An Empirical Study on Information Prominence Reflected in Sentence Structures of Chinese College EFL Argumentative Writing

Autor/in	Ningling, Wei
Titel	An Empirical Study on Information Prominence Reflected in Sentence Structures of Chinese College EFL Argumentative Writing
Quelle	In: English Language Teaching, 8 (2015) 12, S.48-55 (8 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1916-4742
Schlagwörter	English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; College Students; Asians; Second Language Instruction; Persuasive Discourse; Foreign Countries; Semantics; Grammar; Sentence Structure; Writing (Composition); Classification; Statistical Analysis; Cognitive Ability; Writing Skills; Essays; China + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? English as second language; English; Second Language; Englisch als Zweitsprache; Zweitsprachenerwerb; Collegestudent; Asian; Asiat; Asiatin; Asiaten; Asiate; Fremdsprachenunterricht; Persuasion; Persuasive Kommunikation; Ausland; Semantik; Grammatik; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Schreibübung; Classification system; Klassifikation; Klassifikationssystem; Statistische Analyse; Denkfähigkeit; Writing skill; Schreibfertigkeit; Essay; Aufsatzunterricht
Abstract	Prominence, as an important dimension of cognitive construal, refers to the capacity to evoke a certain substructure as the focus of attention, which can be materialized in a variety of semantic and grammatical expressions (Langacker, 1987). Subject of a sentence (Zhang, 2011) and specific sentence structures (Lin, 2013) can bring a substructure into salience by highlighting it in a specifically grammatical place. Accordingly, the place of subject or the specific sentence structures which are applied to emphasize certain information can reflect a writer's intention of prominence. Thus, this essay will take prominence of Langacker's cognitive construal as theoretical basis and has an empirical study on information prominence of 20 argumentative writing papers written by Chinese college EFL learners from Leshan Normal University. By categorizing the sentences of each sample into five types of structures--link verb sentence, active sentence, passive sentence, non-finite verbs as subject and the specific sentence patterns, and referring to the statistics of sentence structure application and the specific writing contents, it is found out that the writers are inclined to highlight subjective or static information, which leads to subjectivity and powerlessness of argumentation. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01