CHAPTER IV RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.3 The Comparison of Linguistic Features of the Narrative and Significant
4.3 The Comparison of Linguistic Features of the Narrative and Significant Grades-related Linguistic Features
In this study, we found seven linguistic features in the study by the analysis of the narratives of English native speakers'. The narratives of TET and TSW collected in this study are analyzed by the seven linguistic features to determine the similarity and the difference between the narratives written by English native speakers and non-native speakers. According to this analysis, only the usage of the perspective and the simple verb tense showed some differences between the narratives of English
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native speakers and non-native speaker, and all the narratives analyzed in this study shared the similarity in using the other five linguistic features. However, although the writers of TSW used most of these seven linguistic features in their narratives, the grades of their narratives are not at the same level. Therefore, we analyzed fifty narratives in TSW to find the linguistic features that are highly related to the grades by the web tool Coh-Metrix. The correlation of the statistical value of each linguistic feature and the grades of each narrative of TSW were calculated, showing that eight linguistic features were crucial factors influencing the rater in marking the grade of each narrative in fifty students' writings used in this study. These eight linguistic features were listed in Table 4.8: (1) Number of words, (2) Syntax sentence similarity4 of adjacent sentences, (3) Hypernymy for nouns and verbs, (4) Syntax sentence similarity across paragraphs, (5) Meaningfulness of content words, (6) Lexical diversity of all words, (7) Noun overlap of all sentences, and (8) Imagability for content words. Seven of these linguistic features which presented the high correlation to the grades of the narrative can be further grouped into three linguistic categorizations: (1) Lexical Sophistication (Meaningfulness of content words, Lexical diversity, Imagability for content words and Hypernymy for nouns and
4Syntax sentence similarity is also called Syntactic Similarity. The value of Syntactic Similarity is calculated by the measure of the uniformity and consistency of the syntactic constructions between adjacent sentences or across the paragraph. More uniform syntactic constructions produce less complex syntax that is easier for the reader to process. (Crossley et al., 2008)
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verbs), (2) Syntactic complexity (Syntax sentence similarity of adjacent sentences and Syntax sentence similarity across paragraphs) and (3) Cohesive devices (Noun overlap of all sentences).
In comparing the seven linguistic features of the narrative and high grades-related linguistic features in three linguistic categorization (Lexical
Sophistication, Syntactic Complexity and Cohesive devices), we find that the rater for the narrative of TSW mostly focused on the lexical and syntactic performances while ignoring the nature of the narrative. According to this study, we formulated some linguistic features such as Agentive subject, Perspective and Constant themes;
these linguistic features were used with numerous first or third personal pronouns.
These personal pronouns may be an essential tool for the students to make their narratives coherent and cohesive. By using them, the personal pronouns can be the topic of the sentence and help the students have coherent narration. However, the rater of the students' narratives did not take the linguistic features of the narrative into account. Although the narratives of many students' writing used many personal pronouns among linguistic features of the narrative, including Agentive subject, Perspective and Constant themes, the results in Table. 4.8 show that the low value of the lexical diversity would be affected by the repetition of the personal pronouns and negatively impact the grades of students' narratives.
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In the narrative, due to multiple usages of personal pronouns, the action verbs were chosen to support the active voice in the sentence. Therefore, Action verb and Active voice are two linguistic features of the narrative found in this study. However, the rater in this study also did not recognize the linguistic features of the narrative as the index to award high grades. Instead, from the result of the high grades-related linguistic features, the high value of Syntax Similarity, which is related to the syntactic structure of the agentive subject and the action verb, would be the factor responsible for lower grades of the narrative. In the raters' minds of this study, the simple syntactic pattern, which is formed by the subject, verb and object (S-V-O), would show that the examinee's proficiency level of syntax is low because of the lack of flexible grammar usage, and this characteristic would result in lower grades for the students' narrative of this study.
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CHAPTER V
PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
In this study, we determined how the writers of Taiwanese English textbooks and Taiwanese students' writing used the seven linguistic features in their narratives, and employed the web tool Coh-Metrix to understand the significant grades-related linguistic features that are thought to be the crucial indices for the rater in grading the students' writing. According to the finding, in this section, some pedagogical
implications are offered to improve the teaching of writing for senior high school students. This chapter includes three sections. The first section relates to the
suggestions for English textbooks used by the senior high school students. The second section presents the suggestions for the teaching and learning English narratives for senior high school students. The third section recommends that the rater makes some adjustments for evaluating students' narratives based on the findings in this study.
5.1 Suggestions for Editing Senior High School English Textbooks
According to the results of this study, students' narratives and the narratives chosen from two versions of English textbook showed that these two sources of the narratives have similarities in the use of the linguistic features of the narrative, such as
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Agentive Subject, Action Verb, Constant Themes and Chronological Order. In the last chapter, we also delved into some narratives in Taiwanese students' writing and Taiwanese English textbooks to understand the way that each linguistic feature of the narrative was presented in the writing. We found that the patterns of the writing in students' narratives are deeply affected by the narratives in English textbooks because they are the main material for learning English writing. Therefore, for the senior high school students in Taiwan, English textbooks are an important part for transferring the knowledge of the narrative writing, and offer the examples of the narrative writing.
However, based on the findings of this study, there are some demerits in Taiwanese English textbooks, and they may be the reason for the student's narratives lacking the linguistic features of the narrative, or the lower grades. First, there is no introduction to the narrative type of the writing in English textbooks. The introduction should include the components of English narratives such as character, plot and the linguistic features of English narratives such as Agentive Subject or Action Verb. This
information of English narratives can help the students to know how to organize and develop their narrative writing in English. Second, more narratives with the first person perspective should be augmented in Taiwanese English textbooks because the topic in the entrance exam provides the context for examinees to use the first person perspective. We found that the small number of narratives with the first person
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perspective would cause frequent problem for students. The problem is that most of the sentences in the writing would frequently begin with the first personal singular pronouns because the students are not familiar with more flexible narration. English narratives with the first person perspective need to reduce the first person singular pronouns with the usage of nouns or the placement of sequential verbs in a sentence.
