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Factors Determining the Development of Discourse Competence in Advanced Learners of English Author View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Title: Factors determining the development of discourse competence in advanced learners of English Author: Marcin Jaroszek Citation style: Jaroszek Marcin. (2008). Factors determining the development of discourse competence in advanced learners of English. Praca doktorska. Katowice : Uniwersytet Śląski MARCIN JAROSZEK FACTORS DETERMINING THE DEVELOPMENT OF DISCOURSE COMPETENCE IN ADVANCED LEARNERS OF ENGLISH A LONGITUDINAL STUDY Ph.D. Dissertation submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the English Language Institute of the University of Silesia. Written under the supervision of prof. dr hab. Maria Wysocka UNIWERSYTET ŚLĄSKI 2008 MARCIN JAROSZEK CZYNNIKI OKREŚLAJĄCE ROZWÓJ KOMPETENCJI DYSKURSU U ZAAWANSOWANYCH UCZNIÓW JĘZYKA ANGIELSKIEGO BADANIE PODŁUŻNE Rozprawa doktorska napisana w Instytucie Języka Angielskiego Uniwersytetu Śląskiego pod kierunkiem prof. dr hab. Marii Wysockiej UNIWERSYTET ŚLĄSKI 2008 Table of contents INTRODUCTION 5 PART ONE: THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF DISCOURSE COMPETENCE 7 DEVELOPMENT 1. Discourse and Discourse Competence 7 1.1 Defining discourse 8 1.2 Discourse Competence and Communicative Competence 10 1.3 Discourse Devices 14 1.3.1 Interaction vs. intra-action in discourse construction 15 1.3.2 Turn-taking 17 1.3.3 Discourse markers 19 1.3.4 Back-channel responses 20 1.3.5 Grammatical cohesion and textuality 20 1.3.6 Lexis and discourse 24 1.3.7 Conjunction 27 1.3.8 Modality 28 1.4 Competence vs. Performance 32 2. Educational factors determining discourse competence development 35 2.1 The role of input in discourse competence development 35 2.2 Classroom discourse vs. natural discourse 39 2.2.1 Teacher talk 40 2.2.2 Classroom interaction 45 3. The role of transfer in discourse construction 55 3.1 Negative transfer vs. positive transfer 57 3.2 Discourse transfer 58 3.3 Language transfer requisites 63 4 Discourse and an advanced foreign language learner 65 4.1 The specificity of an advanced foreign language learner 65 4.2 Psycholinguistic factors and discourse competence 69 4.2.1 Individual differences in discourse construction 69 4.2.2 Personality 73 4.3 Sociolinguistic factors and discourse competence 76 4.3.1 Gender and discourse 76 4.3.2 Social class and discourse 80 4.3.3 Discourse and nation 84 5 Recapitulation 87 PART TWO: EMPIRICAL STUDIES 91 6. The concept of the longitudinal study 91 6.1 Objective 92 6.2 Research questions 92 6.3 Scheme of the study 94 3 6.4 Survey study 96 6.4.1 Method 96 6.4.2 Results 96 6.5 Pilot study 103 6.5.1 Method 103 6.5.2 Results 104 6.5.3 The effect of the survey study and the pilot study on the main study 107 6.6 The main study 109 6.6.1 Procedures 110 6.6.2 The course of the study 112 7. Study results: Factors determining the development of discourse competence 118 7.1 Introduction 118 7.2 Modality 120 7.2.1 Overall modality 120 7.2.2 Specific modality 122 7.2.3 Epistemic and deontic modality 126 7.2.4 Modality diversity 136 7.3 Conjunctions 139 7.3.1 Conjunctions: overall results 140 7.3.2 Specific conjunctions 142 7.3.3 Formal conjunctions 144 7.3.4 Conjunctions diversity 148 7.4 Relexicalization 151 7.5 Reiteration 155 7.6 Ellipsis and substitution 157 7.7 Classroom procedures 159 7.8 Recapitulation 161 FINAL CONCLUSIONS 164 APPENDIX 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216 SUMMARY 231 STRESZCZENIE 233 4 INTRODUCTION Nearly two decades from Poland’s opening to the innovative English as a Foreign Language (EFL) methodologies, the English language has become widely popularized in the country and the number of those speaking it has remarkably grown. Some have learned to pidginize English only, some use it accurately and fluently for professional purposes. It could seem then that these advanced users of English should demonstrate high levels of communicative competence, the development of which is the main objective of most teaching methods widely applied in EFL classrooms. However, day-to-day observation often verifies this claim. Many advanced EFL learners’ L2 (second language) production is rife with awkward utterances, unnatural wording or artificial responses in one-on-one communicative encounters. The reasons might be aplenty. One may be EFL teachers’ possible perception of communicative competence as comprising grammar competence and sociolinguistic competence only, often overshadowing the speaker’s capability of constructing textually coherent and cohesive stretches of speech. This negligent approach to discourse competence might account for why many advance learners’ L2 production is stigmatized with grammatically appropriate, yet somewhat unnatural collocations or sentence wording. L2 discourse is not merely a term restricted to any interactional