Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Network, Communication and Education (SNCE 2018)

A Textual Analysis of Post-reading Writings in Light of the Alignment Effect and Its Implications on Teaching Writing to EFL Learners

Authors
Suyun Xu
Corresponding Author
Suyun Xu
Available Online May 2018.
DOI
10.2991/snce-18.2018.183How to use a DOI?
Keywords
The alignment effect; Textual features; Lexical complexity; Syntactic complexity; Textual coherence
Abstract

As is suggested by the Alignment Effect, EFL writings are featured by remarkable textual qualities when they are finished after close-reading of model texts. With textual analyzers, this research collects data of lexical complexity, syntactic complexity and textual coherence of 126 pieces of post-reading writings by EFL. After the analysis, the research finds simple words dominate while complex content words rarely occur. Content verbs, adjectives, and adverbials show much less diversity than nouns. The EFL writers produce full and long sentences which are mainly compound and simple, but need improvements in composing imbedded dependent clauses and complex noun phrases. Due to connectives abuse and loose semantics, sentences within paragraphs are poorly connected, while paragraphs run smooth from one to another. The textual features of post-reading writings yield some pedagogical references to the teaching of writing to EFL learners.

Copyright
© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Network, Communication and Education (SNCE 2018)
Series
Advances in Computer Science Research
Publication Date
May 2018
ISBN
978-94-6252-505-4
ISSN
2352-538X
DOI
10.2991/snce-18.2018.183How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
Open Access
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Cite this article

TY  - CONF
AU  - Suyun Xu
PY  - 2018/05
DA  - 2018/05
TI  - A Textual Analysis of Post-reading Writings in Light of the Alignment Effect and Its Implications on Teaching Writing to EFL Learners
BT  - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Network, Communication and Education (SNCE 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 890
EP  - 896
SN  - 2352-538X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/snce-18.2018.183
DO  - 10.2991/snce-18.2018.183
ID  - Xu2018/05
ER  -