A Comparative Analysis Of Narrative Structural Configurations In The English Majors’ Oral And Written Narrative Production Prompted By The Same Topic

The present study aims to develop a structural model conceptualized from English majors’oral and written narrative production on the same topic by categorizing the macro-and micro-level structural components inherent in the learners’oral and written narratives. The major focus of the study falls upon the comparison between the learners’ oral and written narratives to explore the convergence and the divergence of the learners’utterances and writings.The materials employed in the study are composed of30oral cases and30written ones. The oral cases were selected from SECCL, a subcorpus of SWECCL built upon the oral production on a given topic by the English majors in their participation in the TEM-Band4Oral Test. The written materials were selected from38sophomoric English majors who were asked to accomplish a narrative composition on the same topic in a testing context.The major methods used in the data analysis were content analysis and grounded theory analysis, which yielded the following major findings:First, either the learners" oral narratives or their written narratives follow a similar macro-structure of Lead-in, Mini-story, and Evaluative Coda. The components of Lead-in and Evaluative Coda were found to be optional within the macro-structure, while Mini-story is obligatory, and naturally is the body of the narrative.Second, each macro-component in both oral and written narratives displays variations at its micro level.In the case of oral narratives, Lead-in is an opening of the narrative, which may further be sub-categorized into Direct Lead-in, Indirect Lead-in or Absent Lead-in. Mini-story consists of an episode or a series of episodes, and constitutes a loosely and temporally organized event structure:Prior Activity, Central Event, and Follow-up Activity. In addition, the basic event structure is interweaved with sporadic Mental Responses, which were understood in this study as the speakers’emotional reflections or commentary statements on what was happening and what had happened. The excessive use of Mental Responses may be interpreted as the learners’strategy to conceal their deficiency in oral narrative competence. Evaluative Coda takes on three types:Retrospective Evaluation, Anticipative Evaluation, and Reflective Evaluation, which are typical features of the ending for an oral narrative.In the case of written narratives, Lead-in is more indirect than direct in that the narrative writer does not choose to initiate a story with a plain introduction of setting. In one typical case the writer used a flashback as an opening, probably to set suspense to attract readers. The Event Structure in the story part follows a relatively rigid and complete narrative time-frame, without too many Mental Responses in the narration. Besides, there is a transitional action or a series of transitional actions to move onto the next episode. Evaluative Coda in the written narratives is by nature similar to that in the oral ones, but the proportion of Anticipative type is relatively higher. Unlike Retrospective type, the former one includes remarks in the form of argumentation, probably due to the effect of excessive training of argumentative writing the Chinese EFL learners have received.Third, comparisons across oral and written cases reveal both divergences and convergences as regards structure and content.In terms of structure, both oral and written narratives follow more or less similar macro-structure, but the frequency of occurrence varies in micro-level structural elements. For instance, there is much higher frequency of Mental Reponses in the oral narratives. In the written cases, the learners had a strong sense of whole in completing their narrative writings.In terms of content, both oral and written narratives are action-centric, which suggests that the learners have acquired schematic knowledge of what narrative is basically like. However, oral and written narratives differ significantly in the proportion of Mini-story in the learners’ narrative production. Written narratives focus more on the story itself or the organizing of the plot structure; while in the oral narratives, story elements and non-story elements were almost equally treated. Non-story elements like mental responses were found more in the oral narratives, which characterizes the learners" allocation of their limited attentional resources to both linguistic forms and meaning in their online narrative production.The major findings from the study may have some pedagogical implications. In the first place, scant attention has been paid to the development of learners’ narrative competence in the current foreign language education, particularly in the exam-driven curricula. However, story-telling is most indispensable linguistic skills, and therefore should be included in language assessment system. In the second place, narrative competence development should distinguish itself against the other genres of speaking or writing such as argumentation so that Chinese EFL learners could express their ideas more in a narrative form than merely in an argumentative form.