act. In fact, its meaning and structure often exceed the interactional frame of communication. Whether discourse is clear, coherent and, above all, rich in natural discourse mechanisms often underlies the learner’s success or failure in L2 communication, unless the aim is to merely pidginize the language. Therefore, it seems relevant to investigate the place of discourse competence development in English Language Teaching (ELT). What poses a question is whether EFL teachers realize the significance of discourse competence, as well as whether they actually develop it in their classrooms. How advanced students’ discourse develops in the long term can also be an interesting investigation. So can a study on factors which might stimulate or 5 impede the process. The factors could include teacher talk, students’ personality and their discourse competence in L1. Part One of the research will present the theory of discourse competence and will review relevant literature which discusses its development. The first chapter of the study constitutes an initial introduction to discourse analysis in the context of foreign language teaching. This introductory chapter will accordingly sketch the theoretical position of Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics on discourse construction and discourse competence development. The subsequent chapters will overview the available literature regarding conceptions of competence, its distinction from performance, as well as the roles of language transfer and classroom communication in L2 discourse construction. The final section of Part One groups the chapters that deal with sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic influences in the construction of discourse and the development of discourse competence. Part Two, the empirical portion of the study, will present the results of a longitudinal study of thirteen advanced students of English developing their discourse competence throughout their three- year English as a Foreign Language tertiary education. With the methodology of the study stipulated, the section will then interpret the course of individual subjects’ discourse competence development, as well as will seek to identify those factors that might have determined possible alterations in the subjects’ discourse competence. This will be conducted correlatively as well as individually for each of the thirteen subjects. The appendix includes the overall numerical representations of the results. Student communication as well as teacher talk tapescripts are not included in the appendix but are available upon request 6 PART ONE: THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF DISCOURSE COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT 1. Discourse and Discourse Competence Communication is not just a mechanical, raw transfer of information from the speakers to their recipients. Nor is it a disorderly exchange of turns or a meaningless, indefinite interactive tug of war. Communication, realized through discourse construction, is a spontaneous allocation of power and an unpredictable, yet logical flow of ideas. It is, or rather should be, structured poetry, with its stanzas placed by the speaker in a specific order, verses interacting with one another, and meaning inferable from the very specific context of this social act. To master this competence is quite an undertaking for a second language (L2) learner. Although successfully utilized in their first language, L2 discourse construction requires the learner to demonstrate specific knowledge of linguistic instruments, understanding of L2 cultural codes and the skills to combine these elements into an individual utterance, unique for the discourse maker, yet still not exceeding the bounds of the social communicative rigor. There have been numerous studies on discourse construction in the last few decades. The research has developed from linguistic analysis of discourse structures through studies on discourse construction by separate speech communities to the analysis of discourse in its semiotic dimension. This chapter will provide a theoretical background for the discussion of discourse competence development in the context of L2 learning by critically reviewing the relevant literature. The chapter will begin with providing the definition of discourse. Then discourse competence will be discussed with reference to other components of communicative competence. Following the discussion of discourse devices, the competence- performance distinction will be presented. The later portion of the literature review will analyze possible factors determining the development and construction of discourse, including language transfer, as well as psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic influences. 7 1.1. Defining discourse Discourse competence is the primary subject of this research. Its discussion then
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