The Use of Private Writing in Written English Narratives

Abstract

This study analyzes the linguistic features of private writing produced by college students of English as a foreign language, following Vygotsky’s claim that higher psychological functions are mediated by language. In this context, this study seeks to discover the way in which EFL students approach the task of narrative writing in light of the potential difficulties. Accordingly, this study adopts a functional analysis of linguistic data, in which linguistic features of private writing are analyzed in their regulatory functions in written English narratives. The subjects were all undergraduate students attending at Korea University. Each student was asked to write a story about a sequence of eight pictures, which was adopted from Can You Believe It? by Huizenga and Huizenga. Following Frawley and Lantolf’s classification scheme, this study analyzes two linguistic features of private writing produced by the EFL students: macrostructure and reference. The analysis of private writing forms reveals that the EFL students produced abundant examples of private writing in written narratives. Many of the private writing features observed in previous studies, such as the externalization of the macrostructure and ambiguous reference were present in written narratives. In addition, the EFL students, in their use of explicit macrostructural devices and pronominalization, manifest discourse behavior similar to that of native children of English observed in the research of Frawley and Lantolf. The similarities in EFL students and native children have a functional explanation in that the adult non-native speakers reverts to native speaking child-like knowing strategies to control the situation and gain self-regulation in difficult knowing situations. This can be explained by “the principle of continuous access,” which maintains that adults are able to re-access previous regulating strategies in other domains where self-regulation can not be achieved (Frawley & Lantolf 22). In this light, the presence of odd forms even in native discourse allows us to understand that not all errors found in non-native discourse are result of low proficiency or inadequate mastery of story grammar of English. On the other hand, the peculiarities of second language discourse such as odd pronominalization and ambiguous reference can be understood as functional for the EFL students.