narrative writing meaning in chinese

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Traditional Chinese text structures and their influence on the writing in Chinese and English of contemporary mainland Chinese students

1997, Journal of Second Language Writing

Related Papers

In his recent studies on classical Chinese text structures and contemporary Chinese composition textbooks, Andy Kirkpatrick claims that Mainland Chinese students are taught to write Chinese compositions in contemporary" Anglo-American" rhetorical style.

Andy Kirkpatrick

International Journal of English Studies

International Journal of English Studies (IJES)

A widespread assumption in the contrastive rhetoric field is the linearity/circularity dichotomy which suggests that Chinese writing is characterized by indirection. This study examines to what extent Chinese university students’ writing differs from that of American students. A total of 200 expository essays (50 by American university students in English, 50 by Chinese students in Chinese, and 100 by beginning and advanced English learners in English) were analyzed. Results indicate that Chinese students, like their U.S. counterparts, also prefer directness in text and paragraph organization, but generally U.S. students tend to be significantly more direct than Chinese students. An examination of modern Chinese writing manuals found that Chinese rhetoricians also encourage directness in structuring expository essays. These findings point to a need for greater awareness of the similarities between writing in “contrasting” languages.

Zhichang Xu

The authors of Chinese Rhetoric and Writing offer a response to the argument that Chinese students' academic writing in English is influenced by "culturally nuanced rhetorical baggage that is uniquely Chinese and hard to eradicate." Noting that this argument draws from "an essentially monolingual and Anglo-centric view of writing," they point out that the rapid growth in the use of English worldwide calls for "a radical reassessment of what English is in today's world." The result is a book that provides teachers of writing, and in particular those involved in the teaching of English academic writing to Chinese students, an introduction to key stages in the development of Chinese rhetoric, a wide-ranging field with a history of several thousand years. Understanding this important rhetorical tradition provides a strong foundation for assessing and responding to the writing of this growing group of students.

Changing English

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

Michael Fuller

(This is just the preface to the first edition. The second edition will come out soon.)

Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture

Zong-qi Cai

This article opens with a reflection on the extrinsic and intrinsic causes of the neglect of Chinese prose in sinological literary studies, followed by the construction of a patterning-based scheme for codifying Chinese prose forms. An in-depth analysis of eight famous texts, drawn from antiquity through the Qing, reveals how continual innovations in extratextual patterning and textual patterning have given rise to manifold and inherently related prose forms over the millennia. The close reading also sheds light on these prose forms' distinctive artistic features, as well as their symbiotic relationships with the three types of genres (narrative, descriptive, and expository) and with broad sociopolitical and cultural developments. It is hoped that these findings will generate serious interest in prose studies among literary sinologists. Keywords Chinese prose forms, Chinese prose art, parallel prose, ancient-style prose, eight-legged essay In Western-language (sinological) studies of Chinese literature, an extraordinary lacuna has eluded the attention of most scholars: the absence of any comprehensive anthology of artistic, nonfiction prose (hereafter just prose), even though prose is an independent literary genre privileged (with poetry) over fiction and drama. Compounding this neglect, all general anthologies of Chinese literature in translation have to date relegated prose to the margins. Monograph studies of Chinese prose art are practically nonexistent. The rich heritage of Chinese prose art has been reduced to mere samples of famous prose works in unguided translations. Thus, as a first step toward restoring prose to its rightful place in sinological literary studies, we have created a comprehensive guided anthology,

Asian Englishes

Ma Qing , Qing Ma

There has been limited research on Chinese English literature (CEL) in the domain of contact literatures. This article reports on a study of a representative Chinese English (CE) literary work well received by a worldwide audience – Qiu Xiaolong’s Enigma of China. With the aim of exploring CE by analysing the unique ‘Chineseness’ in this CE literary work from the paradigms of corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics, the language innovations and sociocultural meanings embedded in different levels of the work are examined. Further, by adopting a corpus-based approach and conducting keyword analysis, a number of language innovations were identified. These included the use of innovative hybrid compounds at the lexis level, the use of hybrid Chinese sentences of parallelism at the syntax level, and the use of discourses on political ideology and employment of ancient Chinese poems at the level of discourse pragmatics. It is argued that these language innovations are manifestations of a transfer of traditional Chinese culture norms and political ideology. The question of how to integrate CE corpus into courses on English creative writing in China is also discussed.

This study looks into the changing voice of Chinese Post-­-80s' students in English academic writing. Data were collected qualitatively through interviews with four Chinese Post-­-80s overseas graduate students and through an examination of their English essays with a focus on discursive features. Findings indicate that Chinese Post-­-80s' voice is changing as a result of their use of linear logical patterns, reduced influence of the ideology of collectivism, and dismissal of the traditional eight-­-legged essay. The paper offers pedagogical implications for academic writing programs both in China and in the West. Further research on other discursive features employed in Chinese students' English writing is suggested.

This study looks into the changing voice of Chinese Post-­‐80s’ students in English academic writing. Data were collected qualitatively through interviews with four Chinese Post-­‐80s overseas graduate students and through an examination of their English essays with a focus on discursive features. Findings indicate that Chinese Post-­‐ 80s’ voice is changing as a result of their use of linear logical patterns, reduced influence of the ideology of collectivism, and dismissal of the traditional eight-­‐legged essay. The paper offers pedagogical implications for academic writing programs both in China and in the West. Further research on other discursive features employed in Chinese students’ English writing is suggested.

RELATED PAPERS

Raquel Hernandez Garcia

Martha Givaudan

Neurosurgery

Frank Papatheofanis

Gabriel Haas

Linguistic Bulletin

Yevhenii Plakhotniuk

THE WORLD OF CULTURE

World of culture

13º Congresso Nacional de Psicologia da Saúde, Actas (pp-275-283)

JPMI (Jurnal Pembelajaran Matematika Inovatif)

indriani fitrianingsih

Tạp chí Y học Việt Nam

The Journal of Clinical Hypertension

Maria Del Carmen Bisi Molina

Physical Review Applied

Saswati Barman

Zoonoses and Public Health

Investigación Bibliotecológica: Archivonomía, Bibliotecología e Información

Amado Vilchis-López

Stippelberg, Snelle loop deel 8

Jan Nillesen

Revista Brasileira de Educação Especial

IGNACIO PERLADO LAMO DE ESPINOSA

Jurnal Online Mahasiswa Bidang Kedokteran

efhandi nukman

Antioxidants

Alfredo Cruz-Gregorio

Journal of Neuro-Ophthalmology

farzad pakdel

International Journal of Food Properties

Sonila Gautam

Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology

Marianela Lopez

chijioke nweke

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

andrew rossetti

Journal of Movement & Health

Estélio H M Dantas

International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics

Michael Persky

Roma, De Luca editori d'arte

Mario Bevilacqua

See More Documents Like This

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Use this tool to add tone marks to pinyin or to convert tone number (e.g. hao3) to tone marks.

Although you can use the red buttons to add tone marks, we highly recommend you use the number method (e.g. hao3) for speed and placement of the accent above the correct vowel. [Hint: Type "v" for "ü"] Note: You do not need to use this tool to enter pinyin in this dictionary.

Showing Results in:

• SEE TRADITIONAL
• SEE CANTONESE

Today’s Top 5 Most Searched for Chinese Words

10 chinese words you should learn this week.

Our Chinese Dictionary is Alive!

Welcome to the first and only living Chinese dictionary that is growing every day with its Chinese learners. You have the opportunity to contribute ways that you remember Chinese characters and photos of your Chinese writing as you learn from other students of Chinese. Click the “Learn More” button next to any character to see what others have said about that character. Try to be the first to share your Chinese learning wisdom with the community!

