An Empirical Study On Evaluative Devices In Chinese EFL Learners’ Oral Narratives

Different cultures and languages have different ways to express meaning. Thus many L2learners cannot produce the cultural-specific narratives. It is important for L2learners to produce narratives that conform to culture and norm of the target language. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the lack of skills and styles in Chinese EFL learners’ English discourses. There are a large number of differences between the NES’English narratives and the Chinese EFL learners’English narratives. But so far, studies on this domain are rare in China. So this thesis is trying to reveal the differences in narratives between Chinese EFL learners’and NES’from the angle of evaluative devices.Based on the evaluation theory, the study uses multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to analyze and study the evaluative devices in Chinese oral narratives, the NES’English narratives, and the Chinese EFL learners’English narratives. It tries to solve three questions:(1) What are the features of evaluative devices between the native English speakers’English narratives and native Chinese speakers’ Chinese narratives?(2) Are Chinese EFL learners’oral narratives similar to or different from American native-English speakers’in their use of evaluative devices? (3) Are there any specifically Chinese linguistic strategies evident in evaluative devices of Chinese English narratives?According to the analysis of evaluation in36narratives, it is found that there are significant differences between the Chinese narratives and NES’English narratives. It is hard to find that "quasimodles"(verb phrases with similar functions to the true modals) and "participle-right"(the present participle) are applied in Chinese narratives. And another two devices,"future"(the future tense) and "Be-ing"(the continuous tense), were used relatively less too. However, these four evaluative devices were frequently applied in English narratives. Influenced by the interaction of first language transfer effect or second language influence, although the frequency of using "future" and "Be-ing" in Chinese EFL learners’English narratives is much more than in their Chinese narratives, they are quite different from the NES’English narratives. Nonetheless,"participle-left"(the past participle) that appeared frequently in Chinese narratives, are used relatively less both in Chinese EFL learners’and the NES’English narratives.It is hoped to make contribution to the English teaching in China, so that it can improve the process of Chinese students in English acquisition. Since the number of the samples is low and the type of narratives is onefold, the limitation of conclusion in this study is inevitable.