Reading in a Foreign Language, etc) andbook chapter articles. His professional/research interests include ESP, language syllabus andmaterials development, language teaching methodology, second language writing, and teacherprofessional development.The Use of AdverbialConjunctions 2The Use of Adverbial Conjunctions as Cohesive Devices in Academic Written English: A Corpus-Based AnalysisAbstractThis paper attempts to provide a continuum of the importance of a corpus-based analysis to makea principled decision on selecting language materials or input for instructional purposes. For this reason, it reports the study on the use of adverbial conjunctions as cohesive devices in academic written English (AWE). Using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the researcher examined the occurrences of semantically classified adverbial conjunctions, syntactic functions and positions, and mechanic properties of the conjunctions. The findings show that the adversative adverbial conjunctions (i.e., however) were found to be the most frequently used in AWE. On the other hand, the adverbial conjunctions (e.g., as a rule of thumb) showing idea generalization were found to be the least mostly frequently used in AWE. The findings also reveal that the adverbial conjunctions had different syntactic functions and positions as well as mechanic properties. Thus, the study findings provide empirically informed evidence on the use of adverbial conjunctions in AWE. Keywords: Academic written English (AWE), adverbial conjunctions, cohesive devices, corpus-based analysisThe Use of AdverbialConjunctions 3IntroductionComposing paragraphs or essays coherently and cohesively is one of the key goals in academic writing programs so that students are able to render successful written communication in a particular academic discourse community. For example, to build or achieve cohesion, “the property of connectedness that [characterises] a text in contrast to a mere sequence of words” (Mahlberg, 2006, p. 363) in academic prose, it is required to include cohesive devices or ties (explicit linguistic devices) in paragraphs or essays. Such devices serve as signposts, which signal readers how texts are organized and how parts of texts are functionally interconnected, andin turn help readers comprehend the entire text (Chen, 2006; Connor, 1996). For this reason, as Connor, Hinkel, Nesi, and Basturkmen (as cited in Aktas & Cortes, 2008) point out, “the analysisof the use of cohesive devices has been of great interest for researchers and language instructors involved in the study and teaching of academic writing” (p. 3). Thus, it is not surprising that the teaching of cohesive devices is the core of ESL academic writing classes in particular; as a result, “cohesion has been the focus of numerous studies investigating the nature of written discourse” (Biber, Chafe, & Morrow, as cited in Biesenbach-Luca, Meloni, & Weasenforth, 2001, p. 137). According to Aktas and Cortes (2008, p. 4), “exploring how certain lexico-grammatical features (such as nouns, conjunctions, and adverbial phrases) function in an academic text may provide information that could help studentsimprove cohesion in their writing.” It is obvious that cohesion plays a crucial important role in creating the readability of a text and affects the comprehensibility and clarity of the arguments in academic prose—i.e., an essay or a paragraph (Mahlberg, 2006). As Hasan (as cited in Lee, 2002) points out, cohesive devices “can help writers achieve connectivity of the surface text and guide the reader toThe Use of AdverbialConjunctions 4establish the coherent interpretation intended by the writer” (p. 137). In short, cohesive devices are badly needed for student writers to develop their competence in text production.There is a great deal of research on cohesive devices. For example, Chen (2006) investigated the use of conjunctive adverbials or adverbial conjunctions in two corpora. He collected two corpora from 23 final papers written by 10 MA TESOL learners studying in a Hong Kong university and two TESOL journals as a control corpus. In his study, Chen analyzed the data quantitatively and qualitatively. In the quantitative analysis, he found that student writersslightly overused connectors based on the word level analysis. In the qualitative analysis, some student writers were found to use particular conjunctive adverbials (i.e., therefore or besides) inappropriately. Chen’s findings show the importance of appropriate use of conjunctive adverbials and the needs for teaching such cohesive devices based on a variety of registers. As another example, Aktas and Cortes (2008) examined the use of a special type of unspecific noun, called shell nouns, considered as cohesive devices. They used two corpora frompublished research articles and research articles by international graduates. Using a corpus-basedresearch design, Aktas and Cortes quantitatively and qualitatively examined (1) the frequency of some shell nouns, (2) the different lexico-grammatical patterns in which they occur, and (3) the functions associated with these patterns. In the study, Aktas and Cortes found that students made use of some of these nouns more frequently than published authors and that the functional patterns of such nouns were differently used between the two groups of writers. Aktas and Cortes’s findings can serve as the basis for the teaching of English for Academic Purposes (EAP).Based on two examples of the empirical studies, the present study provides a continuum of how a corpus-based research design provides valuable information on lexical and grammaticalThe Use of AdverbialConjunctions 5patterns of cohesive devices in academic written English (AWE). In some literature, cohesive devices are differently classified. For instance, cohesive devices as defined by Halliday include four categories (1) conjunctions, (2) references, (3) substitutions and ellipses, and (4) lexical