| The study examines how Chinese EFL learners at junior middle school, senior middle school, and university level respectively, express temporality in written narrative discourse. Based on the categories and general narrative structure described by Kruistum (2006), Masuda (2002) and Meyerson (1997), this study breaks down learner narrative into the micro level, meso level, and macro level temporal structure, and examines the cross-sectional development of temporal encodings both in English and Chinese narrative versions. The focus of the study is on the integrated and systematic relation between temporal expressions and narrative ability of Chinese EFL learners, which also includes the direct or indirect influences of Chinese narrative discourse ability on learners' interlanguage narrative writing ability, by employing multidisciplinary, qualitative and quantitative research methods. Based on previous studies and literature research, this dissertation brings together research findings from the disciplines of narratology, psychology and second language writing to form an alternative framework for the analysis of temporality in written narrative discourse and proposes a multi-level temporal structure which breaks through narrow consideration of tense-aspect in temporality discussion, that, potentially, might yield deeper understanding of the cultural, linguistic, and discourse practices that Chinese EFL learners bring to their foreign language writings.The study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Ninety learners took part in the study. They were given a questionnaire and a writing task. In textual analysis, the data, consisting of 180 narratives (90 English texts and 90 Chinese texts) collected at three schools in Jinan, during an interval of three-weeks, in September 2006, was picture-elicited task in classroom environment: A statistical package Coh-Metrix 2.0 was used to estimate the narrativity of learner texts, and those selected measures in Coh-Metrix tool specify that causality, intentionality, logic and temporal cohesion significantly influence readability of learners' temporally coherent narrative discourse. Qualitative descriptions were conducted to examine background information of Chinese EFL learners' narrative writing experience. Thus, the EFL learners' written discourse could be interpreted in light of not only language in which they directly expressed but also cultural-educational context where their developing system could be observed. For this reason, the quantitative data from questionnaire results were aimed for a discussion of narrative function, content and structure, relevant to temporal expression both in Chinese and English cultures, in order to illustrate and supplement the findings of the textual analysis of the study.The findings show that Chinese EFL learners are confronted with varying difficulties at the micro, meso, and macro levels of narrative. In general comparison with native English writers, Chinese EFL learners' repertoire of temporal encodings was smaller and less varied in English versions. With respect to proposition units at the micro level, it was observed that most learners could choose appropriate tense and aspect to locate events in past time storytelling, to distinguish events and background information, and to employ tense alteration to achieve "narrative effect". The fact that JG learners committed a large number of tense-aspect errors was a sign of their immature and less proficient use of the English language, though this did not exert great influence on their rich and varied narrative content. In terms of rhetorical units, learners were gradually aware of the importance of connectivity between propositions, and could link them sequentially, but in most cases, they failed to connect them causally or simultaneously, to pay attention to the rhetorical relations among these propositions, which, to some extent, specify the temporal relation. They had limited knowledge of discourse functioning role of various types of conjunctions, and additive conjunctions were maintained across three groups of learners under study. Besides, the number of causal conjunctions in Chinese versions was slightly higher than those in English texts.At the meso level, Chinese EFL learners displayed a consistent variation among episodes, both in English and Chinese versions. They employed clause-initial adverbials of time and place to signal temporal shift, organized chronological events into hierarchically-related complete episode, employed eventive, stative, evaluative clauses, and reported speech to the extent that stative and evaluative clauses provided background information, eventive clauses moved timeline forward, and reported speech helped to enhance dramatic color. Meanwhile, analyses of writing sample texts or text extracts have shown that episodic disconnectedness indeed exist in learner narrative discourse and their failure to meet the criteria for narrative timeline results in temporal break. At the macro level, narrativity units were investigated by using Coh-Metrix tool, which is a broader approach to encompass casual, spatial, intentional content and temporal connective perspectives. Regarding the causal organization of the narrative, JG (Junior Middle School Group) learners' texts presented less causal information relevant to the story sequence than any of SG (Senior Middle School Group) and UG (University English Major Group) learners. The highest readability scores obtained from JG might result from other significant measures, such as conceptual similarity across sentences (LSApssa), intentional content and connective use in Coh-Metrix. Compared with learners in JG and SG, learners in UG wrote longer texts but produced similar fewer causal relations between episodes, and they seemed to have difficulty in organizing events in a causal network due to possible cognitive constraints. Generally speaking, learners' performance in JG was better than the other groups (learners in JG got the highest mean score 90.182 in Flesch Reading Ease, compared with 84.575 in SG and 86.991 in UG), possibly because their high frequency of input and more practice in narrative compositions. It was also suggested that L1 transfer on macro level played a positive role in EFL learners' representation of some temporal properties in English.In comparison with learners' English versions, temporal resources of the Chinese language and relative weights imposed on these devices were different from those in English. When establishing past reference with overt markers, Chinese EFL learners resorted mainly to aspect markers and had access to temporal adverbials. When expressing temporality implicitly, learners relied heavily on discourse context. In addition, a number of zero-marked forms in Chinese narrative production demonstrated the peculiarity of the Chinese language. Though the Chinese versions of narrative showed greater temporal diversity and complexity, they demonstrated rudimentary capability in organizing narrative discourse into goal-directed, hierarchically temporal structure, as well as English versions. It also showed that the effects of cultural context on every foreign language learner's narrative development are undeniable. In other words, how narrative is told and interpreted—the linguistic devices and discourse strategies that convey temporal meanings and attitudes—are always culturally embedded. In sum, based on the analysis of 90 English written narratives and 90 Chinese ones, the findings show that temporality in learner texts vary more than that previously studied. This variation is based on an interaction of several factors, including, (a) narrative structure, i.e., figure-ground distinction; (b) representation of event knowledge or situation model; (c) thematic emphasis, and (d) the level (macro, meso, or micro) emphasized.The findings of the study have both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, the study provides a new theoretical framework which can enable us to get a better understanding of the discourse-structural properties and regularities of learner language through the functional analyses of "temporality". We analyze how Chinese EFL learners express temporal categories in their interlanguage discourse, how more complex temporal meanings develop, how temporal progression is evident in their texts, and how the various linguistic means interact at different stages of foreign language development. This study on the semantics of time in a second language and its functioning in interlanguage written discourse will shed some light on the structure of underlying concepts as well. The important theoretical assumption is that the creation of temporality in narrative depends on both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms, i.e., the temporal-semantic relatedness at the micro level and meso level, together with hierarchical, causally relatedness at the macro level have both independent and interacting influencing on narrative production. Practically, EFL teachers need to consider those factors interacting in the expression of time on micro, meso and macro levels. These include, among others, the type of content which the learner might want to express in a particular task environment; the type of expression (grammatical, morphological, discursive, or by an interaction of them), and the role of contextual factors (explicit or implicit means). The EFL teacher's viewpoint broadens, as he/she is concerned with the association of form / meaning with the development of interlanguage temporal semantics. Teachers can apply the concept of goal-directed multi-level temporal structure to material preparation and classroom teaching in EFL, which enables learners to enlarge the repertoire of devices expressing temporality, to be alert on the native language influence in the development of temporal expression, and to enhance rhetorical effectiveness in narrative genre. |
