Summary of the Major Findings

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

61

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

This chapter offers the summary and conclusion of the whole study. Four sections are included in this chapter. The first section summarizes the findings of this study. The second section focuses on the significance of this study. The third section presents the limitations of this study. In the last section, suggestions for further research are provided.

6.1 Summary of the Major Findings

In this study, we have investigated linguistic features of the narrative, their presence in the narratives in English textbooks and students' writings, and the significant grades-related linguistic features of the students' narratives. We randomly selected five narratives from a college writing textbook for the data of native English speakers to formulate the linguistic features of the narrative with the indices contained in Biber's linguistic features (1988). Then, the linguistic features were used to analyze the five narratives of English textbooks by random selection. Fifty students' narratives are also included in this analysis. All the students' narratives are graded by a rater. The grades of each student’s narrative and the linguistic features of the narrative were

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

62

calculated by the statistical program for finding the grades-related features of importance.

At first, the analysis of the narratives of native English native speakers was conducted to answer our first research question: What are linguistic features in the narratives of English native writers? The formulation of the linguistic feature of the narrative shows that the seven linguistic features are found in these narratives: (1) Agentive Subject, (2) Action Verb, (3) Active Voice, (4) Simple Past Tense, (5) First Person Perspective, (6) Constant Themes, and (7) Chronological Order. All the narratives written by native English speakers used high frequency of the personal singular pronouns or the names as the subjects in the sentences. These subjects were chosen for the combination of numerous action verbs found in each sentence. Due to the significant use of the agentive subject and the action verb in every sentence, the active voice is more common than the passive voice. In the aspect of the verb tense, all the native English speakers used the simple past tense to compose the narration. In their minds, the narrative regarded as an event or experience in the past. From the aspect of the link of the sentences, constant themes are remarkable for their abundant agentive subjects as the topic or the theme of the sentence. These constant themes are frequently used to achieve the coherence in these narratives or to narrate a series of actions accomplished by employing the agentive subject. In addition to achieving the

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

63

constant themes among the sentences, these agentive subjects, which include many first person singular pronouns, convey the prominent choice of the first person perspective in the narrative. Furthermore, each action verb in these narratives occurs in a chronological order to present the whole course of events in the narrative, so the chronological order is a linguistic feature in the narrative. Hence, based on this

analysis of the narratives of native English speakers and the indices offered by Biber’s linguistic features (1988), the seven linguistic features of the narrative are established in this study.

In order to understand whether the narratives written by Taiwanese English learners, including the narratives from Taiwanese English textbooks and Taiwanese senior high school students’ writings, we executed an analysis of these narratives with the seven linguistic features of the narrative to answer our second research question:

Based on linguistic features in the narratives of English native writers, what are the similarities and differences between the narratives of Taiwanese English textbooks and Taiwanese senior high school students’ writing?

According to the results, all the narratives used Agentive Subject to refer to the doer of the action in each sentence for the reason that in these narratives, many actions are included to synthesize the overall event of the narration. As for the use of the verb type, Action Verb is found in the narrative of English textbooks and the

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

64

students’ writings. When these writers used the agentive subjects in the narrative, they tend to choose the action verb instead of the stative verb to follow, for emphasizing the link between the subject and the verb. Because of the numerous presence of the agentive verb and the action verb, the use of Active Voice is the most common form in each sentence. These sentences with the active voice are composed by the agentive subjects and the action verbs or the verb to be. However, few sentences with the passive voice are found in these narratives for the description of things. As for the use of Simple Past Tense, most of these narratives used verbs with the simple past tense, and only eight students’ narratives employed the simple present tense. In these eight narratives, some verbs with the simple past tense are used, especially in the presence of dialogue. These students may have been affected by the narratives of English textbooks because the narratives of English textbooks are the main material for learning English writing, and commonly present verbs with the simple past tense.

Although the students used the simple present tense for the verb, the use of the verb tense in the narratives of English textbooks would impact the consistency of the verb tense. Regarding the choice of First Person Perspective, the narratives of the English textbook and the students’ writings exhibit a difference in the numbers. The first person perspective is used more in the students’ narratives but less in the narratives of English textbooks. The reason for this is the consideration of the type or context of the

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

65

narrative. Most narratives of English textbooks aim to express the interior meaning of the story type (the narrative), so the narrator is seldom the character in the story. In the students’ writing, the context of the picture is the classroom, so the students relate to the context of the narrative. Furthermore, we also found that the students using the third person perspective in the narrative attained the lower grades for their narratives because of the detailed description of the character. For the presence of Constant Themes, although narratives without constant themes can be found in these narratives, many writers of these narratives employ constant themes in the narrative. In the narratives with constant themes, three types of constant themes are used frequently as constant themes: the first person pronouns, the third person referent, including the third person pronouns and the name, and the adverbs and prepositional phrases. In narratives with first person pronouns as constant themes, the themes are repeated with the first person pronouns, but the themes of other two types are more flexible.

Regarding Chronological Order, all the action verbs used in the narratives of English textbooks and the students’ writing follow this pattern. Accordingly, the narration can proceed in a smooth sequence without the insertion of the action at a different time.

Lastly, in order to understand the relation of the grades of the students’ narratives to the linguistic features, the evaluation of their correlation were assessed to provide the answer for our third research question: What are the significant grade-related

‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

66

linguistic features of Taiwanese students' narratives?

The results show that eight grades-related linguistic features are significant in affecting the grades of the students’ narratives: (1) The Number of Words, (2) Lexical Diversity of All the Words, (3) Syntax Sentence Similarity of Adjacent Sentences, (4) Hypernymy for Nouns and Verbs, (5) Syntax Sentence Similarity across Paragraphs, (6) Meaningfulness of Content Words, (7) Noun Overlap of All Sentences and (8) Imagability for Content Words. Only the first two linguistic features are positively related to the grades; the other six linguistic features have a negative relation to the grades. Except for the number of the words, the other seven grades-related linguistic features can be further grouped into three categorizations: (1) Lexical Sophistication, (2) Syntactic Complexity and (3) Cohesive Devices. Most of the grades-related linguistic features are included in the first two categorizations; this presents that the use of the lexicon and the syntax is an important consideration for the rater to grade a student’s narrative.