CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
2.3 Summary of Literature Review
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research on English narrative writing of Taiwanese senior high students. Besides, instead of focusing on the specific linguistic features in the students' writing, this study centered on the formulation of the linguistic features of the narratives and the analysis of the narratives of Taiwanese English textbooks and Taiwanese students' writing.
2.3 Summary of Literature Review
The research on L2 writing research and the narrative writing was introduced in the Literature Review section. In L2 writing research, few studies focused on the specified types of L2 writing, or conducted the comparisons of L1 and L2 writing on the basis of the same types of writing. As for the studies on the narrative writing in Taiwan, there is little research on the linguistic features of the narrative and the students' narratives in Taiwanese senior high schools in particular. To fill this gap, this study focused on the formulation of the linguistic features of the narrative. The
linguistic features of the narrative found in the study would be used as the criterion to evaluate the narratives of Taiwanese senior high school students' writing and the Taiwanese English textbook, which is considered the main source of students' English writing.
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CHAPTER Ⅲ
METHOD
The narrative-based linguistic data used in this study is introduced in this chapter.
The information on fifty-five narratives from three sources is presented in the first section. In the second section, the rater of the students' narratives collected in this study is discussed. In the third section, linguistic features of the narrative for this study are interpreted. In the fourth section, the procedure, including the three stages, are explained. In the last section, the analytical framework includes the formulation of the linguistic features of the narrative.
3.1 Data Collection
In this study, sixty narratives were used to formulate the linguistic features of the narrative and the analysis of the writing pattern of Taiwanese English learners. One source was five narratives written by native English speakers, chosen from two English writing textbooks widely used in Taiwanese colleges, which are Developing
Compositional Skills and Refining Composition Skills. The word limit of these
narratives was under 1000 words for the accurate assessment between the narratives in the textbook and the students' narratives, which were under 120~150 words.
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Another source was fifty narratives written by Taiwanese senior high school students in practice exams for the college entrance exam within the time limit and under 120 words. The topic and interpretation of English writing are shown in the Appendix. The other source was five narratives chosen from two English textbooks mostly used in Taiwanese senior high schools, which are the San Min version and Far East version.
Because the articles in English textbooks may be the main models for Taiwanese senior high schools students in learning English compositions, an analysis of them may help us to better understand the impact of the articles in English textbooks on students' writing. The topic and the version of the narratives of the textbooks are listed in the Appendix. Although the narratives of native speakers and the English textbook were taken from the textbook, they differ in two ways. First, most articles in
Taiwanese English textbooks were written by non-native speakers. Although there are some articles written by native speakers, in consideration of the senior high school students as the readers, they were adapted by Taiwanese editors. Second, the
narratives of native speakers from the college textbook would present the features of the formal narrative so that the student can understand how to realize the features in the writing. Therefore, we choose these formal narratives to be the linguistic data for the establishment of the linguistic features in the narrative.
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3.2 Rater
An experienced English teacher in the Senior High School is responsible for giving the marks for the students’ English narratives. This English teacher as the rater has taught English in the Senior High School over three years. The rater in this study used the grading system published by the College Entrance Examination Center (CEEC) as the scoring criterion shown in the Appendix.
3.3 Instrument
According to Biber's analysis of the spoken form and the written form of the language (1988), he proposed that there are some linguistic features for discriminating the narrative form and non-narrative form of the language. The narrative and the story share the same linguistic features because of the nature of the narration in these two types. In daily conversation, the narration is mostly used. Therefore, for the similar nature of the narrative and the story, these two types may contain the same linguistic features of the spoken form of the language. Thus, compared to other types of writing such as expository and persuasive, narratives may be more like the spoken form of the language as the nature of narration is common in oral language. For this reason, linguistic features of the narrative can be discriminated by other types of writing such as expository due to the difference in the spoken and written forms of the language.
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The most common and largest investigation of similarities and differences between speech and writing with the corpus study is Biber’s (1988). Furthermore, Biber also considered linguistic co-occurrence to be the core of the study of register, and he assumed in the situation where a group of linguistic features co-occur with high frequency they must share an implicit communicative function. Biber's finding was based on early studies such as that of Chafe (1982) which assumed that sets of linguistic features are likely to co-occur in specified groups of texts. Therefore, the group of the linguistic features can be referred to different linguistic functions, so the linguistic feature of one type of the writing can be established by the group of the linguistic features with the specific linguistic function, and not just one single linguistic feature.
In Biber's analysis of the spoken and written forms of the language, sixty-seven linguistic features were used; those linguistic features can be categorized into sixteen grammatical items (Biber, 1988, p.73~75): (1) Tense and aspect markers, (2) Place and time adverbials (3) Pronouns and pro-verbs, (4) Questions, (5) Nominal forms, (6) Passives, (7) Stative forms, (8) Subordination features, (9) Prepositional phrases, adjectives and adverbs, (10) Lexical specificity, (11) Lexical classes, (12) Modals, (13) Specialized verb classes, (14) Reduced forms and dispreferred structures, (15)
Coordinations and (16) Negation. Some linguistic features in these sixteen
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grammatical items are found to dominate the narratives of native English speakers, and those linguistic features become the linguistic feature of the narrative for this study.
