A Development Pattern Of Discourse Structures In Chinese EFL Learners’Oral Narratives From A Topic Prompt

This study seeks to explore the narrative structure at both macro-and micro-level that can be extracted in the Chinese EFL learners’open-ended oral narratives from a topic prompt, with a particular focus on the description of the differences across the different learning stages in terms of narrative structures. The ultimate purpose of this study is to discover the developmental pattern of universals and differences regarding discourse structures underlying the learners’oral narratives at their different learning stages.The materials used in this study were narrative utterances produced on the same topic by English majors at two different learning stages, the two stages represented respectively by Year Two students (EM2for short) and Year Three students (EM3for short). Therefore, there were two parts of spoken data:The first 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 second part was30pieces of oral compositions collected from the junior students of English majors who were required to talk the same topic. The data were analyzed qualitatively, focusing on the identification of categories of narrative components that constitute the narrative structures, based on which the developmental pattern of possible changes in narrative structures was observed across the two learning stages. The analysis generated the following findings:Firstly, three macro discourse structures were extracted from English majors’oral narratives produced by the English majors at the elementary learning stage and the advanced learning stage, namely, Topic Initiation, Episode Generation and Story Evaluation. Comparison of EM2and EM3’narratives indicated that Chinese EFL learners have developed a schema of narrative talk in that learners at different learning stages both include these three categories.Secondly, in EM2and EM3cases, two types of Topic Initiation were identified in terms of the explicitness of the topic identification:Prompt Initiation and Delayed Initiation. Learners, though at the different learning stage, show a homogeneous tendency of a preference to prompt initiation in the beginning of narration. Most speakers chose to come to their task by offering background information for the subsequent event-oriented story, despite Delayed Initiation is a more strategic way of opening a narrative. This may be due to the nature of the topic prompt.Thirdly, three different types of event patterns were observed in Episode Generation. Despite the classic pattern of Event Sequence B in both EM2and EM3cases, EM3learners’ narratives displayed a developmental change in the structural complexity of episodes compared to EM2learners’production. The increase in structural complexity was indicated by the number of episodes emerging from learners’oral production.Fourthly, along with learning stages, the learners displayed the increasing consciousness to organize the narrative from the top-down level, as can be seen from EM3cases’overriding tendency to make Story Evaluation in the closure of the narrative, Evaluative Commentary in particular. In terms of the developmental pattern of Story Evaluation, the salient characteristic is the occurrence of three different types of Evaluative Commentary, namely, Emotional Evaluation, Behavioral Evaluation and Appreciative Evaluation, which are frequently employed by the EM3learners. However, the presence of EM2cases’evaluation was rather simple in variety and content, mostly being Emotional Evaluation.The findings of this study may have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, this study has identified narrative components from Chinese EFL learners’ oral narratives, which may provide a partial picture for narrative structures to be investigated. Practically, the notion of sequential description in this study offered some insights into the significant role of message sequencing. This study provides valuable empirical evidence for related narrative studies, particularly in L2learners’ discourse competence development, and into the assessment of the learners’ oral discourse ability in both testing and instructional settings.