Abstract

Researches into colloquialisation in academic writing have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, little has been conducted to the dimension of grammar. Thus, through the corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis method, the present study compiled three corpora extracted from Chinese MA theses, PhD dissertations and international journals, aiming to explore the grammatical colloquial features and non-colloquial features in Chinese EFL learners’ theses. Compared with international journals, both MA theses and PhD dissertations displayed strong colloquial tendency. The similarities between MA theses and PhD dissertations outweigh their differences. Besides, doctoral dissertations are not less colloquial than MA theses. The statistical evidence suggests that the EFL learners in China lack the register consciousness of academic writing and fail to comply with the conventional pragmatic paradigm of academic discourse. With the intention to deepen EFL learners’ stylistic awareness and decrease their colloquial tendency, the study offers some suggestions, seeking for the pedagogical implications for English academic writing.

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