A Comparative Analysis Of Use Of Non-narrative Constituents By The English Majors In Their Spoken And Written Narratives From The Same Topic Trigger

This thesis reports a study which was undertaken to investigate the use of non-narrative constituents by Chinese EFL learners in their spoken and written narratives elicited with the same topic prompt in testing contexts, focusing on two facets: types of non-narrative structural elements and their proportion in the narrative compositions, both spoken and written. The ultimate objective was to obtain exploratory data regarding potential differences in the types and proportions of use of non-narrative constituents by the learners across their spoken and written narrative productions.There were two parts of materials employed in this study:the spoken part and the written part. The spoken part was retrieved from SWECCL, in which30cases were selected from the learners’monologic utterances elicited by the speaking task with a narrative topic prompt. The written part were30pieces of narrative writings collected from the sophomores of English major, who were required to write on the same topic. The problem that had to be overcome in the data analysis was how to distinguish non-narrative elements against narrative ones. Thus, the qualitative approaches like content analysis were adopted in the actual data analysis. The framework of narrative analysis was modeled after Labov, Bruner, Hopper and Yu. The major findings generated in the data analysis are summarized as follows:Firstly, four types of non-narrative constituents were identified in the learners’both spoken and written narratives, namely State Description, Structural Adhesives, Mental Activities, and Interaction with the Audience. Each type except Interaction was classified into several sub-categories. State Description could be realized into Background Orientation, Instant State, and After-state. Structural Adhesives included Topic Introduction, Event Elicitation, Elicitation of Further Development, and Topic Restatement in spoken narratives, and another Topic Elicitation in written narratives. Mental Activities comprised Instant Mental Reaction, Present Mental Reaction, and Evaluative Remarks.Secondly, while the four types were used in varying degree to describe the non-narrative part in narratives, Mental Activities were employed most frequently in both spoken and written narratives. Following on the heels of Mental Activities were State Descriptions. Structural Adhesives took up a much lower proportion, about one tenth of all non-narrative T-units. Interaction with the Audience was seldom used in both spoken and written narratives.Thirdly, the comparison of spoken and written narratives in terms of proportion of sub-types of non-narrative constituents reveals that test-takers use a much larger proportion of Evaluative Remarks, After-state description and Elicitation of Further Development in written narratives than in spoken ones. The reason for this, in the researcher’s view, lies in that in written narratives, the writers had enough time to think about the structure, strategies employed, and word-forming, to make the narration more complete and smooth. As to the Structural Adhesives, the most frequently used types in spoken narratives were Topic Introduction and Topic Restatement, reflecting the learners’awareness of layout or structure; while in written narratives, Topic Elicitation, Topic Introduction, Event Elicitation, Elicitation of Further Development, and Topic Restatement were almost equally allocated, from which the researcher assumes that in written narratives test-takers tend to employ varied connecting devices to make the narration more smooth and variegated. As to the Mental Activities, Instant Mental Reaction and Present Mental Reaction both decreased in written narratives than in spoken ones, whereas Evaluative Remarks increased sharply, which indicates that in written narratives test-takers have a higher narration competence than in oral ones, since they can freely resort to Evaluative Remarks to clarify the point of the event or express their strong emotion.The findings yielded in this study have great significance. From the theoretical perspective, they will offer some insights into the significant role of non-narrative constituents in EFL learners’discourse competence development. From the pedagogical perspective, they are illuminating for the assessment of the learners’discourse ability in both testing and instructional settings. In other words, on the one hand, they offer a new standard for language assessment in testing context; on the other hand, based on this standard, teachers can better adjust their teaching methods and students their learning strategies, to make the narration much clearer in structure and more coherent in meaning.