台灣學習者與英語母語者使用連接詞because之比較：以語料庫為本之研究

Abstract

連接詞的使用在寫作能力上扮演重要的角色。而because 許多常用連接詞的其中之一，同時because也因為[because X]此較新穎之用法被美國方言協會（ADC）選為2013年的年度字。因此，為了幫助台灣學習者在使用because上能夠更貼近母語者，本研究分為兩部分：第一部分為分析母語者與台灣學習者使用because上的不同，第二為調查台灣學習者對於[because X]的接受度為何。本研究從美國當代語料庫（COCA）及學習者語料庫（ICNALE）各收集了100筆語料，就模式(pattern)及功能(function)進行分析；另外透過線上問卷的方式調查台灣學習者對於[because X]的接受度為何，並透過閱讀具有相似結構的母語句子後，是否接受度會有所提升。\n 經過語料分析過後，研究結果發現母語者在使用because上，模式較為多元。而因為母語干擾的關係，台灣學習者在某些特定模式上有過度使用的情形發生，如“, because”，又或是因為非大多數的學習者熟知某模式而鮮少被使用，以避免文法上的錯誤產生，如“because of”；在第二部分，本研究則發現透過閱讀相似結構的母語句子後，台灣學習者在對於 [because X] 的接受度並無顯著性。本研究最後提出幾個在教學的建議，教師在教導已具備一定程度的學生時，可針對較少學習者使用，或是學習者比較不熟悉的模式做寫作訓練；對於[because X]，教師須注意學生是否在非正式場合(如社群媒體)上看到母語人士使用，而誤以為[because X] 是屬於正規的英文。

Logical connectors, which establish the links between sentences and paragraphs, are the important devices to create the cohesion in written texts. One of the most commonly used connectors is because, it is also the Word of the Year in 2013 chosen by American Dialect Society (ADC) because of the relatively recent structure [because X]. There are two parts of the present study. First, in order to help teachers in Taiwan train students how to use because closer to native speakers (NSs) do, we investigate the how NSs and Taiwanese non-native speakers (NNSs) use because differently. Second, we investigate how well Taiwanese NNSs accept the structure [because X] and try to figure out if learners’ first language (L1) can bring a positive influence on accepting it.\nTo examine the use of because, we collected the written data in formal context from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners (ICNALE) for the date of NSs and NNSs. As for investigating the acceptability of [because X], we create an online questionnaire with 8 sentences in [because X] and 8 sentences in similar structure in Chinese. In the first part, we found out that NSs used because more variably than NNSs do, and we also found out that there are some patterns that were overused due to the influence of L1, and some patterns were rarely found because learners were not familiar with the use of the patterns and avoid using them to make grammatical errors. In the second part, after reading the similar structure in learner’s L1, the acceptability of [because X] did not have significant difference. The instructors should be aware if the learners take [because X] as a pattern that follows English grammar rules after seeing it used by native speakers on informal genre such as social media.