“I Think” in NS and Chinese NNS Spoken English

Abstract

In spoken English, “I think” is a frequently-used chunk. The frequent use of “I think” in the Chinese non-native speakers' (NNSs') speech has been interpreted as being somewhat overused in previous studies, such as Xu and Xu (2007) and Yang and Wei (2005). The same phenomenon is also found in the present study, which is based on a detailed analysis of three corpora: The Spoken English Corpus of Chinese Learners (SECCL), MICASE and ICE-GB. “I think” is over-represented in the Chinese NNSs' speech in SECCL. However, it is questionable as to whether the Chinese NNSs use “I think” too much, and inappropriately. The investigation into the frequency information and contexts provides an explanation of the generic constraints and national backgrounds underlying the over-representation of “I think” in the speech of Chinese NNSs as well as revealing differences between Chinese NNSs and NSs.