The Placement of English Adverbial Clauses in Narrative Texts of Native Speakers and Chinese College Students

Abstract

The placement ofEnglish adverbial clauses has scarcely received due attention in theEnglish language teaching in Taiwan. One major reason ofsuch negligence is thatthe function of adverbial clauses has not been fully understood by English teachers and the placement of adverbial clauses has been wrongly treated as a sentencecombining issue. The p山pose ofthis study is first to gain a more comprehensiveunderstanding ofthe discourse function of adverbial clauses and to see ifChinesestudents have fully understood the function ofadverbial clauses. Thenwe wish toapply this knowledge to writing instruction as a part of pedagogical grammar. Theresult of our analysis shows that the placement of adverbial clauses is highlydiscourse determined. Discourse factors have been found to contribute todetermining the positions of adverbial clauses: foregroundlbackground informationstructure the scope of dependence ofsubordinate adverbial clauses topic continuityofneighboring clauses and time sequence ofdescribed events