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A longitudinal study of topic continuity in Chinese EFL learners’ written narratives

  • Yan Liu ORCID logo and Jinting Cai ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: April 22, 2022

Abstract

This paper reports a longitudinal study of topic continuity in Chinese EFL learners’ English written narratives by tracking their dynamic change of referential choices over two years. The proportional distribution of referential forms were calculated and texts produced by learners were analyzed. The calculation and analysis yielded the following findings. Firstly, while the general distribution of referential forms follows Givón’s cross-linguistic topic continuity scale, indicating the dominant role of discourse context in referring, quite a few instances deviate from this scale, suggesting the modulating effect of multiple factors, including L1 influence and articulators’ cognitive pressure. Secondly, with an increase in English exposure, L2 learners’ use of the typical referring form in each context displayed an increasing tendency over time. Finally, the developmental paths of L2 referential choices exhibited individual variability. These findings pointed to variation in interlanguage and the modulating effect of non-linguistic or internal cognitive factors on reference production.


Corresponding author: Jinting Cai, School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China, E-mail:

Funding source: the National Social Science Foundation of China

Award Identifier / Grant number: 11CYY021

Acknowledgment

We are very grateful to the anonymous reviews for their insightful comments.

  1. Research funding: This study was supported by a grant from the National Social Science Foundation of China awarded to Jinting Cai (11CYY021).

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2021-0150).


Received: 2020-10-12
Accepted: 2022-03-23
Published Online: 2022-04-22
Published in Print: 2023-11-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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