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DO COLLEGE-LEVEL ESL STUDENTS WHO SPEAK WELL ALSO WRITE WELL AND VICE VERSA?
Abstract：The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between college-level ESL students’ speaking and writing. The measures of syntactic maturity were employed to study the syntactic development of speaking and writing of 10 students out of a total of 40 students. The rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data exhibited that the same subjects belonged to the high and low-rated subjects regarding both their speaking and writing performance. Concerning the objective measures, the findings indicated that the spoken data correlated with the written data positively and significantly in relation to all the measures of syntactic maturity.
Key words: syntactic maturity; English as second language; Video Oral Communication Instrument (VOCI); T-unit Analysis; relationship between speaking and writing
摘要:本研究旨在探讨大学生英语说和写之间的关系。研究者运用句构成熟（syntactic maturity）这种测量方法对10名学生的口语和写作表现进行水平评估，并加以排序。研究者发现，口语水平较高的被试就是写作水品较高的被试，而口语水品较低的被试也就是写作水平较低的被试。因此，英语作为第二语言学生说与写之间似乎存在正相关。此外，根据对本研究所运用的测量方法即句构成熟的各个指标的分析，学生的口语数据和写作数据在句构成熟的各个指标上都显示出有意义的正相关。 这一结果也说明了学生的说和写之间存在着正相关。
关键词：句构成熟（syntactic maturity）；英语作为第二语言（English as second language）；视频口语交流工具（Video Oral Communication Instrument）； T-unit分析；说和写的关系
1. Introduction
Numerous studies have been conducted on the relationship between speaking and writing development in L1 acquisition from different perspectives(e.g. Harrell 1957; Gleason 1965). Cramer (1978) stressed that speaking influenced writing positively since written language derives from oral language and stated that the teaching of reading and writing could maximize the connections between spoken and written language. Kroll(1981) stated there was a developmental trend on speaking and writing, which progressed through different phases of development. These studies have provided valuable information for L1 instructors to facilitate their students’ language acquisition.
However, fewer studies have been written about this issue on L2 acquisition. L2 instructors therefore have to turn to L1 acquisition studies for information on the relationship between speaking and writing for their teaching strategies. Nevertheless, Vann(1981) states that many questions need to be answered concerning this relationship. For example, “How much transfer of learning can we expect from one language skill area to another”. “Will fluent speakers make good writers?” “Why do some students have particular difficulty with one mode or another?(p.167)” Similarly, Kim (2000) points out the stages in L1 and L2 acquisition might not be the same. Thus, much research is needed to explore this relationship so as to enrich L2 acquisition theories and provide a guide for L2 instructors when they practice their teaching in classrooms.
1.1 Measuring Speaking and Writing Development with T-unit Analysis
Since Hunt (1965) and O’Donnell (1970) developed objective measures of syntactic maturity, they have been successfully used in both first and second language research. Syntactic maturity is defined as the ability to manipulate the syntax of the language, which is positively related with students’ age (Hunt 1965). Syntactic maturity can be measured by objective measures such as mean T-unit length (MTUL), mean error-free T-unit length(MEFTUL) and other indices. In terms of Hunt, T-unit is “minimal terminal syntactic maturity” i.e., any main clause with all of its modifiers(Nystrand 1982).Since T-unit can be objectively identifiable in both speech and writing, it has been used to measure the relationship between writing and speaking development in both L1 and L2 research.
1.1.1. L1 Research
A few studies have used T-units to explore the relationship between speaking and writing in L1 acquisition. Cayer and Sacks(1979) studied both the spoken and written samples of eight basic writers with T-unit count procedures in an effort to describe some of the similarities and differences between their oral and written discourse. They found that “some analogues and parallels do appear to exist between the two modes of discourse, particularly when the writer has not yet fully achieved mastery of skills needed to generate written language effectively”(p.126). O’Donnell and his colleagues’ study revealed that the average length of T-units was significantly greater in the speech than in the writing of third graders, but not of fifth and seventh graders. As students got older, written units became longer and more complex than spoken ones (O’Donnel, Griffin, & Norris 1967).O’Donnell (1974) divided both the written and spoken sample produced by an author and editor into T-units to test the value of a method of analysis and the hypotheses about the syntactic differences between the speech and writing. His findings showed that the median length of the written T-units is greater than that of the spoken T-units and there are more T-units with dependent clauses in writing than in speech. Most important of all, this study demonstrated that T-unit can be objectively identified and is useful as a unit for syntactic analysis.
1.1.2. L2 Research
T-unit analysis has been used widely in L2 research on either speaking or writing development (Cooper1976; Gaies1979; Kameen1983; Halleck1995). But a few studies shed light on the relationship between speaking and writing in L2 development, let alone the use of T-unit analysis. As far as the literature I’ve reviewed, Vann (1979) examined paired oral and written discourse of a group of 28 adult native speakers of Arabic studying English in the United States with the methodology based on previous research using native speakers. She found that “Oral compositions were almost twice as long as written ones (p.9)” and Both mean T-unit length and mean error-free T-unit length were longer in written than in oral discourse. Kim(1996, 1998 & 2000) conducted a study to compare speaking and writing development in a L2 college student over a two-year period. In this study, she analyzed errors and syntactic maturity in the subject’s writing development and his formal language institute oral interviews to determine whether the L2 college student followed the same pattern of writing and speaking development reported for L1 acquisition. Her findings indicate that errors decrease and syntactic maturity increases in the same way that it occurs in L1 development.Additionally, her study indicates that writing is of greater syntactic maturity than speaking in an L2, which agrees with the research in an L1 (e.g. Harrell 1957). The review of literature on syntactic maturity indicates that most L2 research using the T-unit analysis has focused on writing rather than speaking. For instance, twenty-one studies reviewed by Ortega(2003) are also concerned with writing. Very few studies have paid attention to speaking in L2, which should be an important part in L2 development. The earliest study that examined the spoken data with syntactic maturity measures was conducted by Thornhill (1970), who discovered that remarkable parallels existed between the trends in the language behavior in both L1 acquisition and L2 learning. Halleck (1995) compared holistic ratings of ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) and objective measures of syntactic maturity to investigate the syntactic basis of ACTFL’s holistic ratings and examine the relationship between oral proficiency and syntactic maturity. Her findings demonstrate that levels of syntactic maturity vary according to interview tasks and objective measures of syntactic maturity overall correlate with holistic evaluation. In other words, her study provides some empirical evidence that measures of syntactic maturity can be used to demonstrate second and foreign language learners’ oral proficiency. Therefore, further studies should attend to the use of syntactic maturity measures in L2 speaking in order to get an overall picture of L2 development.
