A descriptive structural approach to the teaching of written English to foreign students.

Abstract

The present study investigates the nature of "text" with a view to improving control of text production in composition writing by foreign (Spanish) students of English. The introductory chapter states the reasons for including composition as part of an advanced foreign-language programme, descriptive and discussion writing in that context. After the examination of a number of linguistic models in Chapter 1, the Pragué School theory of Functional Sentence Perspective is adopted as the most suitable descriptive model of “text. Its categories of theme, transition and rheme can be demonstrated to offer an analysis of text surface structure that takes account of syntactic, grammatical, semantic, phonological and contextual features of the discourse. The means by which the speaker recognises well-formed texts (his textual competence) can be explained in terms of these categories. These categories also allow an analysis of textual structure (texture) from the point of view of "thematic progression" and "rhematic layering". Chapter 2 matches a tentative taxonomy of situational constraints against descriptions of narrative, descriptive and discussion texture. A close correlation between the extra-linguistic and linguistic variables is found. On the basis of the data collected in Chapters 1 and 2, Chapter 3 represents a comparative analysis of: i) texture of English and Spanish variety texts ii) texture of student compositions and English variety text iii) textual features in erroneous English sentences from Spanish student compositions and reconstructions of these sentences in Spanish, in order to test the hypothesis that errors in composition by foreign learners of English can frequently be attributed to interference from texture and Say markers of texts in their native language. The hypothesis is verified as regards textuality markers, but not as regards texture. The research concludes with recommendations for a teaching strategy that controls the student's progress towards free composition through the translation of suitably illustrative texts, and exercises activating the means of FSP in the English sentence.