Enhanced schematic structure to achieve social purpose

As discussed in Chapter 3, the Discussion Genre achieves its social purpose and distinguishes itself from other genres mainly through a sequence of stages that make up its schematic structure (Callaghan & Knapp, 1989). Compared with Text 1, all students showed considerable improvement in developing a schematic structure appropriate for a text in the Discussion Genre. Changes in students’ capacity to control the schematic structure are evident in most students’ Text 2 including all stages, namely issue, argument for and against, and recommendation.

It seemed that prior to the intervention of the SFL genre pedagogy, students had not received explicit instruction on the schematic structure expected of the Discussion Genre. Analysis of students’ Text 1 indicated that, on the one hand, most students understood the key stages of the schematic structure including argument for, argument against and conclusion. Except for CL6, who only argued from the positive side of the issue, all other students’ Text 1 included the three structural features above. On the other hand, most students seemed unaware of the role of issue, which is considered as another essential component of a Discussion Genre text (Callaghan &

Knapp, 1989; Derewianka, 1990). In recent research on primary and secondary school learners’ metalinguistic development, H. Chen and Jones(2012) found that “providing explicit knowledge about language for all students is vital” to achieve successful literacy learning. Their research findings support the argument from a previous study (Christie & Unsworth, 2006) in which explicit knowledge provision is advocated as an important means to enhance students’ learning development. Explicit instruction of the genre knowledge is also emphasized as a fundamental theory in the SFL genre pedagogy (Martin & Rose, 2007). Participating in the intervention of the genre pedagogy, therefore, could offer the Chinese learners in the present study opportunities to receive explicit content knowledge about the Discussion Genre.

The inclusion of an issue statement (and preview) is a significant change that emerged from the analysis of students’ Text 2. In the issue stage, students introduce background information related to the topic issue (Derewianka, 1990). As outlined in Table 5.5, seven student participants covered both statement and preview of the issue in their Text 2, rather than only one of the two phases, as was the case with their Text 1. By including both statement and preview, the students successfully stated the thesis and previewed the argument for the topic issue that was to be discussed. A comparison between MM5’s presentation of the issue in the two texts provided a good example as illustrated in Table 5.6 below. In MM5-1, MM5 introduced the issue that Recently there is a

heated argue [argument] about whether [a] Spoken English Test is necessary or not (MM5-1:

Sentence 2, hereafter 2 for short). Nevertheless, what is missing is a subsequent sentence of preview to introduce the perspective that would be argued in the text. The preview of the issue at the opening of a text predicts its overall development (Coffin, 1997). This weakness seemed to be improved upon in MM5-2. MM5 not only stated the issue (see MM5-2: 1), but also previewed that Recreational activities may bring people benefits and they also may be harmful (MM5-2: 2). The involvement of this preview phase clearly orients the readers to the next part on the benefits and harms of recreational activities.

Table 5.6

Comparison of Results between MM-1 and MM5-2

Improvement is also evident in the other two students’ (KL4 & CL6) issue stages, even though the

issue was not previewed successfully. For example, KL4 wrote in Text 2 (see Appendix 19): Today, there are various recreational activities. In activities, we can make many friends and communicate with many different people (KL4-2: 1 & 2). After stating the issue in the first

sentence, KL4 attempted to preview the issue in Sentence 2 but was unsuccessful, as only one side of the arguments was presented. The same problem could be discerned in CL6-2 as illustrated in

Table 5.7 (see CL6-2: 2). Yet, overall, compared with introducing argument points without discussing any background information in Text 1, KL4 and CL6 achieved at least partial improvement in developing a preview phase to the issue in Text 2.

Moreover, the changes in the argument stage of Text 2 suggest that students achieved a better understanding of the importance of providing evidence from different sides of the topic, in order to persuade readers to accept their points of view when constructing Discussion Genre texts. Most students in the present study increased the number of points for both sides of the argument topic in Text 2 more than they did in Text 1 (see Table 5.5). For instance, MM5 presented the point of

argument for the thesis of holding Spoken English Tests in Text 1 that Spoken English not only encourages us to learn English, but also let us know our English level (WW5-1: 4). The only

point of argument against the thesis discussed is related to the pressure that speaking tests may bring upon students: … which make us hate to learn English (MM5-1: 6).

Changes were made to the argument stage in MM5-2 to argue in favour of recreational activities. Two points are displayed: help people happy and relax their body and help to develop our

economic (MM5-2: 3 & 4). In contrast, recreational activities have the disadvantages of waste too much time and people won’t want to work and study, and make people sleep little, which is harmful to their body (MM5-2: 5 & 6). Overall, more evidence is presented for both sides of the

argument in MM5-2, thus making the argument more persuasive when finally concluding that

recreational activities are necessary though people should avoid becoming addicted to

recreational activities.

The changes in CL6’s writing products in terms of the schematic structure are the most significant of all the students’ changes. As shown in Table 5.7, in the issue stage, the background of the issue that A Test of spoken English will be included as an optional component of the college English

Test is introduced in CL6-1. Nevertheless, the preview phase is missing, which is problematic

stage. Improvement in producing the issue stage is evident in CL6-2 as discussed earlier in this section.

Table 5.7

The improvement in the argument stage of CL6-2 is even more significant. The argument in CL6- 1 focused on one side of the issue, as presented in two paragraphs. In paragraph one, CL6 stated the first argument outlining that the necessity of holding the spoken test was due to the problem that most of Chinese students can’t speak English fluently although we can get high score in

English examination nowadays. Then in the topic sentence of paragraph two, CL6 asserted: But there’s [there’re] also some different opinions.

Callaghan and Knapp (1989) argue that the topic sentence should express the central idea of the paragraph. The use of different opinions or the additional conjunction but, would typically lead readers to expect an alternative perspective to be presented, outlining why it is not necessary to have a spoken English test; yet this does not occur. Instead, the next sentence provided a completely opposite message: As far as I am concerned, a test of spoken English is necessary (CL6-1: 4), which was followed by the presentation of three more points supporting the issue. Consequently, when drawing the conclusion, CL6 only supplied evidence for one side of the argument in CL6-1, whereas the argument in CL6-2 covered both sides of the issue with relevant evidence.

Positive changes could also be found in the recommendation stage from CL6-2. In the conclusion phase of CL6-1, CL6 expressed the desire to improve spoken English (CL6-1: 10) and stressed the necessity of pay[ing] more attention to a spoken English and having a test of it (CL6-1: 11). However, when concluding this viewpoint in support of having a spoken test, this part of the final sentence also provided a reason for this view (as the development of our country). As this point had never been raised previously in the text, this added new reason seemed to be irrelevant, particularly as a concluding statement. This is different from the case of CL6-2. The development of phases appeared more logical in the conclusion stage of CL6-2. Sentence 9 summarizes that

everything has two sides. Then it is concluded later that we should control ourselves and find the balance between recreational activities and our study so that we can get higher achievement in the boring study with a lot of fun (CL6: 10 & 11). Thus, compared with CL6-1, the

recommendation stage of CL6-2 achieved more logic, including both a summary and a

conclusion for the thesis of the text.