• Chinese Characters with 1 Stroke
• Chinese Characters with 2 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 3 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 4 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 5 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 6 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 7 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 8 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 9 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 10 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 11 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 12 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 13 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 14 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 15 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 16 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 17 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 18 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 19 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 20 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 21 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 22 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 23 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 24 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 25 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 26 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 27 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 28 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 29 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 30 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 31 Strokes
• Chinese Characters with 32 Strokes

• Help & FAQ

Narrative writing in Australian and Chinese schools : a study of text in context

• Department of English

Research output : Scholarly Books | Reports | Literary Works › Book (Author)

Other files and links

Fingerprint.

• Books Social Sciences 100%
• Schools Social Sciences 100%
• Chinese Social Sciences 75%
• Cultural Organizations Social Sciences 50%
• Production Social Sciences 50%
• Meaning Social Sciences 50%
• Cultural Values Social Sciences 25%
• English Language Social Sciences 25%

T1 - Narrative writing in Australian and Chinese schools : a study of text in context

AU - HO, Woon Yee, Judy

N2 - The book adopts a crosslinguistic and crosscultural approach to narrative analysis. Concepts of narrative are explored through a contrastive study of its expressions in English and Chinese and through a comparison of the contexts of production. Narratives written by Grade 5/6 students were collected from primary schools in Sydney and in Hong Kong. Their structural, ideational and stylistic characteristics were contrasted within a synthesized framework of Western and Chinese narrative traditions, the Labovian model, Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, critical discourse analysis and genre theory. The socio-cultural context was analyzed by examining curriculum documents and by investigating teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices through surveys, interviews and observations. The book shows that the meaning of narrative has to be interpreted within a suprastructure which embodies the expectations, norms, and values of a specific culture. It is a powerful statement of how schools as social and cultural institutions mediate the production of narrative texts and transmit larger cultural values through specific practices. The study makes a substantial contribution to the field for its combination of empirical detail and theoretical breadth, and for its demonstration of how textual and linguistic structures arise from, and make sense within, divergent social and institutional contexts.

AB - The book adopts a crosslinguistic and crosscultural approach to narrative analysis. Concepts of narrative are explored through a contrastive study of its expressions in English and Chinese and through a comparison of the contexts of production. Narratives written by Grade 5/6 students were collected from primary schools in Sydney and in Hong Kong. Their structural, ideational and stylistic characteristics were contrasted within a synthesized framework of Western and Chinese narrative traditions, the Labovian model, Halliday’s systemic functional grammar, critical discourse analysis and genre theory. The socio-cultural context was analyzed by examining curriculum documents and by investigating teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices through surveys, interviews and observations. The book shows that the meaning of narrative has to be interpreted within a suprastructure which embodies the expectations, norms, and values of a specific culture. It is a powerful statement of how schools as social and cultural institutions mediate the production of narrative texts and transmit larger cultural values through specific practices. The study makes a substantial contribution to the field for its combination of empirical detail and theoretical breadth, and for its demonstration of how textual and linguistic structures arise from, and make sense within, divergent social and institutional contexts.

UR - http://commons.ln.edu.hk/sw_master/479

M3 - Book (Author)

SN - 9780820458809

BT - Narrative writing in Australian and Chinese schools : a study of text in context

PB - Peter Lang

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Translation of narrative – English–Mandarin Chinese dictionary

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

(Translation of narrative from the Cambridge English-Chinese (Simplified) Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of narrative

Translations of narrative.

Get a quick, free translation!

Word of the Day

Hippocratic oath

a promise made by people when they become doctors to do everything possible to help their patients and to have high moral standards in their work

Sitting on the fence (Newspaper idioms)

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• Translations
• All translations

Add narrative to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved March 25, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/narrative-essay/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write an expository essay, how to write a descriptive essay | example & tips, how to write your personal statement | strategies & examples, unlimited academic ai-proofreading.

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Learn Mandarin Mandarin-English Dictionary & Thesaurus

• 类属 Thesaurus
• 例句 Examples
• 字 Character
• 字源 Etymology

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Front Psychol

The effects of genre on the lexical richness of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners

Renquan heng.

1 School of Foreign Languages, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

2 Soochow College, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Associated Data

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Lexical richness, a crucial aspect of L2 writing research, has been shown to make a difference in L2 writing performance. Nonetheless, the majority of empirical studies have focused either on a single text type or on the comparison between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative writing) in academic contexts, whereas there has been a dearth of research regarding the lexical features pertaining to varied non-narrative writing genres. Considering the cognitive demands intrinsic in different writing task types, this study examined the development of lexical richness, which includes lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication, in Chinese EFL students’ argumentative and expository compositions over the course of one academic year. Fifty-four participants were asked to write eight compositions (in two alternating genres)—four argumentative and four expository—which were parsed using two computational tools. The results indicated a significant increase in all three subconstructs of lexical richness in argumentative compositions over the year, while in expository compositions, only lexical density and lexical sophistication demonstrated an increasing trend. As time went on, the participants in both genres tended to use more high-frequency words with more senses, more academic words, more high-frequency bigrams, and words that are less familiar and more precise. Moreover, the argumentative compositions displayed higher lexical density than the expository ones, while the expository compositions manifested greater lexical variation and lexical sophistication than the argumentative ones. The findings of the study suggest some implications for L2 writing teaching and research.

1. Introduction

Vocabulary is considered to be at the heart of meaning-making in understanding discourse ( Halliday and Hasan, 1976 ), and having a rich and complex vocabulary is viewed as a crucial component that contributes to the quality of writing for academic purposes ( Maamuujav, 2021 ). In the past few decades, research has shown that the richness of lexis, or rather lexical richness, makes an important contribution to second language (L2) writing quality ( Jarvis et al., 2003 ; Olinghouse and Leaird, 2009 ; Ha, 2019 ), and the ability to produce a well-written text is thought to be important to individual success both at school and in the workplace ( Powell, 2009 ). However, it is arduous and challenging for both L1 (first language) and L2 learners to become an advanced writer, because students should, apart from having a good command of vocabulary, learn to compose different genres of writing which require them to employ varied skills and linguistic resources ( Pu et al., 2022 ). In recent years, there has been a growing increase in research that explores language development across writing genres ( Ravid, 2004 ; Beers and Nagy, 2011 ; Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ; Jeong, 2017 ; Yoon and Polio, 2017 ; Bi, 2020 ), and it has been found that in both L1 and L2 writing, argumentative compositions tend to be more linguistically complex than narrative compositions. However, previous studies mostly focused on a single text type or on comparisons between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative writing) in academic contexts without examining the lexical features pertaining to varied non-narrative writing genres ( Pu et al., 2022 ).

Research has demonstrated that L2 writers deploy different linguistic features for different levels of cognitive demands intrinsic to narrative, argumentative, and expository tasks ( Weigle, 2002 ; Kormos, 2011 ). In relation to this, there are two conflicting hypotheses: Robinson’s (2001) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model. The former claims that a more complex task will lead to more complex language and greater accuracy, whereas the latter asserts that a speaker’s cognitive capacity is limited, so a more complex task will result in less complex and less accurate language. Both L1 and L2 studies have already yielded higher lexical richness in non-narrative writing than in narrative writing ( Ravid, 2004 ; Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ; Yoon and Polio, 2017 ). Moreover, while previous studies have mostly relied on surface measures and investigated broad linguistic features to describe, distinguish and explain the degree of proficiency exhibited in texts written by non-native speakers of English ( Halliday and Hasan, 1976 ; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998 ; Crossley and Skalicky, 2019 ), this study, by way of employing finer-grained indices to gauge lexical richness, will provide a new perspective for both teachers and students to know about the development of lexical richness in L2 learners’ writing. To venture in this direction, the present study intends to determine whether lexical richness develops uniformly or differently in argumentative and expository writing over one academic year and whether there are genre effects on the lexical features of different writing task types.

2. Literature review

2.1. lexical richness.

