Schema Construction Of EFL Argumentative Writings By English Majors In China

With the framework of modern Schema Theory and a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, through collecting keywords, key keywords and associates, this thesis, based on the corpora composed of texts on education written by both English majors in China (EMs) and native speakers of English (NSs), aims to investigate and analyze:1) Whether there are distribution differences in the networks of the keywords and associates in the same-topic writings by both EMs and NSs, if there are, in what way are they different?2) Whether there are shared keywords or associates in both semantic networks, if there are, in what way are these overlapping mental lexicon interrelated?3) Whether there are cultural schemata-specific keywords or associates that are exclusively used by either EMs or NSs, if there are, what kind of interrelation between foreign language acquisition and foreign culture acquisition do they reflect?The research is to verify whether the vocabulary teaching bound with semantic association and pragmatic characteristics centered on the keywords and associates around a specific theme is more effective than the isolated and loose way of vocabulary teaching. The findings show that:1) The EMs’vocabulary network in EFL writings triggered by the same topic seems to be monotonous and isolated; whereas the NSs’ network reflects affluent associations and collocation correlations, NSs are good at using words that bear semantic associations and pragmatic features to enrich and refine their expression content. Moreover, the EMs’ writings are so deeply influenced by the mode of assigning that all the key keywords in EMs’ network and the introductory parts overlap to a great extent.2) For the overlapping mental lexicon, the discrepancies in terms of collocation and colligation at the sentence level and semantic mapping at the context level can be discovered. For example, EMs prefer to start sentences with personal pronouns, particularly with first and second plural personal pronouns, on the contrary, NSs are likely to use the first single personal pronouns, the object pronouns and passive voice. In addition, NSs add derivational affixes to materialize the vocabulary diversity, by comparison, EMs hardly mention the derivational affixes to change configuration of the words.3) The exclusively used words represent the uniqueness of cultural schemata and reflect the complementary interrelation between foreign language acquisition and foreign culture acquisition. Poor or underdeveloped target-cultural schemata will surely impede language acquisition, conversely, rich and detail-specific schemata would be able to facilitate the appropriate expressions and idiomatic usage of target language.The theoretical significance lies in that the present study demonstrates an availability of applying the modern Schema Theory in EFL vocabulary and writing. Further, significance of application is twofold:firstly, teaching vocabulary that express concrete behaviors and accurate meaning will enhance the students’ writing ability and interpersonal competence; secondly, it will assist students to establish an intrinsic link of form-context-function in the input stage so as to promote effective extraction in a multi-dimensional unit of grammar-syntax-pragmatics in EFL writing output.