Comparative Analysis Of The Textual Coherence In Sino-American College Students' Written Expositions

Coherence refers to the underlying functional connectedness of a piece of text or a semantic concept, a linear and hierarchical semantic relation among different components of text produced in a given cultural context. When connectedness, consistency and relevance being achieved in a particular text, they will make a text sensible, rational and coherent to the reader. Organization, elaboration and cohesion are some important textual features contributing to coherence.To study textual coherence in Chinese and America students' written exposition, a total of 120 writing samples, 30 in Chinese and 90 in English, were obtained from 4 groups of college students: American students, Chinese ESL(English as a Second Language) students, Chinese EFL(English as a Foreign Language) students, and Chinese students. The samples are analyzed to determine (1) the top structure-methods used to organize the texts; and (2) the lower level structures-elaboration of ideas and use of cohesive ties. In addition, the relationship between cultural/linguistic backgrounds, patterns of textual coherence, and instances of rhetorical transfer, are studied. Research procedures are patterned after the Langer's(1986) model and Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy.The major findings are as follows:(1) With respect to top-level structure, four of Langer's six methods are identified: extension, comparison/contrast, classification, and cause/effect. Although common features were noted, significant methodological differences are found between American and Chinese subjects. American prefer classification while the Chinese favored comparison/contrast. Such differences suggest that these two groups hold divergent preferences in text organization and that the preferences are closely related to cultural and rhetorical traditions. The preferences change somewhat when the Chinese students learn to write in English. However, the extents to which these changes occur vary between ESL and EFL. Cultural difference is found to be responsible for the variation. Selective mechanism and knowledge structure determine the process oftransition.(2) At lower levels, Chinese students writing in Chinese and American students writing in English exhibit similarities in their elaboration and cohesion profiles.Descriptive structures, especially the subordinate sequencings, are the primary predicates used to elaborate and organize the lower level information by the participants across the four groups. Lexical ties are identified as the major cohesive ties used by the subjects in all four groups of subjects. While the results of the statistical analysis do not reveal the language-specific or cultural-specific concepts of the selection of lower level structures or cohesive ties in Chinese and American expository texts, it did suggest the existence of a strong relationship between linguistic and cultural competence and the general use of lower level structures and cohesive ties, which, in turn, pointed to the importance to pragmatic as well as linguistic knowledge as a necessary background for the invention of a coherent text.