The Developmental Study of Discourse Organization of Chinese English Major’s Argumentative Writings.doc

The Developmental Study of Discourse Organization of Chinese English Major’s Argumentative Writings 　　Abstract. This document displays developmental features of discourse organization in Chinese English majors L2 writings. Tendency was found from variety to oneness， and then to variety from freshmen to higher grades in terms of Discourse Pattern. The tendency for Thesis Statement develops more closely to the preferred English pattern. In addition， with their English language proficiency development， students prefer to write summary in their writings. Based on the comparisons among three proficiency levels―low， intermediate and high level group， significant differences were found. Good writers tend to apply less discourse patterns in compositions， and have tendency to add summary to their writings. On location of Thesis Statement， they are more skillful and developing more and more toward stating thesis not simply initially. These findings can help promote the understanding of the development of L2 writing of Chinese EFL learners and provide insights into the role of discourse organization in L2 writing. Key words： Discourse Organization， writing proficiency， writing development. Introduction Discourse organization， the construction of an article， one of key discourse features that writing presents， assumes overall responsibility from beginning to ending in writing. It confirms selection of materials， connects each piece of language sections， and thus makes the association of every part in good order. However， in China， the studies attempting to investigate the development of discourse organization in Chinese L2 learners written production are relatively few due to the difficulties in data collection and analysis. For this reason， this cross-sectional study was undertaken hoping to reveal some developmental features of discourse organization in Learners writings. Based on the data from text analyses and Jacob’s scoring， the study first investigated t