Exploring second language development in narrative writing : a case study of two learners

Abstract

The overall objective of the study is to explore developmcnt in L2 writing inrelation to the narrative of vicarious experience of two apprentice L2 writers in the EFLcontext. Specifically, the study is concerned with the lexico-grammatical resources thatthe participants use in their narrative texts constructed over a period of time to representthe people, the events and the circumstances of time and place (ideational meanings) asdepicted in the visual images, used as prompts, to organise the clauses of their narrativetexts as messages (textual meanings) and to colour representation of experience withparticular forms of affect, judgement and valuation (interpersonal meanings). Theparticipants in this study ?two EFL university students- were asked to write fournarrative texts prompted by visual images. The analysis was carried out through acombination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings of the study did notre? eal substantial changes in the texts written by the same learner. What was found,instead, was a significant similarity across the texts and also across the subjects asshown by the cross-case analysis.