Hence, if more narratives with the first person perspective are regulated in Taiwanese English textbooks, the students would have the chance to acquire some grammatical strategies to reduce the sentence beginning with the first personal pronouns and raise the grades of the narrative resulting from more sophisticated syntactic structure and less first person pronouns. Third, narratives written with sequential pictures should be added in English textbooks because this type of narrative writing has become
common in recent years. The narratives without the sequential pictures are the majority in Taiwanese English textbooks. The lack of such examples from English textbooks leads to the student's lack of comprehension of the proper narration
reflected in the pictures. Many students append numerous trivial details to the picture, and this is a common error in the narrative with the third person perspective. The student starts by introducing the background of the main leading role in the picture, and this lengthy introduction may lead to the increase of the third person singular pronouns. Followed by the increase, the syntactic pattern of the agentive subject and
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the action verb may also raise. Consequently, the rise of the value of Noun Overlap and Syntax Similarity is negatively related to students' grades of the narrative.
5.2 Suggestions for Taiwanese Senior High School Students in Learning Narrative Most of the students used the linguistic features of the narrative, but the grades differ among the students. Therefore, we used the online computational system
Coh-Metrix to find what linguistic features are highly-related to the grades. According to the result, Noun Overlap is one of the linguistic features that negatively impacts the grades. However, in the linguistic features of the narrative, Agentive Subject and Perspective add to the number of the same nouns in the narrative, and this increases the statistical value of Noun Overlap; the first suggestion for the students is to learn to use syntactic techniques such as a participle phrase to reduce them. In this way, the decrease of personal pronouns can effectively diminish the amount of the similar nouns in the writing, and the use of various syntactic techniques can also abate the syntactic similarity in the writing. The grades of students' narrative can be higher if the negative linguistic features of the grades are reduced. But it must be noted that the excessive presence of the syntactic pattern would cause difficulty in reading, and the grades of the narrative would be lower if the writing is illegible. The second
suggestion is to enrich the lexicon to decrease the noun repetition, other than the use
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of personal pronouns. There is a notable problem in that the students use the same nouns to be the referent because they have little knowledge of synonym. The concept of the synonym can help the students add the lexical abundance in the writing.
Furthermore, learning synonym can help the students master the words and their contexts, and decrease the errors of unsuitable use of a word.
Aside from the lexical aspect, the third suggestion relates to Simple Past Tense, which is one of the linguistic features of the narrative formulated in this study.
Although the simple past tense is used in students' narratives, the presence of the simple present tense can also be found in some of sentences in their narratives. The simple present tense is the basic grammar learned by the students in the early learning stage, so the students may use this tense when they are not concentrating on the adjacent sentence. Moreover, Chinese is a language without the concept of tenses. As a result, mastering tenses would be relatively difficult for Chinese English learners.
Therefore, we suggest that students should pay attention to tense agreement by more practice of the narrative or more awareness of the context.
5.3 Suggestions for Taiwanese Senior High School Teachers for Teaching and Grading Narratives
In Taiwanese education, English compositions start to be emphasized in senior
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high school. The reason for this may be that English writing is added in the college entrance exam. Most students do not have experience in writing English compositions before they get to senior high school. Therefore, the teaching of English writing is essential for these beginners of English writing. However, many teachers in senior high school do not have enough time to teach their students how to write English compositions. Teachers pay attention to teaching the lexicon and the grammar within each lesson in English textbooks. Numerous senior high school students have to face English writing in the third grade of the senior high school without understanding each type of writing and the organization of all the sentences. Most of them have a problem that they transfer the way of Chinese writing into English writing. As a result, Chinese English and indirect writing pattern found in ESL writing research (Kaplan, 2001) may also be the characteristics of Taiwanese senior school students’ English writings and the reasons for the low grades of English writings.
Accordingly, we suggest that, in teaching narrative, the definition of the narrative writing should be taught first. The definition can give the students a whole picture of the narrative and know its purpose. Next, the linguistic features of the narrative can be taught with the narrative of English textbooks or written by English native speakers.
The students can acquire that the narrative is composed of many events, and these events can be narrated by Agentive Subject and Action Verb. Because most sentences
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in the narrative were constructed with Agentive Subject and Action Verb, sentences with Active Voice are in the majority. With many similar personal pronouns of Agentive Subject, Perspective can be presented in the narrative. As for the coherence and cohesion, the link between the sentences can be realized by Constant Themes because of the personal pronouns or the adverbial phrase in the narrative. And the consequent actions can reveal Chronological Order of the narrative.
As for grading the narrative, we found that the use of certain words and the grammar are still the main factors affecting the grades of the narrative in the rater's mind, based on the finding in this study. According to the grading system published by the College Entrance Exam Center (CEEC), the content, organization, use of grammar, use of vocabulary and the format of the punctuation and the letter are five indices for evaluating student's narrative. However, in the grading system and the rater in this study, these indices in grading the writing do not change with different types of writing. Each type of writing has the specified linguistic features to synthesize it. In this study, seven linguistic features of the narrative are found; this may prove that these linguistic features are essential and significant to narrative writing. Therefore, the grading system should add the index of the linguistic features of each type of writing because students’ uses of the linguistic features can interpret their correct knowledge of each type of writing and present their abilities to
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discriminate each type of writing.
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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
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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
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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
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students’ writings. When these writers used the agentive subjects in the narrative, they
students’ writings. When these writers used the agentive subjects in the narrative, they