(A) comparative analysis of the English writing ability of Chinese and Korean university students

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study attempts to present a general picture of contrast between the English writing ability of Chinese university students and that of Korean university students. More specifically, by examining the English essays written by Chinese university students (henceforth CE) and those written by Korean university students (henceforth KE) in a writing assessment, and by examining students’ responses to questions in questionnaires, the study expects to find some similarities and differences in rhetorical and linguistic aspects and in students’ writing strategies as well. All of these analyses and findings are expected to be elucidating best practices for the teaching and learning of English writing in EFL contexts.
A total of 178 subjects participated in the present study. 84 Chinese university students, 84 Korean university students and ten English native speakers have been required to write an English argumentative essay with the same topic within the given 30 minutes. Their essays were then collected, rated and analyzed from linguistic aspects (fluency, grammatical and lexical complexity, structural analysis, and error analysis for only CE and KE) based on Bachman’s (1990) communicative language ability model and Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaski, and Kim’s (1998) linguistic measurement method. In addition, two questionnaires were designed. The first introspective questionnaire was implemented just after the subjects finished their essay writing, while the second set of questions collected basic information about each subject, including age, gender, major, English learning habits and attitudes, etc. Differences and similarities of subjects’ strategies were compared based on these two questionnaires via some statistical methods.
The result proves differences and similarities do exist between CE, KE and essays written by English native speakers (henceforth EE). CE and KE are less fluent (fewer words in each T-unit and clause), less accurate (more errors) and less varied lexically (more K1 words, less academic words) than EE. However, there is no major difference in the structure between CE, KE and EE. Chinese and Korean university students preferred a direct way to express their opinion, just as what English native speakers did. Error analysis of CE and KE shows run-on sentence and omission of conjunctions are major problems for Chinese university students, whereas sentence misodering and omission of articles are serious for Korean university students. Writing strategy analysis shows there is a positive correlation between English reading and writing practice and writing test performance. Both Chinese and Korean university students should spend more time on English writing practice and gain more confidence as well. All of these main findings should have some help for the English writing teaching and learning in EFL contexts especially in China and Korea.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• CONTENTS
• LIST OF TABLES vii
• LIST OF FIGURES x
• Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1
• 1.1 Purpose and significance of the study 1
• 1.2 Research questions 2
• 1.3 Structure of the study 3
• Chapter 2 BACKGROUND AND PREVIOUS RESEARCH 4
• 2.1 Communicative language ability and writing ability 4
• 2.1.1 Communicative language ability 4
• 2.1.2 Writing ability 5
• 2.2 English writing proficiency of Chinese and Korean university learners 8
• 2.2.1 Chinese university learners 9
• 2.2.2 Korean university learners 11
• 2.3 Scoring methods 13
• 2.4 Linguistic measures of written products 15
• 2.4.1 Fluency analysis 15
• 2.4.2 Grammatical and lexical complexity analysis 15
• 2.4.3 Structure analysis 17
• 2.4.4 Error analysis 17
• Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHOD 19
• 3.1 Subjects 19
• 3.2 Design of the research 20
• 3.2.1 Design of the essay 20
• 3.2.2 Design of questionnaires 23
• 3.2.3 Linguistic measures of the writing 24
• Chapter 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 26
• 4.1 General writing proficiency 26
• 4.1.1 Inter-rater reliability of holistic scoring 26
• 4.1.2 Comparison of writing scores of CE and KE 27
• 4.1.3 Results of analytic scoring 29
• 4.1.4 Summary 31
• 4.2 Fluency comparison 31
• 4.2.1 T-unit length 32
• 4.2.2 Clause length 33
• 4.2.3 Essay length comparison 35
• 4.2.4 Summary 36
• 4.3 Grammatical complexity comparison 36
• 4.3.1 T-unit complexity ratio 36
• 4.3.2 Dependent clause ratio 37
• 4.3.3 Summary 39
• 4.4 Lexical complexity comparison 39
• 4.4.1 Words frequency 39
• 4.4.2 Type-token ratio 44
• 4.4.3 Lexical density 47
• 4.4.4 Summary 50
• 4.5 Structure analysis 51
• 4.5.1 Location of thesis statement 52
• 4.5.2 Proportion of background information 53
• 4.5.3 Rational and affective appeals 54
• 4.5.4 Reservation 55
• 4.5.5 Writers’ opinions 56
• 4.5.6 Summary 56
• 4.6 Error analysis 57
• 4.6.1 Comparison of overall errors between CE and KE 58
• 4.6.2 Error comparison in group 1 63
• 4.6.3 Error comparison in group 2 67
• 4.6.4 Error comparison in group 3 70
• 4.6.5 Summary 74
• 4.7 Differences shown in questionnaires 74
• 4.7.1 Comparisons between CE and KE in pre-writing, while-writing and after-writing strategies 75
• 4.7.2 Comparisons in attitude towards English writing 77
• 4.7.3 Comparisons in confidence in English writing 77
• 4.7.4 Comparisons in habits related to English writing ability 78
• 4.7.5 Summary 83
• Chapter 5 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 85
• 5.1 Summary of findings 85
• 5.2 Implications 86
• 5.3 Limitations and further research 87
• References 89
• Appendix I 96
• Appendix II 98
• Appendix III-1 100
• Appendix III-2 102
• Appendix III-3 104
• Appendix IV-1 106
• Appendix IV-2 108
• Appendix IV-3 110
• Appendix V 112
• Appendix VI 114
• Appendix VII 121