Abstract：The present contrastive study aimes to discover the usage of epistemic stance adverbs of Chinese learners based on learners corpus and native speakers corpus. The results revealed that similar to native speakers, foreign language learners employed more certain adverbs in spoken and written languages.More importantly, the data showed some specific features in learners interlanguage that the learners, lack of the awareness of register, preferred adverbs: really, never, actually in both written and oral English.In spoken language the learners overused the adverb “maybe”as a compensation strategy for their influent communication without the meaning of evaluation and judgment. Mainly locating in the beginning of the sentences, the stance adverbs presented monotonous sentence patterns in both written and spoken English.

Keyword：epistemic stance adverb;register;appraisal;