2. Purpose
The purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL students. Specifically, this study used the measures of syntactic maturity to investigate the syntactic development of speaking and writing. I was interested in finding answers to the following research questions. Is there a relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL students? If there is this relationship, what is it?
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Subjects
The 40 students who participated in this study were enrolled in a college-level ESL composition course, International Freshman Composition I at Oklahoma State University, majoring in public administration, international business, communication sciences and disorders, electrical engineering, architecture, computer science and accounting. These subjects came from different countries such as Korea, Japan, Uzbekistan, Taiwan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh. The length of their stay in the United States ranged from 5 days to 1.5 years with a mean of 4.3 months. The average number of years spent studying English was 8.1 years with a range of 2 to 15 years.
3. 2. Instrument
The instrument, the Video Oral Communication Instrument (VOCI) for ESL/EFL was used to assess the oral proficiency of the subjects. The measures of syntactic maturity were employed to examine the syntactic development of both the subjects’ oral and written language.
3.2.1. VOCI
VOCI is a semi-direct and tape-mediated speaking test, which is used as an alternative for the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) to determine level of oral proficiency. This study particularly used the English version, the VOCI for ESL/EFL, which was developed at San Diego State University’s Language Acquisition Resource Center(LARC) by Halleck and Young(1995). Like other semi-direct speaking tests such as Test of Spoken English, the VOCI uses video stimuli to elicit samples of oral performance from the subjects. In the VOCI test, the participants create a context or situation and then ask the test-taker a question related to the situation or the context. The test-taker then has to respond to the question accordingly and the response is recorded with a manually operated audio recorder. Specifically, the test-taker watches the audio-visual stimulus and pauses the VCR with a remote control to respond to the question asked by the participant. After the test-taker finishes answering the question, he or she restarts the video and watches the next video. The VOCI takes two forms: one with time constraints (a timed version) and the other without time constraints (an untimed version). The present study used the untimed version.
The VOCI for ESL/EFL used in this study consists of a total of 23 questions (Please see Appendix A for a complete transcript of the VOCI questions), which assess the four proficiency levels: novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior levels defined by the ACTFL(American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) guidelines (1986). The speech tasks elicited by the VOCI vary from describing, comparing and contrasting to supporting an opinion and hypothesizing. Table 1 presents examples of such questions and the level of difficulty represented by each question.
3.2.2. Measures of syntactic maturity
The measure of syntactic maturity was used to investigate the relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL. Seven measures of syntactic maturity were used in this study to examine the syntactic development of both the subjects’ speaking and writing. Specifically, these measures are total number of words (TNW), mean T-Unit length (MTUL), mean error-free T-Unit length (MEFTUL), and percentage of error-free T-unit (%EFTU), subordination ratio (SR), mean clause length (MCL) and dependent clauses per clause(DC/C). Of these measures, TNW, MTUL and MCL tap length of production at the clausal and phrasal level. MEFTL and %EFTU measure the accuracy of both spoken and written performance. SR and DC/C gauge the amount of subordination in spoken and written data. As far as the calculation of these indices were concerned, the total number of words included in each language sample, and the total number of T-units were counted, as well as the total number of dependent clauses and the total number of error-free T-units. On this basis, six indices were then determined through the following formulas:
MTUL=number of words/number of T-units
MCL = number of words/number of T-units+number of dependent clauses
MEFTL=number of words/number of error-free T-units
%EFTU=number of error-free T-units/number of T-units
SR=number of T-units+number of dependent clauses/number of T-units
DC/C=number of dependent clauses/number of T-units+number of dependent clauses
3.3. Data collection
The written samples were collected from all the subjects and the spoken samples were gathered from those subjects who participated in the VOCI test, which will be explained later in the article. The written samples were taken from the first draft of the diagnostic essay the subjects wrote for the course of International Composition I. The essay prompt is to describe three underlying rules shaping student behavior in American classrooms which they had discovered since they came to Oklahoma State University. Compared to other essays written for this course, the diagnostic essay is written in class, so it has less planning time than other essays that are written after class by the students. Therefore, the use of the diagnostic essays increases the comparability between the spoken and written data.
3.3.1. Written sample
40 essays were originally collected from the second written assignment of the class. Then, according to the rating of the instructor, 20 students took part in the study: 10 high-rated and 10 low-rated students. After the written samples were collected, three raters graded the papers holistically on a scale of 100. A higher interrater reliability was found between Raters 1 and 2 (r=0.91; p=0.0002) than between Rater 3 and the other two raters, respectively. As Davies, et al.(1999) suggests, a correlation coefficient of more than 0.8 indicates a good interrater reliability. So, the rating between Raters 1 and 2 was used as the evaluation of the written samples. The ratings of these two raters were averaged, which were then transferred to the rank-order of the written samples from 1 to 10. Accordingly, 5 high-rated and 5 low-rated students were finally chosen to take the spoken test in this study in order to obtain the corresponding spoken sample. The average of 5 high-rated students’ written score was 90.1 and that of the 5 low-rated students’ written score was 77.1. So, there were 13 points apart between the written samples of 5 high-rated and 5 low-rated students.