3.4 Procedure
There are three stages of the procedure in this study. The first stage is to formulate the linguistic features of the narrative by examining for five narratives of native English speakers, with the calculation of the frequency of the sixty-seven linguistic features proposed by Biber (1988) to discriminate between speech and writing. The second stage is to analyze the narratives from the two English textbooks commonly used in Taiwanese senior high schools and from Taiwanese senior high school students' writings. The writer of the narratives from the textbook and from students' writings would be counted if he/ she used the linguistic features of the narrative found in the first stage. The third stage is to find the significant grades-related linguistic features of students' narratives. In this stage, we would use the web tool Coh-Metrix, which is introduced in Chapter four, to calculate the statistical value of each linguistic feature contained in Coh-Metrix. Then, the data from Coh-Metrix and the grades of the students' narrative will be assessed by SPSS software for the value of the
correlation, which can present the extent of relation of each linguistic feature and the
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grades of the narrative.
3.5 Analytical Framework
3.5.1 The formulation of the linguistic feature of the narrative
Each of the linguistic features in Biber's analysis of the speech and the writing (1988) was used to investigate the linguistic features in native English speakers' narratives. After the analysis of sixty-seven linguistic features were categorized into sixteen grammatical items, four linguistic features, including the first personal
pronoun, the third personal pronoun, the simple past tense and proper nouns presented the highest occurrence in this study.
The high frequency of the first and third person pronouns in the position of the subject established one linguistic feature called the agentive subject because they represented agentive referents. Furthermore, the first and third personal pronouns, which are two of the key linguistic features in this study, can express the perspective of the writer. In the five narratives written by native English speakers, the first person pronouns were used the most; therefore, the first person perspective is a linguistic feature of the narrative. Another high frequency linguistic feature was the simple past tense in these five narratives. Based on the high frequency of the simple past tense, it became one of the linguistic features of the narrative for this study.
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Aside from the single linguistic feature, the group of linguistic features can refer to the specified function in the text (Chafe, 1982; Biber, 1988). The co-occurrence of the set of linguistic features is a linguistic feature of the narrative in this study. The high frequency of co-occurrence of the linguistic features, including the third person pronouns and the proper nouns, like the name of the character, served as a linguistic feature for this study. This linguistic feature of the narrative was called constant themes in this study because the same referent of the pronouns and the proper nouns as the theme was found among sentences. With its high frequency in the narratives from native English speakers, many writers used the first personal pronoun as the theme to form constant themes in the narrative. The term of constant themes was first proposed by Danes (1974) in his four types of thematic progression, and his definition of constant themes is that the same themes among the sentences are repeated.
Therefore, constant themes, i.e. the same referent with the same pronouns or the same proper nouns as the theme in the sentence, are one of the linguistic features of this study.
Through the analysis of linguistic features of tense and aspect markers, the focus was on the verb. In this process, we noticed that, numerous action verbs were used in the sentences. These action verbs and the high frequency of the first or third person pronouns formed many sentences with the active voice in the narrative. Therefore,
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action verbs and the active voice were viewed as two linguistic features of the
narrative. Furthermore, from the investigation of the verbs in the narratives written by native English speakers, we found that the verbs occurred in chronological order for the development of the narrative. According to this discovery, the chronological order is a linguistic feature of the narrative for this study. Based on the observation of the occurrence of each linguistic feature and co-occurrence of a set of linguistic features and analysis of the verbs, seven linguistic features of the narrative and their examples are listed in Figure 3.1.
Seven Features in Narratives Examples(from Refining Composition
Skills)
1. Agentive subject Forcibly, she walked us the seven long, hilly blocks from our home to school, depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal.
2. Simple past tense I recognized him as a repressed maniacal child-killer, and knew that if we ever saw his hands we'd be in big trouble.
3. Action verb We piled into jeeps provided by the Jamaican government and headed north
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into the interior.
4. Active voice The activities in the kitchen increase as my father stirs the gravy and my mother puts the finishing touches on the festive table setting.
5. First person perspective We relish the fact that we have nothing to do but wait for the events of the day to unfold. (First person perspective) 6. Constant themes I hated that smell. I favored crisp new
scents.
7. Chronological Order We piled into jeeps provided by the Jamaican government... We turned onto a dirt road that cut though... We had been on foot for about fifteen minutes...
Figure 3.1 Linguistic features of the narrative and examples in native English speakers' narratives.
Note. The words underlined in the table refer to the occurrence of the linguistic
features of the narrative.
After the formulation of the seven linguistic features of the narrative, in the
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following section, these seven linguistic features of the narrative are used to evaluate the narratives of Taiwanese English textbooks (TET) and Taiwanese students' writing (TSW) in the senior high school to know their presences of each linguistic feature of the narrative.
