A Comparative Analysis Of Language Formality In Narrative And Argumentative Speeches Made By Chinese And American Students

With the rapid development of foreign economic relationships and trade in China, English speaking ability is becoming increasingly important. How to speak appropriately has received a lot of attention. Many aspects of speech are analyzed by researchers, among which formality is attached with inadequate attention due to the difficulty of speech sample collection. However Formality of speech is one important aspect concerning varieties of language use in speaking. The study of formality of speech is of great value to know more about the speaking ability of Chinese students and to give implications to English teaching.In order to analyze the differences in terms of formality between Chinese students and American students, the author carried out a comparative study concerning formality between speeches produced by Chinese and American students. The author selected six variables, including vocabulary, sentence length and nominal phrase, subordinate clause, passives and reduced clause. Through the comparative study, the present study tries to answer the following questions:1) What differences can be observed in terms of formality measurements of vocabulary, syntactic length, nominal phrases, subordinate clauses, passives and reduced forms as demonstrated in narrative and argumentative speeches produced by Chinese and American students?2) What is the range of formality like in narrative and argumentative speeches produced by Chinese and American students?Range32and SPSS16.0were applied to analyze the data. The author discussed the results of data and came to the following conclusions.1) There are differences in terms of formality measurements. i) Chinese students use fewer formal words than American students do in both narrative and argumentative speech. ii) Chinese students use fewer long sentences than American students. iii) Chinese students adopt less positive markers of subordinate clauses than American students. iv) Chinese students adopt fewer passive forms than American students do in argumentative speech. v) Chinese students adopt fewer reduced clauses than American students due to the difficulty and strangeness of this structure. vi) Some formal structures are more frequently used in argumentative speech than in narrative speech. However, the use of reduced clause in two types of speech produced by Chinese students is an exception. More reduced clauses are used in narrative speech than they are used in argumentative speech. The result gives an implication that Chinese students are not familiar with the functions of reduced clause.2) From the figure of formality ranges, both narrative and argumentative speeches produced by Chinese students are less formal than those produced by American students. The difference is caused by the insufficiency of the use of some formal structures by Chinese students, including formal words, subordinate clauses as noun constituents, reduced clauses and passives.The findings of the study are of great help for the teaching of oral English in China. Students should be trained to be able to produce speeches with appropriate language in different situations. Especially when speaking in formal situations, they should adopt more formal structures. Besides, some structures should be attached with more importance in the teaching of English. Reduced clause adds to the variety of a sentence and excels in stylistic formality. Chinese students are not familiar with its stylistic functions and do not have a good ability to use it. What’s more, other structures calling for attention are types of subordinate clauses. Due to the similarity between Chinese and English, students use more adverbial and object clauses displaying informality. In the teaching of subordinate clauses, the ability to produce more relative clauses, predicative clauses, subject clauses and appositive clauses should be emphasized.