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Discourse Structure in Nonnative English Discourse

The Effect of Ordering and Interpretive Cues on Perceptions of Comprehensibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Andrea Tyler  and
John Bro
Andrea Tyler
Affiliation:
University of Florida
John Bro
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Abstract

A frequently discussed hypothesis concerning the source of cross-linguistic communication difficulty in written discourse is conflicting organizational patterns (Kaplan, 1966, 1987). Extending the argument to oral discourse, Young (1982) argued that spoken English discourse produced by Chinese speakers evidenced a discourse-level topic-comment structure that native English speakers find difficult to follow. However, Tyler (1988) argued that the perception of incoherence might better be understood as the cumulative result of interacting miscues at the discourse level, that is, miscues in syntactic incorporation, lexical discourse markers, tense/aspect, and lexical The study reported here aims at testing these competing hypotheses. One hundred fifteen subjects rated four versions of the Chinese-produced English discourse presented in Young's study for comprehensibility. Results indicated that the effect of discourse miscues on comprehensibility was highly significant (F = 70, p <.0001). However, there was no significant effect for order of ideas (F = .47, p <.49).

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Articles
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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 71 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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