3.3.2. Spoken Sample
After the written data of these 10 students were collected, the spoken data were gathered through the students’ participation in the VOCI. The subjects took the VOCI in a testing room alone in order for them to feel less nervous. As noted earlier, the VOCI is a semi-direct, tape-mediated oral proficiency test, which lasts approximately 30 minutes and consists of a total of 23 questions (Please see Appendix A for the VOCI questions). Of these 23 questions, the subjects’ answers to 17 questions were used for analysis mainly according to the familiarity of the topics of these questions. These 17 questions are questions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22 and 23. In a specific manner, questions 1 and 2 function as the practice questions in order for the students to familiarize themselves with the use of the machines. Questions 13, 14, 19 and 20 were not used for data analysis because the researcher felt that the subjects might not be familiar with the topics such as “lasting peace” (Q13), “abstract painting”(Q14), “free trade”(Q19), “televising trials”(Q20). After the collection of the spoken samples, they were rated and rank-ordered from 1 to 10 by a certified OPI tester according to the ACTFL Guidelines (1986). After the spoken samples were gathered, they were transcribed. In regard to the spoken sample, each subject’s answers to all the above-mentioned 17 VOCI questions were taken as a whole to be analyzed in comparison with the subjects’ written samples.
3.4. Research Hypotheses
The hypotheses of the study are to examine the relationship between speaking and writing with respect to high-and low-rated subjects. The categorization of the subjects into high-and low-rated subjects depends on the rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data, which will be revealed in hypothesis 1. Specifically, they study whether students with good writing skills have good speaking skills and vice versa. Hypothesis 1 concerns the rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data.
If hypothesis 1 is sustained, there will be 5 high-rated subjects and 5 low-rated ones in regard to both samples. Specifically speaking, 5 high-rated students will be ranked highly in both samples and 5 low-rated students will be placed in the low rank area in both samples. Hypothesis 2 is concerned with the correlation between each subject’s spoken and written sample in relation to the indices of syntactic maturity. This hypothesis explores whether students who are found to speak well are judged to write well too and vice versa, which take all subjects’ written and spoken performance into account. These two hypotheses are as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Students who were ranked highly in the spoken samples will be those who were ranked highly in the written samples and vice versa.
Hypothesis 2: The written samples will positively correlate with the spoken sample with regard to the measures of syntactic maturity for all subjects.
3.5. Data Analysis
Two procedures were carried out to analyze statistical data in regard to the purpose of this study. First, the objective measures of syntactic maturity and lexical density were marked and tallied in both the spoken and written samples. Second, the data were analyzed using version 3.03 of the statistical software GraphPad Prism. Pearson product-moment correlation was carried out to demonstrate how each measure in the spoken and written data correlates with each other so as to investigate the relationship between speaking and writing. Finally, the level of significance was computed with version 8 of SAS software to examine whether the results obtained were statistically significant or not. Results were considered significant at the p <.05 level.
4. Results and Discussion
Given the purpose of the study, this section first demonstrates the rank-order of the subjects in terms of their speaking and writing performance. And then, results of the measures of syntactic maturity are analyzed to further explore this relationship.
4.1. The Rank-Order of the Subjects
Table 2 provides an overview of how the subjects’ speaking and writing related to each other in terms of the rank-order of the subjects in accordance to their speaking and writing performance. Both the spoken and written samples were ranked from 1 to 10. In order to protect the confidentiality of the subjects, pseudonyms were used to identify each subject. With regard to the spoken samples, Melody, Andrea and Polina were rated as No 1, since these subjects had the highest level of oral proficiency. Similarly, John and Kala were both ranked as No 4 and Anna and Tom were rated No 8. As revealed in the table, Melody, Andrea, Polina, John and Kala were rated highly in both spoken and written samples as compared to Anna, Emily, Tom, Jack and Mike, who were ranked in both samples as the low-level group. In other words, Melody, Andrea, Polina, John and Kala belonged to the high-rated group while Anna, Emily, Tom, Jack and Mike were in the low-rated group in both samples. In general, this finding indicates that subjects who write well also speak well and vice versa.
Concerning the spoken samples, the difference is related to the holistic nature of the oral proficiency rating scales. With a close look at the table, one could find that Melody, Andrea and Polina were rated No 1 in the spoken sample as compared to No 1, 2 and 3, respectively in the written sample. So, they were almost ranked the same in both the spoken and written samples. The same observation could also apply to John and Kala, who were ranked No 4 in the spoken sample and No 4 and 5 in the written sample. As far as the low-rated subjects were concerned, Mike was ranked No 10 in both samples. Thus, the rank-order of the subjects in light of their speaking and writing performance indicated that there seemed to exist a positive relationship between the subjects’ speaking and writing. Stated differently, if students are found to write well, they are judged to speak well too and vice versa.
4.2. The Correlation between Speaking and Writing regarding High-and Low-rated Subjects with Measures of Syntactic Maturity
As mentioned earlier, the measures of syntactic maturity were used to investigate the syntactic development of the subjects’ speaking and writing. The analysis of this relationship with measures of syntactic maturity was particularly concerned with the correlation between spoken and written sample in terms of the measures of syntactic maturity. If such correlation can be found between two modes, it may be concluded that the one who speaks well also writes well and vice versa.
Table 3 reflects this correlation with measures of syntactic maturity. In Table 3, a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to show the relationship between the spoken and written data. As far as this correlation is concerned, TNW was not considered because the topics of the written and spoken data were different from each other. Besides, there were 17 topics in the spoken data as opposed to 1 topic in the written data. So, the spoken and written data were not of comparability in terms of this index. Thus, all the other measures except TNW were calculated to exhibit this correlation. Of all the measures, MTUL showed the strongest correlation with a correlation coefficient r being 0.85 followed by DC/C (r=0.75), %EFTU (r=0.72), SR (r=0.71), MCL (r=0.67) and MEFTUL (r=0.67).
