This study investigated how advanced Chinese students of English construct clause relations when construing English texts. A deconstructed text was distributed in class to 42 graduate students of linguistics, who were...This study investigated how advanced Chinese students of English construct clause relations when construing English texts. A deconstructed text was distributed in class to 42 graduate students of linguistics, who were required to organize the clauses into a conceivably good text. The result suggests that these students seemed to rely on explicit cohesive words （anaphoric references and repetitions） rather than meaning relations in text construction. They seemed to have difficulties in using cataphoric contextual information and the popular discourse pattern from general to specific. This study calls for an enhanced awareness of logico-semantic relations in teaching and learning text construction.展开更多
基金contributes partly to the fulfillment of a National Project of Social Science entitled:A contrastive study of minimum discourse patterns in English and Chinese, coded 10BYY006an MOE project A contrastive study of clause relations and discourse patterns in English and Chinese, coded 08JA740013
文摘This study investigated how advanced Chinese students of English construct clause relations when construing English texts. A deconstructed text was distributed in class to 42 graduate students of linguistics, who were required to organize the clauses into a conceivably good text. The result suggests that these students seemed to rely on explicit cohesive words （anaphoric references and repetitions） rather than meaning relations in text construction. They seemed to have difficulties in using cataphoric contextual information and the popular discourse pattern from general to specific. This study calls for an enhanced awareness of logico-semantic relations in teaching and learning text construction.