Lexical richness is a crucial aspect of L2 writing research, and a sophisticated, diverse, and accurate lexical contribution to texts enhances writing quality and showcases the learner’s writing proficiency ( Zhang and Daller, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2021 ). Nonetheless, there has been no consensus in the literature regarding the conceptualisation of lexical richness ( Laufer and Nation, 1995 ; Jarvis, 2013 ; Treffers-Daller et al., 2018 ; Zhang et al., 2021 ). Some studies equate lexical richness with a variety of different words ( Kalantari and Gholami, 2017 ), while for others, it is a multidimensional concept ( Laufer and Nation, 1995 ; Wolfe-Quintero et al., 1998 ; Read, 2000 ; Lu, 2012 ). For instance, Daller et al. (2003) equated lexical richness to lexical diversity and lexical complexity, while Laufer and Nation (1995) examined it in terms of lexical variation, lexical density, lexical sophistication, and lexical originality. However, Read (2000) contended that lexical originality could not evaluate the development of lexical performance; therefore, he proposed modifying Laufer and Nation’s categorization by taking error into consideration, rendering lexical richness in the form of lexical sophistication, lexical variation, lexical density, and lexical errors. Also taking errors into consideration, Engber (1995) suggested that lexical richness includes lexical variation with errors, lexical variation without errors, percentage of lexical errors, and lexical density. Although they differ in their views on the subcomponents of lexical richness, most researchers have, by and large, focused their attention on three main components: lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication ( Laufer and Nation, 1995 ; Qin and Wen, 2007 ; Lu, 2012 ; Bulté and Housen, 2014 ). The present study follows the multidimensional model and explores lexical features along the three most often researched dimensions, namely lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication, in argumentative and expository compositions written by Chinese EFL learners over the course of one academic year.

2.2. Argumentative writing and expository writing

Text genres are primarily divided into narratives and non-narratives in both academic and non-academic contexts ( Bruner, 1986 ; Pu et al., 2022 ). Narratives focus on events and actions in settings performed by the characters, whereas non-narratives (e.g., argumentative, expository, and descriptive) focus on ideas and concepts and express the unfolding of claims and argumentation in a logical fashion ( Berman and Slobin, 1994 ; Tian, 2014 ). Among non-narratives, argumentation mainly invites a writer to give personal opinions and judgment on a debatable issue or statement and to take a stand on the issue or statement based on facts, generalizations, and reasoning, while exposition mainly invites a writer to explain and provide information about something (not to take a side on something debatable or to argue on the topic), based on facts and generalizations of events and states ( Genung, 1900 ; Yang, 2014 ).

Genre is concerned with cognitive task complexity, which, in turn, is related to two competing hypotheses—Cognition Hypothesis ( Robinson, 2001 , 2003 ) and the Limited Attentional Capacity Model ( Skehan, 1998 ). In general, different genres place different levels of cognitive demands on learners, with narrative being the least cognitively demanding, exposition being more cognitively demanding than narrative, and argumentation being the most cognitively complex ( Weigle, 2002 ). In light of varied cognitive demands, different genres may exhibit distinct language characteristics as a way to describe and clarify ideas and expressions in different types of writing ( Ravid, 2004 ; Pu et al., 2022 ). This is the basic motive for the present study, i.e., to compare and contrast the developmental features of lexical richness in argumentative and expository compositions by Chinese EFL learners over the course of one academic year.

2.3. Studies on lexical richness in relation to genre differentiation

Research has shown that writing across genres involves different cognitive task loads and requires different linguistic demands ( Berman and Nir-Sagiv, 2007 ; Beers and Nagy, 2011 ; Kormos, 2011 ; Pu et al., 2022 ). Moreover, differences among genres are not only restricted to macro-structural elements ( Beers and Nagy, 2009 ; Biber and Conrad, 2009 ; Beers and Nagy, 2011 ; Lu, 2011 ), but they can also occur at the word level ( Bar-Ilan and Berman, 2007 ). L1 studies on children’s writing have documented that argumentative or expository compositions have higher lexical richness than narrative ones. Ravid (2004) examined the differences across Hebrew L1 narrative and expository compositions produced by child, adolescent, and adult writers of Hebrew. The results demonstrate a greater lexical density for expository compositions than for narrative ones. Similarly, Berman and his colleagues ( Bar-Ilan and Berman, 2007 ; Berman and Nir-Sagiv, 2007 ) conducted studies across seven languages comparing writing in two genres (narrative and expository) by children at three different ages, testifying to consistent differences between narrative and expository compositions. Likewise, Olinghouse and Wilson (2013) examined the features of lexis in story, persuasive, and informative texts written by 105 English fifth graders. They found that story texts had higher diversity and maturity than informative or persuasive texts.

As for studies on lexical richness in L2 writing, they are mostly focused on one single text type or on the comparison between narrative and non-narrative writing (mostly argumentative writing) in academic contexts ( Lu, 2011 ; Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ; Yıldız and Yeşilyurt, 2017 ; Yoon and Polio, 2017 ; Ha, 2019 ; Bi, 2020 ; Lei and Yang, 2020 ; Azadnia, 2021 ). Among the studies that focused on a single text type, Ha (2019) researched the contribution of lexical richness to L2 writing quality in argumentative compositions written by thirty-five Korean undergraduates in the final exam of a reading and writing class. By way of the correlation analysis, the study concluded a close relationship between writing quality and the indices of lexical diversity, sophistication, and fluency; in particular, lexical sophistication was found to be the most significant predictor contributing to writing quality. Similarly, Azadnia (2021) examined the lexical richness of a corpus composed of doctoral dissertations written by Iranian TEFL students in terms of lexical density, diversity, and sophistication. The corpus in the study was analyzed in comparison to an L1 baseline containing doctoral dissertations written by native English speakers. Their findings revealed that the texts written by Iranian TEFL learners were lexically less diverse but more sophisticated.

Among studies focusing on the comparison between different genres, Yıldız and Yeşilyurt (2017) carried out a study of 41 Turkish students who were learning English to assess the effects of task planning and rhetorical mode (e.g., descriptive and narrative compositions) on lexical and syntactic complexity, as well as overall writing quality. The results reveal that lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication in descriptive (or expository) writing were significantly greater than those in narrative writing. Similarly, Qin and Uccelli (2016) compared lexico-syntactic, and genre-specific discourse features in argumentative and narrative compositions written by secondary school Chinese EFL students. Their results show that argumentative compositions displayed higher lexical diversity and lexical sophistication than narrative ones. Likewise, Yoon and Polio (2017) examined lexical richness in the narrative and argumentative genres of writing by ESL learners over one semester. The findings indicate that genre was strongly related to lexical richness, as the writers used longer and less frequent words in argumentative writing and a greater diversity of words in narrative writing. Moreover, Bi (2020) examined genre differences among three proficiency groups and found that for beginner learners, their argumentative writing showed higher lexical richness than narrative writing, but for intermediate and advanced learners, they were apt to use more sophisticated and more diverse words in narrative writing.

A review of previous studies on lexical richness in both L1 and L2 literature shows that few studies have been conducted to explore the differences across non-narrative genres of writing. Moreover, most related studies are cross-sectional, where lexical richness is examined across different grades or proficiency levels at a given point in time ( Bi, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2021 ). In view of this, the present study intends to address the following two research questions: (1) What are the changes in lexical richness over the course of one academic year in Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative and expository compositions? (2) What are the effects exerted by genre on lexical richness in Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative and expository compositions?

3. Methodology

3.1. research context and participants.

The study was positioned in a one-year Comprehensive English course at a leading university in Jiangsu Province, mainland China. The course lasted for an entire academic year and the first author of this paper was actually the teacher of this course. In the university where the study was conducted, the participants were supposed to take the TEM-4 (Test for English Majors) at the end of their second-year college study, which is composed of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The genres of writing for the TEM-4 are mostly argumentative and sometimes expository. To prepare for the test, the participants had a lot of writing practice over the one academic year, which constituted the materials for the study, with the informed consent from all participants. The participants, aged between 19 and 21, came from two parallel classes (with 28 and 31 students respectively) of the same grade. They all had about 10 years of formal English learning experience and were fairly proficient in writing, though with individual differences. All the courses for the two classes, including both compulsory and optional ones, were given by the same teachers, thus avoiding some potential intervening variables. Nonetheless, in the course of data collection, some participants failed to complete all eight assigned compositions, so only 54 (out of 59) participants’ compositions were valid for analysis in the present study.