As indicated in this table, the spoken and written data were found to positively and significantly correlate with each other in light of all the measures. So, it supports the assumption made above that the one with good speaking skills has good writing skills and vice versa. When examined closely, it can be noted that MTUL demonstrates the strongest correlation between the spoken and written data followed by DC/C, %EFTU, SR, MEFTUL and MCL, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded from Table 3 that the students with good speaking skills have good writing skills and vice versa. Besides, MTUL is the most sensitive index to exhibit the relationship between speaking and writing with respect to high-and low-rated students.
To sum up, significant correlation between the two samples was found in regard to all the measures of syntactic maturity. Therefore, it can be concluded that measures of syntactic maturity are good indicators of levels of proficiency.
5. Conclusion
The conclusion of the study is presented by a discussion of outcomes of the hypotheses and implications of the results. Hypothesis 1 deals with the rank-order of the subjects in both the spoken and written samples. The results of the present study show that the same subjects were ranked as high- and low-rated groups in both spoken and written samples. That is to say, the subjects who were ranked highly in the spoken samples were also ranked highly in the written samples and vice versa. Therefore, this hypothesis is proved.
Based on hypothesis 1, hypothesis 2 investigates whether the spoken and written samples for all subjects correlate with each other. They take into account all subjects’ written and spoken performance. The results of the study demonstrated a positive and significant correlation between spoken and written data with respect to all the measures of syntactic maturity. This meant that students with good speaking skills had good writing skills and vice versa. So, this hypothesis is sustained.
The findings of the present study seemed to indicate that there was a positive relationship between speaking and writing according to the rank-order of the subjects and the analysis of syntactic maturity of both the spoken and written samples.However, this implication cannot be generalized, because other aspects of this relationship have to be considered to get an overall picture of this relationship. In addition, with regard to the measures of syntactic maturity, the present study found that the measures of syntactic maturity could distinguish between proficiency levels.
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Appendix: VOCI Questions
Q1: Hello, my name is Gene and this is Ron. What’s your name?
Q2: I am from New York and Ron is from Wisconsin. Where are you from?
Q3: This is a picture of my hometown. Tell us about your hometown?
Q4: Instead of writing letters, you have decided to send a cassette message to a friend back home. Describe where you are living now and what you’ve been doing recently.
Q5: I’m so happy my best friend just got back from vacation. I really missed him a lot. My best friend moved away and she’s impossible to replace because she’s so special. Describe one of your friends.
Q6: Because of a last minute problem you missed a dinner engagement with a friend. You called to apologize, but your friend is not yet home, so you need to leave a message on the answering machine apologizing for the date and explaining why you were not there.
Q7: Did you know that I went to New York last month? It sure is an interesting city. What’s so special about it? The entire time I was there I tried to compare it with our city. There are lots of differences, but on the other hand, lots of things are similar. Can you compare your hometown with a city that you visited or you know well?
Q8: One thing that I didn’t like about New York was that it is so big. I never really feel comfortable in big cities anymore. Really, I love city life. There’s nothing more fascinating that a really big city. Not me. There are too many problems I guess. What do you think? What are the advantages or disadvantages of big city life?
Q9: Yes, that’s just really unbelievable. It was a really terrific experience. There are some experiences you just can’t forget. That’s true. Have you ever had such an experience? An experience that you’ll never forget. It can be something positive or it can be something negative. Tell us about it.
Q10: So, you finally made up your mind? Yes, and I’m really excited about it. Then you must have pretty concrete plans for the next few years? I have a good idea about what my life might be like. And you, what are your plans? What do you need to reach your goals? How might your life look ten years from now?
Q11: You have a summer job selling great books. I’m a potential customer. Convince me why I should buy the books from you.
Q12: Gene, did you read about the student who took one of these Swiss army knives to school with him in his pocket? No, what happened? Well, when he was using the scissors part of it, his teacher caught him and she took the knife away from him and they expelled him from school. I don’t get it. It looks like an innocent tool to me. Well, their school has a zero tolerance policy and they considered a Swiss army knife as a weapon. If you were the principal of this school, what would you do about this issue?
Q13: Wow, look at the headlines, another war. There have always been wars. It’s nothing new. It’s just human nature. Not necessarily. How do you feel about this issue? How do you think we could create a lasting peace?
Q14: I really love this painting. I don’t understand it at all. Tell us why you think this is or isn’t art.
Q15: My computer is broken again. Man, what a disaster. I feel so dependent on this machine. Yeah, modern technology can make life easy, but sometimes it can cause a lot of frustrations too. Discuss the positive benefits and the negative consequences of our dependence on such machines.
Q16: Some undergraduates at American universities think that native speakers of English make the most effective teachers. On the other hand, some people think the advantages of having an international teacher outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think?
Q17: If you were a teacher and you discovered one of your students had cheated on a test by copying from another student’s paper, what would you do?
Q18: In many countries, higher education is for an elite group of students. Not everybody can go to the university. That certainly isn’t the case in this country. Our universities are open to almost everyone regardless of their background. I can see the pros and cons of both types of educational systems. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both types of educational systems.
Q19: You know, I’m reading an article here on free trade in Europe and in America and it says that everybody benefits from having a free trade. No, I don’t know. There’s still an awful lot of opposition in a few countries to the whole issue of free trade. Take one position and defend your opinion regarding the issue of free trade.
Q20: Did you know that US laws allow trials to be televised? Yes, several high profile trials have been televised recently because of the freedom of information act. I wonder if that’s such a good idea? What do you think about televising criminal trials?
Q21: Have you noticed how many shows on TV portray violent crimes? Pretty hard not to notice. Some people feel that this creates violence in our society. Yeah, but other people feel it doesn’t have any effect at all on our young people. In fact, they’re proud of this country’s freedom of expression. What do you think about the portrayal of violence and crime on TV?
Q22: Three must be problems in your country too. What are some of the problems in your country? Suggest some solutions and discuss the implications of these solutions.
Q23: This is the last question. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably taken other
English tests. If so, how does this test compare to other English tests you have taken.
