A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of English Writings by Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract

The exponential growth in the population of Chinese EFL learners has fueled the study of Chinese EFL learner writing. A survey of relevant literature indicates that the majority of studies are confined to the exploration of individual linguistic features, with a few exceptions which employ a broader perspective that might involve multiple features. This work aims to investigate the English writings by Chinese EFL learners via Multi-Dimensional (MD) analysis, a corpus-based approach that combines both microscopic (i.e., individual linguistic features) and macroscopic perspectives (i.e., textual dimensions). A comparison between writings by Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers shows that the former are high on involvement, informativeness, and referential explicitness while the latter exhibit superiority on word-choosing, information integration, narrativity, and persuasiveness. Regarding their specific use of 67 MD linguistic features, the two writer groups also show certain significant but interesting differences. Analysis of Chinese EFL learner corpora from different English education levels indicates that writings by learners from higher levels are lower on involvement, but are higher on informativeness, narrativity, referential explicitness, and persuasiveness. This trend is manifested by their decreasing use of involvement features, but increasing use of features marking the latter four aspects.