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CHAPTER IV
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter, the study’s findings are presented and discussed. First, the narratives of Taiwanese English textbooks and Taiwanese students' writing were analyzed according to seven linguistic features of the narrative. Second, the grades-related linguistic features of the narrative were found by the data from Coh-Metrix. Third, we compared the linguistic features of the narrative with the grade-related linguistic features of the narrative.
4.1 The Analysis of the Seven Linguistic Features of the Narrative in Taiwanese English Textbooks and Taiwanese Senior High School Students' Writings In this section, we will investigate the narratives collected from English
textbooks and students’ writings with the seven linguistic features of the narrative:(1) Agentive Subject, (2) Action Verb, (3) Active Voice, (4) Simple Past Tense, (5) First Person Perspective, (6) Constant Themes, and (7) Chronological Order. Seven parts are included in this section to present the uses and the example for each linguistic features of the narrative in these narratives.
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4.1.1 Agentive Subject
The subject used in Taiwanese English textbooks (TET) and Taiwanese students' writing (TSW) is the agentive subject as in narratives of native English writers. The reason for this choice of subject is that the narrative writing is similar to telling a story, and in the story, the people are essential parts of the story. In general, the key role in the story’s narrative, which is made up of a series of events, is played by humans; the description of their actions is factual or imagined. To create a story for humans in the picture, all the narratives in TET and TSW use the agentive subject. In Table 4.1, the total numbers of words, total numbers agentive subjects and the percentage of them are presented. The higher percentage in TSW indicates the lack of the flexible
syntactic pattern due to the numerous sentences beginning with the agentive sentences.
The log likelihood ratio and the P value are also shown in Table 4.1; it presents that the difference of the usage of agentive subject in TET and TSW is significant.
Table 4.1 The usage of agentive subject in TET and TSW
TET TSW total numbers of words 3090 9973 total numbers of agentive subjects 292 1097 Percentage 9.4% 10.9%
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In the Taiwanese English textbook, most of the narratives involve one specified person. One of narratives chosen in this study is a story about a man named Gulliver who had made a special trip to Lilliput.
An example of a narrative in a Taiwanese English textbook is shown below.
(1) I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir; for as I happened to lie my back, I found my arms and legs were fastened to the ground with my hair tied down in the same manner. I likewise felt…
This example is the narration of the main leading character’s first arrival in the new place. The words underlined are the subject in each sentence, and they are the referent to the main leading role.
In TSW, the agentive subject is also used to refer to the main leading role, and this choice of the subject not only corresponds to the pictures but also represents the doer of a series of actions within the story.
An example in the student's narrative is shown below.
(2) One day, when I was in Teacher Brown’s class, I couldn’t help taking out my smart phone because there were so many applications that I just wanted to use it at every moment. When I was using a communication application
1Log likelihood ratio can be calculated by Log-likelihood and effect size calculator
(http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html). The value of log likelihood ratio can present the significance of the difference of two frequency scores.
2The P value is used as an index to present the significance of the result in the statistical test. If the P value is less than 0.05, it means the result is significant; if the P value is less than 0.01, it means the result is the most significant. But if the P value is higher than 0.05, it means the result is not significant.
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which is called LINE, I lowered down…
In the example of the student’s writing, every subject in the main clause underlined is I, which is the main leading role in the pictures shown on the test sheet.
4.1.2 Simple Past Tense
In the narration, people would correlate the event with the time. In English, the tense used to narrate the event which happened in the past can be the simple present tense and the simple past tense. The simple present tense can refer to the fact that the event in the narrative truly happened, while the simple past tense can emphasize that the event in the narrative was accomplished in the past.
All narratives of TET and TSW use simple tense as the referent of the time.
However, most of the writers in TSW used the simple past tense. Only eight writers in TSW used the simple present tense. The possible reason for the numerous uses of the simple past tense in TSW may be that the event in sequential pictures is similar to their experiences so that the simple past tense is chosen. On the other hand, in TET, the simple past tenses are used frequently to present the story or the experience of the main leading role. Therefore, for the writers of TET and TSW, the simple past tense is the choice with the highest frequency in writing a narrative. Table 4.2 shows us this result. Because more agentive subjects are used in TSW, the percentage is higher in TSW for the narration of the subject. Furthermore, the difference of the usage of the
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simple past tense in TET and TSW is the most significant according to the largest log-likelihood ratio and the smallest P value.
Table 4.2 The usage of the simple past tense in TET and TSW
TET TSW total numbers of words 3090 9973 total numbers of verbs with the simple past
tense difficult to see. He almost missed the old lady, stranded on the side of the road. But even in the dim light of day, he could see she needed help…
As we can see, the simple past tense is used to narrate the surrounding and actions of the man. The verb in the simple past tense includes the words underlined. Aside from the narrative for the example (3), the other four narratives collected in this narrative used the simple past tense as well.
As we can see, the simple past tense is used to narrate the surrounding and actions of the man. The verb in the simple past tense includes the words underlined. Aside from the narrative for the example (3), the other four narratives collected in this narrative used the simple past tense as well.