Abstract：The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between college-level ESL students’ speaking and writing. The measures of syntactic maturity were employed to study the syntactic development of speaking and writing of 10 students out of a total of 40 students. The rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data exhibited that the same subjects belonged to the high and low-rated subjects regarding both their speaking and writing performance. Concerning the objective measures, the findings indicated that the spoken data correlated with the written data positively and significantly in relation to all the measures of syntactic maturity.
Key words: syntactic maturity; English as second language; Video Oral Communication Instrument (VOCI); T-unit Analysis; relationship between speaking and writing
摘要:本研究旨在探讨大学生英语说和写之间的关系。研究者运用句构成熟（syntactic maturity）这种测量方法对10名学生的口语和写作表现进行水平评估，并加以排序。研究者发现，口语水平较高的被试就是写作水品较高的被试，而口语水品较低的被试也就是写作水平较低的被试。因此，英语作为第二语言学生说与写之间似乎存在正相关。此外，根据对本研究所运用的测量方法即句构成熟的各个指标的分析，学生的口语数据和写作数据在句构成熟的各个指标上都显示出有意义的正相关。 这一结果也说明了学生的说和写之间存在着正相关。
关键词：句构成熟（syntactic maturity）；英语作为第二语言（English as second language）；视频口语交流工具（Video Oral Communication Instrument）； T-unit分析；说和写的关系
1. Introduction
Numerous studies have been conducted on the relationship between speaking and writing development in L1 acquisition from different perspectives(e.g. Harrell 1957; Gleason 1965). Cramer (1978) stressed that speaking influenced writing positively since written language derives from oral language and stated that the teaching of reading and writing could maximize the connections between spoken and written language. Kroll(1981) stated there was a developmental trend on speaking and writing, which progressed through different phases of development. These studies have provided valuable information for L1 instructors to facilitate their students’ language acquisition.
However, fewer studies have been written about this issue on L2 acquisition. L2 instructors therefore have to turn to L1 acquisition studies for information on the relationship between speaking and writing for their teaching strategies. Nevertheless, Vann(1981) states that many questions need to be answered concerning this relationship. For example, “How much transfer of learning can we expect from one language skill area to another”. “Will fluent speakers make good writers?” “Why do some students have particular difficulty with one mode or another?(p.167)” Similarly, Kim (2000) points out the stages in L1 and L2 acquisition might not be the same. Thus, much research is needed to explore this relationship so as to enrich L2 acquisition theories and provide a guide for L2 instructors when they practice their teaching in classrooms.
1.1 Measuring Speaking and Writing Development with T-unit Analysis
Since Hunt (1965) and O’Donnell (1970) developed objective measures of syntactic maturity, they have been successfully used in both first and second language research. Syntactic maturity is defined as the ability to manipulate the syntax of the language, which is positively related with students’ age (Hunt 1965). Syntactic maturity can be measured by objective measures such as mean T-unit length (MTUL), mean error-free T-unit length(MEFTUL) and other indices. In terms of Hunt, T-unit is “minimal terminal syntactic maturity” i.e., any main clause with all of its modifiers(Nystrand 1982).Since T-unit can be objectively identifiable in both speech and writing, it has been used to measure the relationship between writing and speaking development in both L1 and L2 research.
1.1.1. L1 Research
A few studies have used T-units to explore the relationship between speaking and writing in L1 acquisition. Cayer and Sacks(1979) studied both the spoken and written samples of eight basic writers with T-unit count procedures in an effort to describe some of the similarities and differences between their oral and written discourse. They found that “some analogues and parallels do appear to exist between the two modes of discourse, particularly when the writer has not yet fully achieved mastery of skills needed to generate written language effectively”(p.126). O’Donnell and his colleagues’ study revealed that the average length of T-units was significantly greater in the speech than in the writing of third graders, but not of fifth and seventh graders. As students got older, written units became longer and more complex than spoken ones (O’Donnel, Griffin, & Norris 1967).O’Donnell (1974) divided both the written and spoken sample produced by an author and editor into T-units to test the value of a method of analysis and the hypotheses about the syntactic differences between the speech and writing. His findings showed that the median length of the written T-units is greater than that of the spoken T-units and there are more T-units with dependent clauses in writing than in speech. Most important of all, this study demonstrated that T-unit can be objectively identified and is useful as a unit for syntactic analysis.
1.1.2. L2 Research
T-unit analysis has been used widely in L2 research on either speaking or writing development (Cooper1976; Gaies1979; Kameen1983; Halleck1995). But a few studies shed light on the relationship between speaking and writing in L2 development, let alone the use of T-unit analysis. As far as the literature I’ve reviewed, Vann (1979) examined paired oral and written discourse of a group of 28 adult native speakers of Arabic studying English in the United States with the methodology based on previous research using native speakers. She found that “Oral compositions were almost twice as long as written ones (p.9)” and Both mean T-unit length and mean error-free T-unit length were longer in written than in oral discourse. Kim(1996, 1998 & 2000) conducted a study to compare speaking and writing development in a L2 college student over a two-year period. In this study, she analyzed errors and syntactic maturity in the subject’s writing development and his formal language institute oral interviews to determine whether the L2 college student followed the same pattern of writing and speaking development reported for L1 acquisition. Her findings indicate that errors decrease and syntactic maturity increases in the same way that it occurs in L1 development.Additionally, her study indicates that writing is of greater syntactic maturity than speaking in an L2, which agrees with the research in an L1 (e.g. Harrell 1957). The review of literature on syntactic maturity indicates that most L2 research using the T-unit analysis has focused on writing rather than speaking. For instance, twenty-one studies reviewed by Ortega(2003) are also concerned with writing. Very few studies have paid attention to speaking in L2, which should be an important part in L2 development. The earliest study that examined the spoken data with syntactic maturity measures was conducted by Thornhill (1970), who discovered that remarkable parallels existed between the trends in the language behavior in both L1 acquisition and L2 learning. Halleck (1995) compared holistic ratings of ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) and objective measures of syntactic maturity to investigate the syntactic basis of ACTFL’s holistic ratings and examine the relationship between oral proficiency and syntactic maturity. Her findings demonstrate that levels of syntactic maturity vary according to interview tasks and objective measures of syntactic maturity overall correlate with holistic evaluation. In other words, her study provides some empirical evidence that measures of syntactic maturity can be used to demonstrate second and foreign language learners’ oral proficiency. Therefore, further studies should attend to the use of syntactic maturity measures in L2 speaking in order to get an overall picture of L2 development.
