CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.4 Significance of the Study
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and learning of English narratives, the researcher aims to investigate the following questions regarding the linguistic features and the narratives.
1.3.1 What are linguistic features in narratives of native English writers?
1.3.2 Based on linguistic features in narratives of native English writers, what are the similarities and differences between the narratives of Taiwanese English text books and Taiwanese senior high school students’ writing?
1.3.3 What are the significant grade-related linguistic features of Taiwanese students' narratives?
1.4 Significance of the Study
English writing is essential in English learning. However, the lack of teaching and practice of English writing has led to a negative effect resulting in the inferior writing ability in the college entrance exam. To help students and teachers learn and teach English writing, respectively, to face the recent trend of the narrative writing in the college entrance exam, this study pays attention to the research on English
narratives. English narratives used in this study can be grouped into three sources: (1) narratives of native English speakers, (2) narratives of English textbooks and (3) students' narratives. In this study, the seven linguistic features of the narratives were found by analyzing native English speakers' narratives according to the linguistic
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items used in Biber's investigation (1988) in the variation of speech and the writing.
Followed by the formulation of the seven linguistic features of the narrative, the narratives of Taiwanese English textbooks, which is the main learning resource for Taiwanese senior high school students' English reading and writing, and narratives of Taiwanese senior high schools students' would be evaluated for determining whether the seven linguistic features of the narrative are presented. To help the students raise the grades of their narrative effectively, we also seek the significant grades-related linguistic features. Finally, some suggestions can be proposed for English textbooks, the teaching of English narratives and the learning of English narratives.
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CHAPTER Ⅱ
LITERATURE REVIEW
The following literature review is divided into two parts. The first part is the introduction of ESL/ EFL writing research. The second part reviews some studies on narrative writing research.
2.1 ESL/ EFL Writing Research
Second language writing (L2) has always been a difficult area for second language learners and a hot topic for second language researchers (Zhang, 2008). In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the population of international ESL writers at institutions of higher education in North America increased, so the field of L2 writing was originally centered on teaching those ESL students. Researchers from different linguistic fields have addressed numerous issues in their studies, and the studies conducted by the researchers of L2 writing can be categorized into five areas: (1) L2 writers' characteristics, (2) the L2 writing process, (3) L2 writing feedback, (4) L2 writing instruction, and L2 writers' texts (Zhang, 2008). Studies on L2 writers’
characteristics have mainly investigated three categories of the writer variables: L2 variables, L1 variables, and psychological and social variables, and their influence on
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L2 writing. Different L2 skills can be seen as one of L2 variables. In their writing, more skilled L2 writers wrote longer texts (Grant & Ginther, 2000; Sasaki, 2000) and used more parts of speech, fictional categories (Grant & Ginther, 2000; Kiany &
Nejad, 2001), and grammatical features(Grant & Ginther, 2000). As for L1 variables, the studies of L1 writing ability are included in this respect. Carson et al. (1990) proposed that L2 writing ability correlated significantly with L1 writing ability. In their research, the first language and second language writing abilities of adult ESL learners, which include Japanese and Chinese ESL Students, was examined to determine the relationships across languages (L1 and L2) in the acquisition of L2 writing skills. Furthermore, Ma and Wen (1999) claimed that the L2 writing ability of writers at different L2 proficiency levels could be significantly predicted by L1 writing ability according to the linguistic evidence they found. The research on psychological variables found that the emotions of the L2 writers may influence their writing strategies (Clachar, 1999). When the L2 writers faced topics which can elicit emotions, the writers spent more time on lexical, morphological and syntactic issues for the complete expression of their feeling with specific linguistic structures.
Classification of the L2 writing research in the studies on the L2 writing process is the second area. There are two main focuses in this area of study: the role of L1 in L2 writing, and writing strategies. Brooks (1985) investigated the writing processes of
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five unskilled college writers speaking Cantonese, French, Spanish and Malay. She found that students who had read and written extensively in their native language were able to use these competencies when writing in English. The positive correlation of the L1 writing ability and the L2 writing ability is proven by Brook's findings. The other issue in the L2 writing research is writing strategies. The usage of writing strategies, such as the planning, is influenced by the level of L2 proficiency (Akyel, 1994). He found that “proficiency level affected the quality of plans and compositions, but the language used for the plan had no significant effect on the differences between higher- and lower-proficiency writers in terms of the plan and composition scores.”
The third area of the L2 writing research is L2 writing feedback. In the writing classroom, there are two sources of feedback: L2 writing instructors and student peers.
The effect of L2 writers’ approaching the writing process, viewing feedback and making revisions to the writing will be definitely decided by the type of feedback given by the teacher (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz, 1996; Lockhart & Ng, 1995). As for the peer feedback, it is stated there are some advantages of using peer review, including
bringing a genuine sense of audience into the writing classroom, helping develop students’ critical reading and analysis skills (Keh, 1990), and encouraging students to
focus on their intended meaning by discussing alternative points of view that can lead to the development of those ideas (Mangelsdorf, 1992; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994).
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In the area of L2 writing feedback, the effects of peer feedback and teacher feedback have been compared. Connor and Asenavage (1994) explored the impact of peer and teacher feedback on the revisions of university freshman ESL students from different countries in a university in the USA as they wrote and revised an essay. The results showed that the feedback of the teacher and the peer were not the reason for the revision; interestingly, the revision resulted from some other source.
