Discourse Organizational Features In Argumentation By Chinese English Majors

Discourse organization is the construction of an article, which is one of discourse features that writing presents. In writing, discourse organization of an article assumes overall responsibility from beginning to ending. It confirms selection of materials, connects each piece of language sections, and thus makes the association of every part in good order. In all, writing transfers meaning by organization, and the process of writing is actually the embodiment of structure construction. However, in China, the studies attempting to investigate the development of discourse organization in Chinese L2 learners'written production are relatively few due to the difficulties in data collection and analysis. For this reason, this cross-sectional study was undertaken hoping to reveal something indicative about the framework of discourse organization development of Chinese EFL learners. In order to investigate the features, whether there are any differences in the application of discourse organizational patterns across levels, and whether there is any correlation existing between discourse organizational patterns and writing quality, descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA and/or Kruskal-Wallis H analyses and correlation test were performed to analyze the measures of discourse organization in English compositions written by 129 undergraduate English majors at three grade levels. Conclusion was drawn as following: first, as to common features and development tendency of discourse organization in Chinese English majors'compositions in terms of macro-structure and micro-structure, all the participants tend to adapt General-Particular discourse pattern and state thesis initially with summary presented. When writing they prefer to apply Example, Cause-Effect and Comparison to develop their writing structure. Less application was found in Definition, Description, Classification and Sequence of events. Second, significant differences were found in terms of Thesis Statement, Definition, Description and Classification measures among the three different grade levels. Besides, the students were found tendency from variety to oneness, and then to variety from freshmen to higher grades in terms of Discourse Pattern. The tendency for Thesis Statement develops more closely to the preferred English pattern, namely, from the focus on simply stating initially to diversity—initially, in the middle and finally. What's more, with their English language proficiency development during college study, students prefer to write summary in their writings. As to micro-structure measures, with the development of their English proficiency, students apply more Contrast/Comparison, Definition and Description measures and less Cause-Effect measure to develop their composition. Referring to Example, Sequence of events and Classification measures, there is a climb up when students know more about English language; while when they get to junior level, they tend to use less. Then, based on the comparisons among three proficiency levels—low, intermediate and high level group, significant differences were found in terms of Discourse pattern, Summary, Comparison/Contrast, Example, Definition, Description and Classification among groups. Good writers tend to apply less discourse patterns in compositions,and have tendency to add summary to their writings. On location of Thesis Statement, they are more skillful and developing more and more toward preferred English Pattern, namely, state thesis not simply initially. In addition, good writers apply more Comparison, Cause-Effect, Example, Definition, Description, Classification and Sequence of events to develop their compositions, especially Comparison, Example, Definition and Description measures. Finally, based on correlation analyses with the purpose to examine the relationship of discourse organizational patterns to ratings based on Jacob's scoring criteria, seven measures of discourse organization are significantly and positively correlated with Jacob's rating groups (low, intermediate and high groups), although the correlation is not high. The present study displayed the general developmental features of discourse organization in English majors'L2 writing in China. It is suggested that language teachers and learners should raise their awareness of the importance of discourse organization in improving writing proficiency.