Structure and Cohesion of English Narratives by Nordic and Chinese Students

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As one of the most notable studies in discourse level of English as second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) in Nordic countries, NORDWRITE project (1985) succeeds in identifying important problems and suggesting solutions for students’ writing in terms of discourse-level properties such as cohesion and superstructures. Findings from NORDWRITE project were reported in several papers, such as Enkvist (1990), Evesen (1990), Lindeberg (1988), Linnarud (1986), Wikborg (1990). However, a comparative study of Nordic and other EFL/ESL writing has not been dealt with yet. In order to identify similarities and differences between English writing of two distinct first language (L1) groups, in this study, a number of Chinese ESL texts were collected and compared with the results obtained from NORDWRITE project. In this study, narrative was elicited by giving subjects a series of pictures which allows reliable comparison across texts produced by different subjects. A group of Hong Kong Chinese tertiary students was asked to write narratives in both English and Chinese. Meanwhile, a group of English students with similar age and education background wrote the narratives in English, and their texts serve as a reference for comparison. The areas for analysis cover narrative structure and cohesion. By examining the similarities and differences in Chinese ESL students’ and Nordic EFL students’ texts, we find that certain similarities between the two groups are due to the fact that English is their second/foreign language. On the other hand, differences may be attributed to the influence of their L1, as the two groups belong to two distinct language groups. The study also shows that certain writing problems of ESL/EFL students are originated from inadequate understanding of English discourse. The implications of L1 influences on discourse level for ESL/EFL writing were drawn as well.