L2 writing instruction is the fourth area in the L2 writing research. The research on L2 writing instruction mostly focused on the discussion of instructional models and the use of portfolios. For the studies on instructional models, which contain process approach and product approach, some researchers have compared the advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches (Han, 2001; Zhang & Zhou, 2002; Chen, 2005). The other issue in L2 writing instruction is the use of portfolios.
Baack (1997) reported his own experience with using portfolios in ESL writing classrooms. He argued for the use of portfolios for helping the evaluation of the students' writing development.
The last area is L2 writers’ texts. Studies of L2 writers’ texts include two issues:
contrastive rhetoric between L1 and L2 texts, and linguistic features of L2 texts.
Kaplan started Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) research in 1966. He assumed that “each language is characterized by a set of rhetorical conventions unique to it, and these
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conventions influence how people in those cultures think and write, and consequently interfere with their ESL writing ” (Grabe & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan & Grabe, 2002;
Kaplan, 1966, 2000). Furthermore, some researchers analyzed the differences between Chinese and English writing. Matalene (1985) found that a huge amount of memorization is essential to the Chinese writing system because of the important role of rote-learning. Li (1996) also proposed the reason for the lack of creativity in Chinese writing, and the respect of authority in Chinese culture. Another important difference between English and Chinese writing lies in discourse organizational patterns: the structure of English composition is linear and direct, while that of
Chinese composition is a roundabout (Kaplan, 2001). The other issue in the area of L2 writers’ texts is linguistic features of L2 texts. In 2002, Hinkel conducted a
comprehensive study of L2 texts. She compared the writings of non-native English speakers (NNS) (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Arabic) to those of native English speakers (NS) (English). Based on this comprehensive study, systematic information about linguistic and rhetoric characteristics of L2 texts by learners of different L1 backgrounds was provided.
Through the introduction of five areas of L2 writing, research, we found that although researchers in the area of L2 writers’ texts dealt with the linguistic features in L2 texts and the difference in the writing of L1 and L2 (Hinkel, 2002), the texts of
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L2 writers were not focused on specific types of writing and compared L1 and L2 writing on the basis of the same types of writing. To fill this gap, this study aims to formulate the linguistic features of the narrative of native English speakers and investigate L2 texts, including the narrative articles in Taiwanese English textbooks and the narrative writing written by Taiwanese senior high school students.
2.2 Narrative Writing Research
In this section, the writing research is narrowed down to studies on the narrative in order to understand the nature of the narrative and the issues discussed in this field.
It is claimed that narratives can be seen as the original method for people to recount the individual and social experiences of their lives (Burner, 1986, 1990, 1991;
Polkinghorne, 1988). Some studies state that the structure of the narrative occurs as a process of emplotment (Polkinghorne, 1991; Ricoeur, 1984-1986) in which separated temporal actions and events are transformed through language into “unified story with a point or theme” (Polkinghorne, 1991, p.141). Normally, the understanding of the narrative does not depend on the formal logic or concrete empirical evidence, but rather on interpretive strategies. Two modes of thinking were proposed by Bruner (1986, 1991) for the discrimination underlying the understanding narratives and non-narrative. The logicoscientific (paradigmatic) mode and the narrative mode are
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included in these two modes of thinking. The former type refers to the kind of
thinking in formal science where people make connections among natural phenomena, searching for casual and logical interpretations. The other type, narrative mode,
signifies how people make connections among and explains the events and the actions of human experience. Bruner (1991) also proposed that narrative versions of reality are considered to be based on the acceptance of conventions, not empirical
falsification, verification, or logic. Therefore, there can be fictional narratives because of the dispensable concurrence between the text and the real world.
Form is the main focus in the research on narrative writing. Eggers (1994) stated that the narrative writing can be the presentation of personal experiences or events that happened to oneself or to other people. He also proposed that “a narrative should (1) have enough detail to give the reader a close-up of the events, (2) contain enough transitional expressions to help the reader follow the sequence of actions, and (3) be written in one tense, usually the past tense since the paragraph is usually about actions taking place in the past.”Similarly, in the narrative essay, some basic structures are included (Cobb, 1985). In his findings, the details about the action are provided first, followed by the detailed explanation of the action and the introduction of the
characters. Finally, the reason for the writing is offered to the reader.
In the research on writing, the comparative analysis of narratives of native
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English speakers and ESL writers was conducted (Smith, 2011). Writing mechanics, writing syntax and overall story quality are three aspects analyzed in the writing of narratives. He found that “monolingual and ESLs were similar to the cognitive, linguistic, word- and text-level reading and writing measure, but ESL performance was lower on vocabulary and reading comprehension across all three grades.
Narrative writing in monolingual and ESLs alike was predicted by syntactic skills, word-level skills (decoding and spelling) and text comprehension.” EFL writing researchers in Taiwan pay much attention to the narratives of senior high school students. Chung (2004) investigated the narrative writing process among senior high students at different writing proficiency levels. She found that in the composing process, the subjects among different proficiency level shared numerous similarities, followed by the classification and definition of theme types (Halliday, 1994) and the concept of the theme and rheme (Daneš, 1974). English narratives of senior high school were analyzed to understand the preference of the theme types in students' writing (Tsai, 2011). The results showed that the theme type proper unmarked noun phrase is favored by the students; based on her findings, some pedagogical
implications about the teaching the concept of the types and the functions of the themes were proposed.
While the studies on narrative writing are discussed in this section, there is little
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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
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