3.2. Writing tasks

Each of the 54 participants in this study produced eight 300-word compositions (four argumentative and four expository) over the course of one academic year, and the compositions were all finished in class and with no access to electronic devices. The writing topics were determined in relation to the contents of the textbooks (Integrated English III and Integrated English IV) and some contemporary issues of the time. In class, after each unit, the students were asked to give presentations on what they had learned. Meanwhile, the students were encouraged to discuss contemporary issues using the words and expressions they had learned from the texts. In this way, the task difficulties were well controlled. The compositions were collected at regular time intervals, with the first, third, fifth, and seventh being argumentative, and the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth expository (see Table 1 ).

Writing prompts for argumentative and expository compositions.

3.3. Computational tools and measures of lexical richness

Kyle, Crossley and their colleagues ( Kyle and Crossley, 2015 ; Kim et al., 2018 ; Kyle et al., 2018 ) have conducted a series of studies to validate TAALES (the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication) and TAALED (the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Diversity). They suggested that some indices are stable and reliable and could be generalized to other populations. In light of previous studies and a pilot study, 15 indices were chosen to measure lexical richness in this study, representing different aspects of the multidimensional construct. Table 2 displays detailed information on the 15 indices measured in the present study.

Indices of lexical richness examined in the study.

3.4. Data collection and analysis

The study was positioned in the Comprehensive English course which lasted for one academic year, and the participants were assigned a timed writing task every three or 4 weeks in class. They were instructed to work individually, and the use of a dictionary or any other reference material was prohibited. At the end of the first semester, the participants composed four compositions (two argumentative and two expository compositions). The remaining four compositions were collected in the second semester. Altogether, there were a total of 432 compositions for analysis.

To address the first research question, descriptive statistics were generated for lexical measures over time. Then, a one-way within-subjects ANOVA was conducted to capture the changes in lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication in argumentative and expository compositions, respectively. To address the second research question, a paired sample t -test was conducted to investigate whether differences existed concerning lexical richness in the two genres at the first time point of data collection. After that, a one-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed to examine the effects of genre on lexical richness across four time points over the academic year.

4.1. Changes in lexical richness in argumentative and expository compositions over one academic year

In this section, the changes in lexical richness in argumentative and expository compositions are presented separately. First, the descriptive statistics of lexical richness in argumentative writing will be displayed along three dimensions: lexical density (LD), lexical variation (LV), and lexical sophistication (LS).

Table 3 shows that the mean values of LD in argumentative writing are significantly different across the four time points [ F (3,162) = 41.067, p  < 0.05]. There is a sharp increasing tendency from Time 1 to Time 2, then a slight decreasing tendency from Time 2 (0.508) to Time 3 (0.495), which is followed by another slight increasing tendency from Time 3 to Time 4 (0.501). The general changing tendency indicates that LD increases from the first writing to the fourth writing, though with a non-linear developmental pattern. Then, repeated contrast tests were conducted to assess how the four time points differed from one another, with the result of a statistically significant difference between Time 1 and Time 2 [ F (3,162) = 32.558, p  = 0.000].

Changes in LD in argumentative writing over one academic year.

Arg., argumentative; * p  < 0.05.

The results indicate that lexical words account for more than half of the total words in L2 writers’ argumentative compositions, which in turn suggests that more information is produced in writing as students progress through the year, although the developmental pattern is non-linear. This finding is consistent with the developmental features of lexical density in L2 writing found by Bao (2008) . One noteworthy point is that there was a slight decrease in LD at Time 3 compared with Time 2. The reason might be that the topic of the writing task influences the use of lexical words, as the topic of Time 2 was Eating Habit , while the topic of Time 3 was Choice after Graduation . Most sophomore students have not decided whether to find a job or pursue further studies. Therefore, they have a limited language repertoire about the topic and tend to use more functional words. The third argumentative writing assignment contained 1,066 more function words than the second one. The results show that the extensive use of function words decreases the value of lexical density.

The LV results exhibit a rising tendency in argumentative writing over one academic year. Table 4 indicates that the values of LV changed significantly over time [ F (3,162) MATTR = 11.456; Maas = 13.019, p  < 0.05]. The MATTR scores were positive for LV, while Maas scores calculated from the log correction approach were negative for LV. Though the changes in the two indices are upside down, they show the same developmental pattern in LV; that is, there is a small decrease in LV from Time 1 to Time 2, and a steady increase from Time 2 to Time 4. In order to determine whether the changes were significant, repeated contrast tests were conducted. The results indicate that a significant difference exists between Time 2 and Time 3 ( p  = 0.05) and between Time 3 and Time 4 ( p  = 0.001), while there is no significant difference between Time 1 and Time 2 ( p  = 0.34). This finding supports what has been concluded from previous studies: that is, as students gain knowledge in English, they perform better in L2 writing by using a great variety of words ( Wang and Zhou, 2012 ; Zhu and Wang, 2013 ).

Changes in LV in argumentative writing over one academic year.

Lexical sophistication (LS), as previously stated, is a multidimensional construct comprising frequency, word range, word property, and word specificity. Table 5 shows that the mean values of all the LS components were significantly different over one academic year. To be specific, the frequency of bigrams and academic words develops steadily with an overall upward tendency, and there are significant differences between adjacent times [ F (3,162) AWL = 91.766; bigram = 11.306, p  < 0.05]. The values of word range significantly decrease over time [ F (3,162) KFR_CW = 101.879, p  < 0.05], which indicates that the participants tended to use words occurring in fewer contexts. The developmental patterns of word familiarity and meaningfulness are quite similar. Repeated contrast tests reveal that there is a significant difference across the four time points [ F (3,162), Familiarity = 21.021; Meaningfulness = 63.969, p  < 0.05], which shows that EFL learners choose to use less familiar and less meaningful words in their writing as time goes on. Though the polysemy scores are significantly different across the four time points [ F (3,162) Polysemy = 5.739, p  < 0.05], the scores are almost the same at Time 4 compared with Time 1. Hypernymy scores tend to increase over time. As well, the scores are significantly higher at Time 2, and the scores decrease gradually at Time 3 and Time 4 [ F (3,162) Hypernymy = 26.005, p  < 0.05].

Changes in LS in argumentative writing over one academic year.

Table 5 shows an unstable increasing tendency in LS in argumentative writing. Nonetheless, a large number of previous studies have demonstrated an increase in LS over time ( Bao, 2008 ; Wan, 2010 ; Wang and Zhou, 2012 ; Zhu and Wang, 2013 ; Bulté and Housen, 2014 ; Kalantari and Gholami, 2017 ). Compared with previous studies, the present study used many finer-grained indices of LS instead of choosing only the proportion of low-frequency words. For example, the indices of frequency in this study included bigram and word frequency, and the participants tended to more frequently use bigrams over one academic year. Examples 1 and 2 below highlight the differences between sentences with high and low bigram frequency scores.

• High bigram frequency example (bigram score of 0.21): Perhaps some people’s views of dealing with difficulties rely on others’ suggestions and guidance.
• Low bigram frequency example (bigram score of 0.13): Working earlier means experiencing worldly wisdom earlier than those who pursue further study.

The bigram frequency corpus adopted in TAALES contains the most frequent 50,000 bigrams of the BNC. Example 1 shows a comparatively higher score, for most of the bigrams in the sentence appear in the corpus. Of the 15 bigrams in Example 1, 12 can be found in the database. “Perhaps some suggestions and guidance” does not occur in the 50,000 most frequent bigrams in the BNC. In the second example, which gets a lower bigram score, only 4 of the 12 bigrams occur in the database. This evidence concurs with previous studies showing that advanced L2 learners tend to use more frequent bigrams ( Salsbury, 2000 ; Crossley et al., 2010 ; Crossley and Skalicky, 2019 ) and lends support to the claim that bigram indices could more strongly indicate LS than word frequency in L2 writing ( Kyle and Crossley, 2016 ).