2. Purpose
The purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL students. Specifically, this study used the measures of syntactic maturity to investigate the syntactic development of speaking and writing. I was interested in finding answers to the following research questions. Is there a relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL students? If there is this relationship, what is it?
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Subjects
The 40 students who participated in this study were enrolled in a college-level ESL composition course, International Freshman Composition I at Oklahoma State University, majoring in public administration, international business, communication sciences and disorders, electrical engineering, architecture, computer science and accounting. These subjects came from different countries such as Korea, Japan, Uzbekistan, Taiwan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh. The length of their stay in the United States ranged from 5 days to 1.5 years with a mean of 4.3 months. The average number of years spent studying English was 8.1 years with a range of 2 to 15 years.
3. 2. Instrument
The instrument, the Video Oral Communication Instrument (VOCI) for ESL/EFL was used to assess the oral proficiency of the subjects. The measures of syntactic maturity were employed to examine the syntactic development of both the subjects’ oral and written language.
3.2.1. VOCI
VOCI is a semi-direct and tape-mediated speaking test, which is used as an alternative for the OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) to determine level of oral proficiency. This study particularly used the English version, the VOCI for ESL/EFL, which was developed at San Diego State University’s Language Acquisition Resource Center(LARC) by Halleck and Young(1995). Like other semi-direct speaking tests such as Test of Spoken English, the VOCI uses video stimuli to elicit samples of oral performance from the subjects. In the VOCI test, the participants create a context or situation and then ask the test-taker a question related to the situation or the context. The test-taker then has to respond to the question accordingly and the response is recorded with a manually operated audio recorder. Specifically, the test-taker watches the audio-visual stimulus and pauses the VCR with a remote control to respond to the question asked by the participant. After the test-taker finishes answering the question, he or she restarts the video and watches the next video. The VOCI takes two forms: one with time constraints (a timed version) and the other without time constraints (an untimed version). The present study used the untimed version.
The VOCI for ESL/EFL used in this study consists of a total of 23 questions (Please see Appendix A for a complete transcript of the VOCI questions), which assess the four proficiency levels: novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior levels defined by the ACTFL(American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) guidelines (1986). The speech tasks elicited by the VOCI vary from describing, comparing and contrasting to supporting an opinion and hypothesizing. Table 1 presents examples of such questions and the level of difficulty represented by each question.
3.2.2. Measures of syntactic maturity
The measure of syntactic maturity was used to investigate the relationship between speaking and writing in college-level ESL. Seven measures of syntactic maturity were used in this study to examine the syntactic development of both the subjects’ speaking and writing. Specifically, these measures are total number of words (TNW), mean T-Unit length (MTUL), mean error-free T-Unit length (MEFTUL), and percentage of error-free T-unit (%EFTU), subordination ratio (SR), mean clause length (MCL) and dependent clauses per clause(DC/C). Of these measures, TNW, MTUL and MCL tap length of production at the clausal and phrasal level. MEFTL and %EFTU measure the accuracy of both spoken and written performance. SR and DC/C gauge the amount of subordination in spoken and written data. As far as the calculation of these indices were concerned, the total number of words included in each language sample, and the total number of T-units were counted, as well as the total number of dependent clauses and the total number of error-free T-units. On this basis, six indices were then determined through the following formulas:
MTUL=number of words/number of T-units
MCL = number of words/number of T-units+number of dependent clauses
MEFTL=number of words/number of error-free T-units
%EFTU=number of error-free T-units/number of T-units
SR=number of T-units+number of dependent clauses/number of T-units
DC/C=number of dependent clauses/number of T-units+number of dependent clauses
3.3. Data collection
The written samples were collected from all the subjects and the spoken samples were gathered from those subjects who participated in the VOCI test, which will be explained later in the article. The written samples were taken from the first draft of the diagnostic essay the subjects wrote for the course of International Composition I. The essay prompt is to describe three underlying rules shaping student behavior in American classrooms which they had discovered since they came to Oklahoma State University. Compared to other essays written for this course, the diagnostic essay is written in class, so it has less planning time than other essays that are written after class by the students. Therefore, the use of the diagnostic essays increases the comparability between the spoken and written data.
3.3.1. Written sample
40 essays were originally collected from the second written assignment of the class. Then, according to the rating of the instructor, 20 students took part in the study: 10 high-rated and 10 low-rated students. After the written samples were collected, three raters graded the papers holistically on a scale of 100. A higher interrater reliability was found between Raters 1 and 2 (r=0.91; p=0.0002) than between Rater 3 and the other two raters, respectively. As Davies, et al.(1999) suggests, a correlation coefficient of more than 0.8 indicates a good interrater reliability. So, the rating between Raters 1 and 2 was used as the evaluation of the written samples. The ratings of these two raters were averaged, which were then transferred to the rank-order of the written samples from 1 to 10. Accordingly, 5 high-rated and 5 low-rated students were finally chosen to take the spoken test in this study in order to obtain the corresponding spoken sample. The average of 5 high-rated students’ written score was 90.1 and that of the 5 low-rated students’ written score was 77.1. So, there were 13 points apart between the written samples of 5 high-rated and 5 low-rated students.
