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Awareness of Perspective-taking in English Writing. Bai Hong-ai . Yanbian University. Teacher’s headache:. Some of the student’s mistakes can never be eliminated.
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Awareness of Perspective-taking in English Writing Bai Hong-ai Yanbian University
Teacher’s headache: Some of the student’s mistakes can never be eliminated. The vague awareness of the situation in which the discourse is produced, the identities and roles of the writer and the reader, their relationship, the purpose of the discourse, etc.
Current paper: the necessity of the awareness of perspective-taking in the process of writing
Circle the outside of the house The children ran aroundthe house.
Move around within the house’s internal space The children ran around the house.
Fowler (1986) and Xiong Muqing (2001) have categorized 4 kinds of perspectives (1)Spatial-temporal perspective (2)Narrative perspective (3)Ideological perspective (4)Perceptional perspective
Short (1994) The manipulations of perspectives to the appropriate linguistic realization
(1)Spatio-temporal perspective the choice of the proper deictic expressions relating to time and place present and past tense demonstrative pronouns adverbials of time, place deictic verbs
(2)Narrative perspective first-person (participant) viewpoint third-person (non-participant) viewpoint the focus of the narration the proper usage of personal pronouns definite/indefinite articles textually referring pronouns
(3)Ideological perspective the proper usage of modal expressions the lexical choice for proper style, register
(4)Perceptional perspective where the information departs (i.e. given information) and on which it focuses on (i.e. new information).
RESEARCH ON NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE Hypothesis 1: The root of the personal pronoun errors lies in the students’ vague narrative perspective, which further proves the manipulation of perspective to the linguistic realization of the discourse. Hypothesis 2: The vagueness of narrative perspective is caused by the writer’s unclear knowledge of the identities and roles of the participants (i.e. the writer himself and his reader(s)).
Table 1 Distribution of Discourse Types of the Students’ Writing Practice
Table 2: Errors occurring in 4 subjects caused by vague narrative perspective
① Dear Victoria, I am very sorry that Iunintentionally neglected to invite you to our party. Before the party, Mary sent invitation to her friends, andI sent to mine. Since you are a friend of ours.I thought she would invite you. SoI didn’t. Unfortunately, Mary didn’t, either. Forgive us forour mistake. Peter
TITLES: Loving and Being Loved Family Education Modern Life, Modern Pressure Is Beauty So Important? Brain Drain Tourism Brings Me Worries What is Poverty? What Should Universities Teach Their Students?
Result 1: The misuse of personal pronouns mostly occurs in the discourse types in which the identities and roles of the writer and reader(s) are not clear. And the errors occur more to generic reference of the pronouns instead of specific reference.
Result 2: In the argumentative and expository, the student writers tend to shift from one role to another, from one identity to another, which causes the narrative perspective to shift accordingly. Problem 1: The writer’s role in the discourse is shifting between a participant and a non-participant; Problems 2: The writer’s role is shifting between an explicit participant and an implicit participant; Problem 3: The identities of the writer changes in the same essay, which results in the changes of the reader’s identity.
② Most of Chinesesaid thattheylove ourcountry with heart and soul. Problem 1: narrative perspective shifts a non-participant’s a participant’s. “they” “our”
③ In my opinion, to some extent, weshould encourage students to use electronic dictionary in order to get information more quickly, but we can’t rely on electronic dictionary totally. After all, it isn’t our basic tool. I think if we have time, we’d better use the book dictionary, because we can gain more. Problem 3: the identity of the writer changes: “we” teachers students
universities University teachers ④ What should all these universities teach their students? First, theyshould provide the students all kinds of professional knowledge, … Second, universities should also teach their students how to behave themselves. … So we shouldn’t neglect the education of the students’ moral characters when they are in the universities. Third, universities should provide the chances of practicing their skills as much as possible. It is obvious that the aim of our studying is to prepare ourselves well for the social needs. … students Problem 1, 2, 3,
Result 3: The problem of vagueness exists at all levels of a discourse: discourse perspective, paragraph perspective, sentence chunk perspective, and sentence perspective. (See Figure 1 and 2) Among the errors caused by the vague narrative perspective, the majority (79%) of personal pronoun errors is caused by the vague discourse perspective and the vague paragraph perspective.
Figure 1: Errors Caused by Vague Narrative Perspectives at Each Level of the Discourse
Result 4: The personal pronouns of generic reference (i.e. “we”, “you”, “they”) are more subject to be chosen wrongly. It further proves that the writer’s uncertainty towards the identities and roles of the reader(s) disturbs his narrative perspective.
⑤ * People often use telephones, youcan only hear hervoice. * Now it’s a society of information technology.Peopleare all busy withtheirown business, so we almost can’t get any time to communicate with others. That makesus isolate from others. * Wehave videophone to communicate withyourparents. The writer’s narrative perspective has changed 3 times: non-participant implicit participant explicit participant
Explicit narrative perspective (“I”) writer as a participant focus: people including the readers (“you”) Implicit narrative perspective (“we”) focus: people including the readers (“we”) Implicit narrative perspective (“he/they”) writer as a non-participant focus: people excluding the readers (“they”)
Bakhtin’s dialogism: Any language use is a dialogic process. Widdowson (1984:48) The act of writing is the enactment of an exchange, with the writer taking on the roles of both interlocutors. Eco (1979:5-7) “The reader, as an active principal of interpretation, is part of the generative process of the text. To make his text communicative, the author has thus to foresees a model of the possible reader supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same ways as the author generatively deals with them.”
Conclusion: the interrelationship between perspective- taking and the linguistic realization
Vague Spatio-temporal Perspective * There is a large population in the world, so the environment was destroyed. (tense) * We all thought our school is irresponsible.(tense) * When I arrived there, I found a woman in front of a tree. stand there, facing a tree. (adverbial of place)
Vague Ideological Perspective (loaded words) * He is afreedom fighter. / He is a terrorist. (lexical choice of proper style) * Peacekeeping forces / occupation army (lexical choice of proper style) * Do you favor increasing government revenues / taxes to pay for new roads? (lexical choice of proper style)
Vague Perceptional Perspective *Thirdly, ( ? ) teaches them believe in themselves. Now ( ? ) is a competitive time, if ( ? ) don’t have self-confidence, how ( ? ) challenge the developing technology. (departing point of new information) *… he told me Tigress always vomited recently and eating nothing, so that ( ? ) lost almost a pound. (departing point of new information) * Oppositely, in your country, everything you are familiar with. you are familiar with everything (promotion from given to new information)
Implication: Perspectives connected with the syntactic structure, the semantic structure, as well as the information structure. These levels are co-occurring in our mental or semantic process of the experience and perhaps processed in the same time. Therefore, teaching English writing should enlarge its scope to the discourse level, and to include the practice of perspective taking into the process of writing.