Word range, word property, and word specificity are negative predictors of L2 writing proficiency ( Kim et al., 2018 ). In the present study, they all (except for the hypernymy norm) showed a negative growth pattern, indicating that L2 learners began to produce words that were less familiar, less meaningful, less abstract, and occurred in a limited context. Moreover, the present study concurs with Kim et al.’s (2018) study, which explored lexical growth using LS components. As shown in Table 5 , polysemy significantly increased over one academic year, which deserves special attention. High polysemy scores indicate that texts containing words with more senses are more ambiguous. Research has shown that as proficiency levels increase, L2 learners tend to produce words with fewer senses ( Schmitt, 1998 ). Word specificity is closely related to frequency, and we explain it thoroughly in the section on genre differentiation.

Generally speaking, all indices significantly increased in argumentative compositions across the four time points of data collection. Similar findings have also been reported in Wang and Zhou’s (2012) study, where they explored the development of lexical richness of college students across three terms and yielded a stable increase in LD, LV, and LS. The results are also consistent with most studies that have reported advancement in the three constructs of lexical richness ( Larsen-Freeman, 2006 ; Tan, 2006 ; Wan, 2010 ; Wang and Zhou, 2012 ). As with the changes in lexical richness in argumentative writing, the changes in expository writing will also be presented in terms of lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication.

For LD in expository writing, there is a weak rising tendency from Time 1 to Time 4, with some fluctuations in between. Table 6 shows that the scores of LD are significantly different across four time points [ F (3,162) = 29.757, p  < 0.05], and there is a slight decrease in LD from Time 2 to Time 3. Moreover, the results of repeated contrasts tests show that there are significant differences between adjacent times ( p  < 0.05), suggesting that the students tend to use more lexical words in their writing as their language proficiency improves.

Changes in LD in expository writing over one academic year.

Exp., Expository; * p  < 0.05.

This finding aligns with Ravid (2004) , who found that the LD of written expository texts increases over time. Nevertheless, there was a significant decrease in LD from Time 2 to Time 3. It might be that the third expository was written by the students at the beginning of the second semester after spending the winter vacation, and the students lacked enough language input.

For LV, there was no significant development from Time 1 to Time 4. Table 7 shows the developmental pattern of LV over 1 year, with the values of both MATTR and Maas being insignificantly different [ F (3,162) MATTR = 0.370; Maas = 0.452, p  > 0.05]. Moreover, the results of repeated contrasts tests show that there are no significant differences between adjacent times ( p  > 0.05).

Changes in LV in expository writing over one academic year.

This finding differs from what has been concluded in cross-sectional studies conducted by Ravid (2004) and Jeong (2017) which both examined the effects of narrative and expository genres on language development across three proficiency levels (novice, intermediate, and advanced). They found that lexical variation in expository texts increased with proficiency level. The reason might be that 1 year is not long enough to capture changes in LV.

For LS, the scores of all four sub-constructs are significantly different across time ( p  < 0.05) ( Table 8 ). The frequency of bigram significantly increases over time [ F (3,162) bigram = 2.993, p  < 0.05]. Likewise, the frequency of academic words also increases over time [ F (3,162) AWL = 66.356, p  < 0.05], and it is significantly different between adjacent times. The developmental change in the word range exhibits a downward tendency [ F (3,162) KFR_CW-12.015, p  < 0.05], which indicates that the words the students use are in a limited range of context. The scores for word property were negative for LS. The scores of word familiarity and meaningfulness are significantly different between adjacent times [ F (3,162) Familiarity = 29.330; Meaningfulness = 12.717, p  < 0.05], which suggests that the students tend to use more familiar and more meaningful words in their compositions. Polysemy scores are negatively correlated to LS, the values of which significantly decrease over time [ F (3,162) Polysemy = 11.668, p  < 0.05]; while hypernymy scores are positively correlated to LS, the values of which significantly increase as time goes by [ F (3,162) Hypernymy = 17.689, p  < 0.05].

Changes in LS in expository writing over one academic year.

The findings of this study indicate that the students tended to use more bigrams, more academic words, words with fewer senses, less abstract and more specific words, but more familiar and meaningful words in expository writing. The four sub-constructs of LS in question develop in a balanced way, such as low polysemy but high familiarity and meaningfulness. This finding agrees with what was concluded by Zhu and Wang (2013) and Zhang et al. (2021) ; that is, lexical complexity is not an isolated phenomenon restricted to a stable domain; rather, whereas when LS increases, it causes a decrease in other dimensions of lexicon at different levels.

Overall, the picture of the developmental changes in lexical richness is not straightforward in Chinese EFL learners’ expository compositions. LD and LS showed a significant increase over the year, while no significant development was detected in terms of LV. The developmental tendencies are non-linear, which offers further support that the language complexity system is dynamic and complicated ( Larsen-Freeman, 2006 ; Norris and Ortega, 2009 ).

4.2. Effects of genre on lexical richness in L2 writing

To probe into the effects exerted by genre on lexical richness, a paired sample t -test was conducted with genre as a within-subject variable. The values of the lexical richness measures for the two genres at four time points are displayed in Table 9 .

Lexical richness measures by time point and genre.

* p  < 0.05; Arg., Argumentative; Exp., Expository. Not significant with Bonferroni adjustment.

As demonstrated in Table 9 , there was no significant difference in lexical density between genres at Time 1 [ t (54) = 0.255, p  = 0.799]. For LV, only Maas [ t (54) = 3.745, p  = 0.000] was significantly higher in expository compositions than in argumentative compositions. The t -tests for the different sub-dimensions of LS yielded significant differences in the bigram values [ t (54) = −5.246, p  = 0.000], KFR_CW [ t (54) = 6.661, p  = 0.000], Familiarity [ t (54) = 2.093, p  = 0.041], Meaningfulness [ t (54) = 3.086, p  = 0.003], and Hypernymy [ t (54) = −2.893, p  = 0.005], which indicate that LS is higher in expository compositions. Regarding the frequency level, there are more academic words in exposition, but the differences are not significant.

Unlike at Time 1, LD was significantly higher in argumentation than in exposition [ t (54) = 4.964, p  = 0.000] at Time 2. However, expository compositions contain more diversity of words than argumentative ones. For the varied subdimensions of LS, expository compositions contain more academic words and words with lower familiarity (AWL [ t (54) = −3.558, p  = 0.001], Familiarity [ t (54) = 2.663, p  = 0.010]), while argumentative compositions contain words occurring in fewer contexts and words with fewer senses {KFR_CW [ t (54) = −3.825, p  = 0.000]; Polysemy [ t (54) = −2.573, p  = 0.013]}. Other measures of LS showed no significant differences in argumentative and expository compositions.

The picture of Time 3 diverges from the first two time points. To be specific, LD, LV, and LS in both genres of writing decreased slightly when compared with Time 2. A possible reason might be that there was a long time span between the two writing times. There are significant differences in the measures of LD [ t (54) = 6.305, p  = 0.000], KFR_CW [ t (54) = −2.297, p  = 0.026], Familiarity [ t (54) = 3.030, p  = 0.004], Meaningfulness [ t (54) = 2.916, p  = 0.005], and Polysemy [ t (54) = −8.820, p  = 0.0003]. In contrast to the first three times of writing, the lexical richness was higher in argumentation than in exposition at Time 4 with regard to LV {MATTR [ t (54) = 2.797, p  = 0.007]}, Frequency {AWL [ t (54) = 5.460, p  = 0.000]}, and Word Property {Familiarity [ t (54) = −5.922, p  = 0.000]}; Meaningfulness [ t (54) = −5.876, p  = 0.000].

