A Corpus-based Study on Writer/reader Visibility in English Writing by Chinese EFL Learners

Writer/reader(W/R) visibility is regarded as an important indicator of personal involvement. Previous studies concluded that EFL learners tend to contains more personal involvement than native speakers in their writing, making it resemble spoken language as a result. Therefore, this paper examines the degree of W/R visibility in English writing by university-level Chinese learners to verify the applicability of the previous findings on Chinese learners. Based on the data collected in the corpora CLEC,WECCL and LOCNESS, the results show that Chinese EFL learners have the tendency to employ more features of W/R visibility than native speakers, for example the high use of first or second person reference and words that represent mental process. Besides, the paper also reveals little distinction on W/R visibility between English and non-English majors, suggesting the inefficiency of the writing ability of today's English majors.