3.3.2. Spoken Sample
After the written data of these 10 students were collected, the spoken data were gathered through the students’ participation in the VOCI. The subjects took the VOCI in a testing room alone in order for them to feel less nervous. As noted earlier, the VOCI is a semi-direct, tape-mediated oral proficiency test, which lasts approximately 30 minutes and consists of a total of 23 questions (Please see Appendix A for the VOCI questions). Of these 23 questions, the subjects’ answers to 17 questions were used for analysis mainly according to the familiarity of the topics of these questions. These 17 questions are questions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22 and 23. In a specific manner, questions 1 and 2 function as the practice questions in order for the students to familiarize themselves with the use of the machines. Questions 13, 14, 19 and 20 were not used for data analysis because the researcher felt that the subjects might not be familiar with the topics such as “lasting peace” (Q13), “abstract painting”(Q14), “free trade”(Q19), “televising trials”(Q20). After the collection of the spoken samples, they were rated and rank-ordered from 1 to 10 by a certified OPI tester according to the ACTFL Guidelines (1986). After the spoken samples were gathered, they were transcribed. In regard to the spoken sample, each subject’s answers to all the above-mentioned 17 VOCI questions were taken as a whole to be analyzed in comparison with the subjects’ written samples.
3.4. Research Hypotheses
The hypotheses of the study are to examine the relationship between speaking and writing with respect to high-and low-rated subjects. The categorization of the subjects into high-and low-rated subjects depends on the rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data, which will be revealed in hypothesis 1. Specifically, they study whether students with good writing skills have good speaking skills and vice versa. Hypothesis 1 concerns the rank-order of the subjects’ spoken and written data.
If hypothesis 1 is sustained, there will be 5 high-rated subjects and 5 low-rated ones in regard to both samples. Specifically speaking, 5 high-rated students will be ranked highly in both samples and 5 low-rated students will be placed in the low rank area in both samples. Hypothesis 2 is concerned with the correlation between each subject’s spoken and written sample in relation to the indices of syntactic maturity. This hypothesis explores whether students who are found to speak well are judged to write well too and vice versa, which take all subjects’ written and spoken performance into account. These two hypotheses are as follows:
Hypothesis 1: Students who were ranked highly in the spoken samples will be those who were ranked highly in the written samples and vice versa.
Hypothesis 2: The written samples will positively correlate with the spoken sample with regard to the measures of syntactic maturity for all subjects.
3.5. Data Analysis
Two procedures were carried out to analyze statistical data in regard to the purpose of this study. First, the objective measures of syntactic maturity and lexical density were marked and tallied in both the spoken and written samples. Second, the data were analyzed using version 3.03 of the statistical software GraphPad Prism. Pearson product-moment correlation was carried out to demonstrate how each measure in the spoken and written data correlates with each other so as to investigate the relationship between speaking and writing. Finally, the level of significance was computed with version 8 of SAS software to examine whether the results obtained were statistically significant or not. Results were considered significant at the p <.05 level.
4. Results and Discussion
Given the purpose of the study, this section first demonstrates the rank-order of the subjects in terms of their speaking and writing performance. And then, results of the measures of syntactic maturity are analyzed to further explore this relationship.
4.1. The Rank-Order of the Subjects
Table 2 provides an overview of how the subjects’ speaking and writing related to each other in terms of the rank-order of the subjects in accordance to their speaking and writing performance. Both the spoken and written samples were ranked from 1 to 10. In order to protect the confidentiality of the subjects, pseudonyms were used to identify each subject. With regard to the spoken samples, Melody, Andrea and Polina were rated as No 1, since these subjects had the highest level of oral proficiency. Similarly, John and Kala were both ranked as No 4 and Anna and Tom were rated No 8. As revealed in the table, Melody, Andrea, Polina, John and Kala were rated highly in both spoken and written samples as compared to Anna, Emily, Tom, Jack and Mike, who were ranked in both samples as the low-level group. In other words, Melody, Andrea, Polina, John and Kala belonged to the high-rated group while Anna, Emily, Tom, Jack and Mike were in the low-rated group in both samples. In general, this finding indicates that subjects who write well also speak well and vice versa.
Concerning the spoken samples, the difference is related to the holistic nature of the oral proficiency rating scales. With a close look at the table, one could find that Melody, Andrea and Polina were rated No 1 in the spoken sample as compared to No 1, 2 and 3, respectively in the written sample. So, they were almost ranked the same in both the spoken and written samples. The same observation could also apply to John and Kala, who were ranked No 4 in the spoken sample and No 4 and 5 in the written sample. As far as the low-rated subjects were concerned, Mike was ranked No 10 in both samples. Thus, the rank-order of the subjects in light of their speaking and writing performance indicated that there seemed to exist a positive relationship between the subjects’ speaking and writing. Stated differently, if students are found to write well, they are judged to speak well too and vice versa.
4.2. The Correlation between Speaking and Writing regarding High-and Low-rated Subjects with Measures of Syntactic Maturity
As mentioned earlier, the measures of syntactic maturity were used to investigate the syntactic development of the subjects’ speaking and writing. The analysis of this relationship with measures of syntactic maturity was particularly concerned with the correlation between spoken and written sample in terms of the measures of syntactic maturity. If such correlation can be found between two modes, it may be concluded that the one who speaks well also writes well and vice versa.
Table 3 reflects this correlation with measures of syntactic maturity. In Table 3, a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to show the relationship between the spoken and written data. As far as this correlation is concerned, TNW was not considered because the topics of the written and spoken data were different from each other. Besides, there were 17 topics in the spoken data as opposed to 1 topic in the written data. So, the spoken and written data were not of comparability in terms of this index. Thus, all the other measures except TNW were calculated to exhibit this correlation. Of all the measures, MTUL showed the strongest correlation with a correlation coefficient r being 0.85 followed by DC/C (r=0.75), %EFTU (r=0.72), SR (r=0.71), MCL (r=0.67) and MEFTUL (r=0.67).