We also conducted a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), with genre as an independent variable and the indices of lexical richness as dependent variables (see Table 10 ). The effect size was reported via partial eta squared ( ηp 2 ), with 0.0099 corresponding to a small effect size, 0.0588 corresponding to a medium effect size, and 0.1379 corresponding to a large effect size ( Cohen, 1969 ). The ANOVA results indicate a significant genre effect on lexical density [LD F (1,432) = 23.813, p  = 0.000, ηp 2 = 0.052] and Polysemy [ F (1,432) = 49.542, p  = 0.000, ηp 2 = 0.103] with medium effect sizes, suggesting that the students tend to use more lexical words and words with core senses in argumentative compositions than in expository ones. Regarding Word Property, there is no significant difference between the two genres. Nevertheless, a significant effect of genre was detected on LV and LS (except for Polysemy) with small effect sizes, namely Maas [ F (1,432) = 10.665, p  = 0.001, ηp 2 = 0.024], Bigram [ F (1,432) = 2.921, p  = 0.048, ηp 2 = 0.007], and Hypernymy [ F (1,432) = 9.322, p  = 0.002, ηp 2  = 0.021], indicating that expository compositions have more diverse words, more bigrams, and more specific words than argumentative ones.

Genre effects on lexical richness measures.

Arg., Argumentative; Exp., Expository; * p  < 0.05.

5. Discussion

The results yielded from the present study bear on the two competing models reviewed in Literature Review, namely Robinson’s (2001) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model. According to the Cognition Hypothesis, an argumentative task is more complex than an expository task, so language is generally more complicated in argumentative writing than in expository writing. Some of our findings are consistent with those of previous studies, while others are not. The reason for this inconsistency might be that most previous studies adopted limited measures of lexical richness (especially lexical diversity) in comparing narrative compositions and non-narrative ones. The present study reveal that lexical density was higher for argumentative compositions than for expository ones. That is to say, the higher reasoning demand of the writing task pushes learners to use lexically denser language. This finding for lexical density partially supports Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis. By contrast, according to Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, argumentative writing involves a higher cognitive processing load compared to expository writing, so L2 learners would produce a language of higher lexical richness when composing expository compositions, which is cognitively less demanding. The results concluded in this study show greater lexical variation and lexical sophistication in expository compositions than in argumentative ones, which lends some support to the Limited Attentional Capacity Model.

Lexical variation, measured by MATTR and Maas in this study, is found to be significantly influenced by genre. Though MATTR shows no significant difference between the two genres, the value in argumentative compositions is still a little higher than in expository ones. By contrast, Maas shows a significant difference between argumentative and expository compositions. However, previous studies on lexical variation across genres ( Yoon and Polio, 2017 ; Bi, 2020 ) found that learners would employ more diverse words in narrative essays than in argumentative ones. The lower lexical variation in argumentative compositions in this study might be attributed to two reasons. On the one hand, as the participants needed to revolve around the topic of the argumentative task, they would frequently use the words from the prompts to express their opinions. For example, the word “entertaining” and its derivation “entertainment” were used 186 times (3.4 times per composition), and in one composition it was used as many as 12 times. On the other hand, the participants showed greater reliance on the formulaic sequences that are common in argumentation. For instance, they were inclined to express personal views using formulaic phrases such as in my opinion, from my perspective, and similar expressions. In contrast, the expository writing prompts invited the writers to give reasons based on their personal experiences. By looking further into the participants’ compositions, we found that most of them chose to describe their personal experiences in detail. Higher lexical variation scores for expository compositions might be attributable to the use of vivid and engaging vocabulary, which is appropriate for personal experience.

The expository compositions exhibited greater lexical sophistication than the argumentative ones, which is beyond our expectation and contrary to the findings of most previous studies. According to Robinson’s (2007) Cognition Hypothesis, compared to expository writing, argumentative writing is more cognitively complex, and thus usually results in more complex language production. In analyzing the students’ compositions, we found that, in contrast to argumentative compositions, expository ones contained more advanced vocabulary ( sacrifice, compromise, reluctant, consensus, encounter, rebellion ) and longer words ( interpersonal, willingness, responsibilities, communication, discouragements ). In the present study, lexical sophistication is a multidimensional construct that includes frequency, range, word property, and word specificity. The use of advanced words and longer words discriminates the values of frequency and word property, for most of the unfamiliar and precise words are academic words occurring in limited contexts.

Many L2 studies have suggested a positive relationship between the percentage of less frequent words and L2 language proficiency ( Daller et al., 2007 ; Kyle and Crossley, 2015 ). In view of the genre effects on frequency, most previous studies have found that argumentative compositions have more sophisticated or advanced words than narrative ones ( Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ; Yoon and Polio, 2017 ). In this study, expository compositions contained more academic and bigrams than argumentative ones. Apart from frequency, word specificity, measured in terms of polysemy and hypernymy, also significantly distinguished argumentative and expository compositions. Moreover, as demonstrated in Table 10 , the value of word range in argumentative compositions was lower than that in expository ones, which suggests that there were more sophisticated words in argumentative compositions, although the difference was insignificant. In addition, we can also find words of lower familiarity and meaningfulness in expository writing than in argumentative writing, despite insignificant statistical differences.

Finally, it should be pointed out that in L2 writing, there is no dichotomous classification for exposition and argumentation. Writing that involves personal judgment and opinions but does not take a side on something debatable is sometimes classified as exposition and, at other times, argumentation ( Ravid, 2004 ). In the present study, exposition prompts were given to elicit personal opinions to explain or give reasons, so it is not surprising that learners used expressions conventional to argumentation, such as “from my perspective, I think, I believe, and in my opinion.” Some of the participants organized claims and arguments in a stepwise, hierarchical format, which is the typical way of organizing argumentative compositions. This might explain why the expository compositions contained more diverse (LV) and more sophisticated words (LS).

This study has some implications for L2 writing research methods, assessments, and instruction. Regarding the L2 writing research method, finer-grained indices should be taken into consideration in data collection. This study investigated a number of indices, such as range, familiarity, hypernymy, and polysemy, which all contribute to a deep understanding of lexical sophistication. To gauge the changes in lexical variation, this study used different measures to provide complementary, unique properties of the deployment of vocabulary in a text. Regarding L2 writing assessment, this study show that college-level EFL learners performed unequally well on the two writing genres, which points to the need to take into account the differential aspects of language pertaining to different genres when assessing students’ performance. Regarding L2 writing instruction, Chinese teachers often attach a great deal of importance to rote learning and memorization during foreign language education ( Gong et al., 2021a ). However, learning one set of discourse practices relevant to a particular context does not guarantee language performance in other contexts ( Qin and Uccelli, 2016 ). Therefore, students should be taught to learn and acquire specific experiences, knowledge, and skills that are required in different professional and sociocultural roles ( Gong et al., 2021b ). Put another way, English teaching cannot be taken as just a way for promoting the overall language level and performance, which is, more often than not, believed to serve the same function in different contexts. Instruction based on specific genre contexts will provide a coherent framework for learning language and its use, thus ensuring that curriculum objectives come from students’ needs. Meanwhile, students should learn to develop their lexical richness along varied dimensions and at the same time enhance their awareness in relation to genre differences in L2 academic writing.

6. Conclusion

In response to the first research question, it was found that the subconstructs of lexical richness in argumentative and expository compositions developed in an unbalanced way over the course of one academic year. To be precise, argumentative compositions displayed a significant increase in lexical density, lexical variation, and lexical sophistication, while expository compositions exhibited a significant increase in lexical density and lexical sophistication, but not in lexical variation. Regarding the second research question, the results show that there were significant differences between argumentative compositions and expository ones on some of the measuring indices examined. To be exact, expository compositions display greater lexical variation and lexical sophistication than argumentative compositions do.

The findings yielded from the study lend support to both Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model. On the one hand, the higher lexical density in argumentative writing than in expository writing partially supports Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis (i.e., the higher reasoning demand of the writing task indeed pushes the learners to produce lexically denser language). On the other hand, the higher lexical variation and lexical sophistication in expository writing than in argumentative writing provide further evidence in support of Skehan’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model (i.e., L2 learners would produce language of higher lexical richness when composing expository writing, which is less cognitively demanding than argumentative writing).

