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Narrative Inquiry: Online-First Articles

Telling an expressive narrative in a foreign language

Analysis of Chinese JFL learners’ evaluative strategies in oral narrative discourse

ORCID logo | Jinan University
ORCID logo | Jinan University
This study explores the discourse expressivity of Chinese JFL (Japanese as a foreign language) learners’ Japanese narratives in terms of the variety and use of evaluative strategies, and analyzes how the evaluation system in their first language (L1) may be evident in their second language (L2) performance. For this reason, using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you?, we examined the oral narratives produced by adult Japanese native speakers, adult Chinese native speakers, and Chinese JFL learners. The findings suggest that the absence of “utterance attitudes” in the Chinese-language narratives is evident in the Japanese-language narratives of the Chinese JFL learners; thus, the evaluation of JFL stories is somewhat more direct, and the stories are easier to understand than those of adult JNS. However, the evaluations of the Chinese JFL learners’ narratives also diverged from those of the adult CNS in the direction of the target language’s norms.
Keywords: discourse expressivity, evaluation system, narratives, L2 performance, target language
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedures
    • Transcription
    • Coding and analysis
  • Results
    • Situation A: The search for frogs in the forest
    • Situation B: The activities of the dog
    • Situation C: The encounter with a deer
  • Discussion
    • Language-specific evaluative strategies in the Japanese and Chinese narratives
    • Limitations for Chinese JFL learners’ use of evaluative strategies in their L2
    • The Chinese JFL learners’ competence in the use of evaluative strategies in their L2
    • Context effects in L2 discourse production
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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