As indicated in this table, the spoken and written data were found to positively and significantly correlate with each other in light of all the measures. So, it supports the assumption made above that the one with good speaking skills has good writing skills and vice versa. When examined closely, it can be noted that MTUL demonstrates the strongest correlation between the spoken and written data followed by DC/C, %EFTU, SR, MEFTUL and MCL, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded from Table 3 that the students with good speaking skills have good writing skills and vice versa. Besides, MTUL is the most sensitive index to exhibit the relationship between speaking and writing with respect to high-and low-rated students.
To sum up, significant correlation between the two samples was found in regard to all the measures of syntactic maturity. Therefore, it can be concluded that measures of syntactic maturity are good indicators of levels of proficiency.
5. Conclusion
The conclusion of the study is presented by a discussion of outcomes of the hypotheses and implications of the results. Hypothesis 1 deals with the rank-order of the subjects in both the spoken and written samples. The results of the present study show that the same subjects were ranked as high- and low-rated groups in both spoken and written samples. That is to say, the subjects who were ranked highly in the spoken samples were also ranked highly in the written samples and vice versa. Therefore, this hypothesis is proved.
Based on hypothesis 1, hypothesis 2 investigates whether the spoken and written samples for all subjects correlate with each other. They take into account all subjects’ written and spoken performance. The results of the study demonstrated a positive and significant correlation between spoken and written data with respect to all the measures of syntactic maturity. This meant that students with good speaking skills had good writing skills and vice versa. So, this hypothesis is sustained.
The findings of the present study seemed to indicate that there was a positive relationship between speaking and writing according to the rank-order of the subjects and the analysis of syntactic maturity of both the spoken and written samples.However, this implication cannot be generalized, because other aspects of this relationship have to be considered to get an overall picture of this relationship. In addition, with regard to the measures of syntactic maturity, the present study found that the measures of syntactic maturity could distinguish between proficiency levels.
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Appendix: VOCI Questions
Q1: Hello, my name is Gene and this is Ron. What’s your name?
Q2: I am from New York and Ron is from Wisconsin. Where are you from?
Q3: This is a picture of my hometown. Tell us about your hometown?
Q4: Instead of writing letters, you have decided to send a cassette message to a friend back home. Describe where you are living now and what you’ve been doing recently.
Q5: I’m so happy my best friend just got back from vacation. I really missed him a lot. My best friend moved away and she’s impossible to replace because she’s so special. Describe one of your friends.
Q6: Because of a last minute problem you missed a dinner engagement with a friend. You called to apologize, but your friend is not yet home, so you need to leave a message on the answering machine apologizing for the date and explaining why you were not there.
Q7: Did you know that I went to New York last month? It sure is an interesting city. What’s so special about it? The entire time I was there I tried to compare it with our city. There are lots of differences, but on the other hand, lots of things are similar. Can you compare your hometown with a city that you visited or you know well?
Q8: One thing that I didn’t like about New York was that it is so big. I never really feel comfortable in big cities anymore. Really, I love city life. There’s nothing more fascinating that a really big city. Not me. There are too many problems I guess. What do you think? What are the advantages or disadvantages of big city life?
Q9: Yes, that’s just really unbelievable. It was a really terrific experience. There are some experiences you just can’t forget. That’s true. Have you ever had such an experience? An experience that you’ll never forget. It can be something positive or it can be something negative. Tell us about it.
Q10: So, you finally made up your mind? Yes, and I’m really excited about it. Then you must have pretty concrete plans for the next few years? I have a good idea about what my life might be like. And you, what are your plans? What do you need to reach your goals? How might your life look ten years from now?
Q11: You have a summer job selling great books. I’m a potential customer. Convince me why I should buy the books from you.
Q12: Gene, did you read about the student who took one of these Swiss army knives to school with him in his pocket? No, what happened? Well, when he was using the scissors part of it, his teacher caught him and she took the knife away from him and they expelled him from school. I don’t get it. It looks like an innocent tool to me. Well, their school has a zero tolerance policy and they considered a Swiss army knife as a weapon. If you were the principal of this school, what would you do about this issue?
Q13: Wow, look at the headlines, another war. There have always been wars. It’s nothing new. It’s just human nature. Not necessarily. How do you feel about this issue? How do you think we could create a lasting peace?
Q14: I really love this painting. I don’t understand it at all. Tell us why you think this is or isn’t art.
Q15: My computer is broken again. Man, what a disaster. I feel so dependent on this machine. Yeah, modern technology can make life easy, but sometimes it can cause a lot of frustrations too. Discuss the positive benefits and the negative consequences of our dependence on such machines.
Q16: Some undergraduates at American universities think that native speakers of English make the most effective teachers. On the other hand, some people think the advantages of having an international teacher outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think?
Q17: If you were a teacher and you discovered one of your students had cheated on a test by copying from another student’s paper, what would you do?
Q18: In many countries, higher education is for an elite group of students. Not everybody can go to the university. That certainly isn’t the case in this country. Our universities are open to almost everyone regardless of their background. I can see the pros and cons of both types of educational systems. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both types of educational systems.
Q19: You know, I’m reading an article here on free trade in Europe and in America and it says that everybody benefits from having a free trade. No, I don’t know. There’s still an awful lot of opposition in a few countries to the whole issue of free trade. Take one position and defend your opinion regarding the issue of free trade.
Q20: Did you know that US laws allow trials to be televised? Yes, several high profile trials have been televised recently because of the freedom of information act. I wonder if that’s such a good idea? What do you think about televising criminal trials?
Q21: Have you noticed how many shows on TV portray violent crimes? Pretty hard not to notice. Some people feel that this creates violence in our society. Yeah, but other people feel it doesn’t have any effect at all on our young people. In fact, they’re proud of this country’s freedom of expression. What do you think about the portrayal of violence and crime on TV?
Q22: Three must be problems in your country too. What are some of the problems in your country? Suggest some solutions and discuss the implications of these solutions.
Q23: This is the last question. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably taken other
English tests. If so, how does this test compare to other English tests you have taken.