As with most studies, the present study also has limitations. First, the study involved only a limited number of participants from the same class at a leading university. Thus, the results could by no means reveal the general developmental trajectories of lexical richness in writing. Second, comparing results from EFL learners with those of native speakers may yield more informative findings concerning the effects of genre on lexical richness. Third, the lexical richness measures investigated in this study failed to take accuracy into account, which makes a great difference in the quality of writing. Lastly, although one academic year is not short for a longitudinal study, it is still desirable to conduct similar research over a longer period of time.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the School of Foreign Languages, Soochow University, Suzhou, China. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

RH: conceptualization, research design, data analysis, and manuscript drafting. LP: research design, data analysis, drafting. XL data collection and data analysis. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• Azadnia M. (2021). A corpus-based analysis of lexical richness in EAP texts written by Iranian TEFL students. Teaching English as a second language quarterly (TESLQ) . Formerly J. Teach. Lang. Skills 40 , 61–90. doi: 10.22099/JTLS.2021.40043.2960 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bao G. (2008). A survey of the development of lexical richness in L2 compositions from a multidimensional perspective . Comput. Assist. Foreign Lang. Educ. Chin. 127 , 38–44. doi: CNKI:SUN:WYDH.0.2008-05-010 [ Google Scholar ]
• Bar-Ilan L., Berman R. A. (2007). Developing register differentiation: the Latinate–Germanic divide in English . Linguistics 45 , 1–35. doi: 10.1515/LING.2007.001, PMID: [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beers S., Nagy W. (2009). Syntactic complexity as a predictor of adolescent writing quality: which measures? Which genre? Read. Writ. 22 , 185–200. doi: 10.1007/s11145-007-9107-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beers S. F., Nagy W. E. (2011). Writing development in four genres from grades three to seven: syntactic complexity and genre differentiation . Read. Writ. 24 , 183–202. doi: 10.1007/s11145-010-9264-9 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Berman R. A., Nir-Sagiv B. (2007). Comparing narrative and expository text construction across adolescence: a developmental paradox . Discourse Process. 43 , 79–120. doi: 10.1080/01638530709336894 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Berman R. A., Slobin D. I. (1994). Relating Events in Narrative: A Cross-Linguistic Developmental Study . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bi P. (2020). Revisiting genre effects on linguistic features of L2 writing: a usage-based perspective . Int. J. Appl. Linguist. 30 , 429–444. doi: 10.1111/ijal.12297 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Biber D., Conrad S. (2009). Register, Genre, and Style . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bruner J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bulté B., Housen A. (2014). Conceptualizing and measuring short-term changes in L2 writing complexity . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 26 , 42–65. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2014.09.005 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cohen J. (1969). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 1st Edn . New York: Academic Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Crossley S., Salsbury T., McNamara D. (2010). The development of polysemy and frequency use in English second language speakers . Lang. Learn. 60 , 573–605. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00568.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Crossley S. A., Skalicky S. (2019). Examining lexical development in second language learners: an approximate replication of Salsbury, Crossley and McNamara (2011) . Lang. Teach. 52 , 380–405. doi: 10.1017/S0261444817000362 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Daller M., Milton J., Treffers-Daller J. (Eds.). (2007). Modelling and Assessing Vocabulary Knowledge . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Daller H., Van Hout R., Treffers-Daller J. (2003). Lexical richness in the spontaneous speech of bilinguals . Appl. Linguist. 24 , 197–222. doi: 10.1093/applin/24.2.197, PMID: [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Engber C. A. (1995). The relationship of lexical proficiency to the quality of ESL compositions . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 4 , 139–155. doi: 10.1016/1060-3743(95)90004-7 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Genung F. (1900). The Working Principles of Rhetoric: Examined in Their Literary Relations and Illustrated With Examples . Boston: Ginn. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gong Y., Guo Q. J., Li M., Lai C., Wang C. (2021a). Developing literacy or focusing on interaction: New Zealand students’ strategic efforts related to Chinese language learning during study abroad in China . System 98 :102462. doi: 10.1016/j.system.2021.102462 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gong Y., Lai C., Gao X. (2021b). Language teachers’ identity in teaching intercultural communicative competence . Lang. Cult. Curric. 35 , 134–150. doi: 10.1080/07908318.2021.1954938 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ha H. S. (2019). Lexical richness in EFL undergraduate students’ academic writing . Engl. Teach. 74 , 3–28. doi: 10.15858/engtea.74.3.201909.3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Halliday M. A. K., Hasan R. (1976). Cohesion in English . London: Longman [ Google Scholar ]
• Jarvis S. (2013). Capturing the diversity in lexical diversity . Lang. Learn. 63 , 87–106. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00739.x, PMID: [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jarvis S., Grant L., Bikowski D., Ferris D. (2003). Exploring multiple profiles of highly rated learner compositions . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 12 , 377–403. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2003.09.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jeong H. (2017). Narrative and expository genre effects on students, raters, and performance criteria . Assess. Writ. 31 , 113–125. doi: 10.1016/j.asw.2016.08.006 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kalantari R., Gholami J. (2017). Lexical complexity development from dynamic systems theory perspective: lexical density, diversity, and sophistication . Int. J. Instr. 10 , 1–18. doi: 10.12973/iji.2017.1041a [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim M., Crossley S. A., Kyle K. (2018). Lexical sophistication as a multidimensional phenomenon: relations to second language lexical proficiency, development, and writing quality . Mod. Lang. J. 102 , 120–141. doi: 10.1111/modl.12447 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kormos J. (2011). Task complexity and linguistic and discourse features of narrative writing performance . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 20 , 148–161. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2011.02.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kyle K., Crossley S. A. (2015). Automatically assessing lexical sophistication: indices, tools, findings, and application . TESOL Q. 49 , 757–786. doi: 10.1002/tesq.194 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kyle K., Crossley S. (2016). The relationship between lexical sophistication and independent and source-based writing . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 34 , 12–24. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2016.10.003 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kyle K., Crossley S., Berger C. (2018). The tool for the automatic analysis of lexical sophistication (taales): version 2.0 . Behav. Res. Methods 50 , 1030–1046. doi: 10.3758/s13428-017-0924-4, PMID: [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Larsen-Freeman D. (2006). The emergence of complexity, fluency, and accuracy in the oral and written production of five Chinese learners of English . Appl. Linguist. 27 :590–619. doi: 10.1093/applin/aml029 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Laufer B., Nation P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: lexical richness in L2 written production . Appl. Linguist. 16 , 307–322. doi: 10.1093/applin/16.3.307 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lei S., Yang R. (2020). Lexical richness in research articles: corpus-based comparative study among advanced Chinese learners of English, English native beginner students and experts . J. Engl. Acad. Purp. 47 :100894. doi: 10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100894 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lu X. (2011). A corpus-based evaluation of syntactic complexity measures as indices of college-level ESL writers’ language development . TESOL Q. 45 , 36–62. doi: 10.5054/tq.2011.240859 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lu X. (2012). The relationship of lexical richness to the quality of ESL learners’ oral narratives . Mod. Lang. J. 96 , 190–208. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01232_1.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Maamuujav U. (2021). Examining lexical features and academic vocabulary use in adolescent L2 students’ text-based analytical essays . Assess. Writ. 49 :100540. doi: 10.1016/j.asw.2021.100540 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Norris J., Ortega L. (2009). Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA: the case of complexity . Appl. Linguist. 30 , 555–578. doi: 10.1093/applin/amp044 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Olinghouse N. G., Leaird J. T. (2009). The relationship between measures of vocabulary and narrative writing quality in second- and fourth-grade students . Read. Writ. 22 , 545–565. doi: 10.1007/s11145-008-9124-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Olinghouse N. G., Wilson J. (2013). The relationship between vocabulary and writing quality in three genres . Read. Writ. 26 , 45–65. doi: 10.1007/s11145-012-9392-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Powell P. (2009). Retention and writing instruction: implications for access and pedagogy . Coll. Compos. Commun. 60 , 664–682. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40593424 [ Google Scholar ]
• Pu L., Heng R., Cao C. (2022). The effects of genre on the syntactic complexity of argumentative and expository writing by Chinese EFL learners . Front. Psychol. 13 :1047117. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1047117 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Qin W. J., Uccelli P. (2016). Same language, different functions: a cross-genre analysis of Chinese EFL learners’ writing performance . J. Second. Lang. Writ. 33 , 3–17. doi: 10.1016/j.jslw.2016.06.001 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Qin X. Q., Wen Q. F. (2007). EFL Writing of College English Majors in China: A Developmental Perspective . Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ravid D. (2004). “ Emergence of linguistic complexity in written expository texts: evidence from later language acquisition ” in Perspectives on Language and Language Development . eds. Ravid D., Shyldkrot H. B. (Boston, MA: Springer; ), 337–355. [ Google Scholar ]
• Read J. (2000). Assessing Vocabulary . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson P. (2001). Task complexity, task difficulty, and task production: exploring interactions in a componential framework . Appl. Linguist. 22 , 27–57. doi: 10.1093/applin/22.1.27 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson P. (2003). The cognition hypothesis, task design, and adult task-based language learning . Second Lang. Stud. 21 , 45–105. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10125/40656 [ Google Scholar ]
• Robinson P. (2007). “ Criteria for grading and sequencing pedagogic tasks ” in Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Learning . ed. del Pilar García-Mayo M. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; ), 7–27. [ Google Scholar ]
• Salsbury T. (2000). The Acquisitional Grammaticalization of Unreal Conditionals and Modality in L2 English: A Longitudinal Perspective . Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University [ Google Scholar ]
• Schmitt N. (1998). Tracking the incremental acquisition of a second language vocabulary: a longitudinal study . Lang. Learn. 48 , 281–317. doi: 10.1111/1467-9922.00042 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Skehan P. (1998). A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning . New York, NY: Oxford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tan X. C. (2006). A developmental study of the productive vocabulary by Chinese EFL learners . Foreign Lang. Teach. Res. 38 , 202–207. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1000-0429.2006.03.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tian Z. X. (2014). A Guide to “FLTRP Cup” English Writing Contest . Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Treffers-Daller J., Parslow P., Williams S. (2018). Back to basics: how measures to lexical variation can help discriminate between CEFR levels . Appl. Linguist. 39 , 302–327. doi: 10.1093/applin/amw009 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wan L. F. (2010). A study of the lexical richness in Chinese English majors’ English writing . Foreign Lang. World 1 , 40–46. doi: CNKI:SUN:WYJY.0.2010-01-005 [ Google Scholar ]
• Wang H. H., Zhou X. (2012). A longitudinal study of lexical richness changes in Chinese non-English majors’ English writing . Foreign Lang. and Foreign Lang. Teach. 2 , 43–47. doi: CNKI:SUN:WYWJ.0.2012-02-010 [ Google Scholar ]
• Weigle S. C. (2002). Assessing Writing . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wolfe-Quintero K., Inagaki S., Kim H. Y. (1998). Second Language Development in Writing: Measures of Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity , No. 17 . Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Yang W. W. (2014). Mapping the Relationships Among the Cognitive Complexity of Independent Writing Tasks, L2 Writing Quality, and Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency of L2 Writing . Doctoral Dissertation.. Atlanta, GA: Georgia State University. [ Google Scholar ]
• Yıldız M., Yeşilyurt S. (2017). Effects of task planning and rhetorical mode of writing on lexical complexity, syntactic complexity, and overall writing quality of EFL writers’ task performance . J. Lang. Linguist. Stud. 13 , 440–464. Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/jlls/issue/36120/405621 [ Google Scholar ]
• Yoon H. J., Polio C. (2017). The linguistic development of students of English as a second language in two written genres . TESOL Q. 51 , 275–301. doi: 10.1002/tesq.296 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhang H., Chen M., Li X. (2021). Developmental features of lexical richness in English compositions by Chinese beginner learners . Front. Psychol. 12 :665988. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.665988, PMID: [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhang J., Daller M. (2020). Lexical richness of Chinese candidates in the graded oral English examinations . Appl. Linguist. Rev. 11 , 511–533. doi: 10.1515/applirev-2018-0004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zhu H. M., Wang J. J. (2013). The developmental features of lexical richness in English writing: a self-built corpus-based longitudinal study . Foreign Lang. World 159 , 77–86. doi: CNKI:SUN:WYJY.0.2013-06-015 [ Google Scholar ]

• China Daily PDF
• China Daily E-paper
• Global Views
• Featured contributors
• Opinion Line
• Forum Trends

Shape global narratives for telling China's stories

In the past 70 years since the founding of New China, the Chinese people have created the miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability. Insightful people around the world have expressed admiration for what has been achieved.

However, there are still some people in the world who have little knowledge of and even misunderstandings and prejudices about China's development. Since the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, China has been embracing the world, learning from the world, integrating into the world and making contributions to the world, in the hope of achieving win-win cooperation with all countries and promoting self-development as well as common development with the rest of the world. This process is still ongoing, and we need to better convey China's views and make China's voice heard so that more people can understand China.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in late 2012, President Xi Jinping has attached great importance to the country's international communication and repeatedly stressed in his speeches that we should better tell China's stories and strengthen China's voice in the international arena. To do this, we should grasp the profound connotations of China's stories and master effective ways to tell China's stories to actively increase China's voice, enhance the international community's recognition of China's development and present to the world an authentic, multi-dimensional and comprehensive picture of China.

Forging China's global image

Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy, China has made remarkable progress in promoting communication with the world since the 18th Party Congress. We have put forward China's policy positions and introduced important initiatives on many occasions, demonstrating our support for economic globalization and multilateralism, and presenting China's voice to the world.

Many Chinese experts, scholars and media outlets have more actively come onto the international stage, enabling a greater diversity of China's voices to be heard and provide responses to the concerns of the outside world. At the same time, China's international communication channels have become more diversified with regard to both its general communication with the rest of the world as a whole and its bilateral communication with individual countries, and it has accelerated the transformation from traditional media to integrated multimedia.

While firmly safeguarding China's sovereignty, security and development interests, we have actively articulated our positions and propositions on various issues. Not only has the Chinese government taken a clear-cut and firm stance on diplomatic occasions, but the Chinese business community and academia have also come to the fore and played an important role in helping promote China's major-country diplomacy through their practices that have clarified some vague perceptions of China's diplomacy held by the outside world. These achievements and accumulated experience give us the confidence that we can better get across what China stands for to the world with active efforts to make China's voice heard.

It requires dedicated and systematic efforts to improve a country's international communication capabilities. The world's perception of China can be shaped by Chinese narrative and behaviors. We should accurately grasp the trend of the times, constantly strengthen our ability to build our narrative, and explore the trends that are not only in line with China's national conditions but also reflect those of the world, so as to make China's international communication more targeted and timely, enhance its appeal, and strengthen the international influence of Chinese discourse.

Promote community with a shared future

We should actively strengthen the construction of our foreign narrative system, use innovative ways to tell our stories to the world and enhance the affinity of our cultural communication to make the image of contemporary China more appealing to the people in the world. For example, to more actively respond to the concerns of the international community about the novel coronavirus outbreak, we need to use various forms to make our voice heard in a timely manner, narrate our fight against the epidemic, clearly explain our positive actions and progress in epidemic prevention and control, and promote our vision of a community with a shared future for mankind.

A country's ability to get its messages across internationally determines its influence, while its narrative determines its ability to seize the initiative in its global interactions. In international communications theory, the "narrative" is a communication tool that conveys specific values and enables meaningful communication between the speaker and the listener. The international narrative capacity of a country not only emanates from its ability to get itself heard, but more importantly the effectiveness and influence of its narrative. In theory, a country's narrative contains multi-faceted elements. First is content and quality. To be effective, the narrative needs to be supported by high-quality content.

Second is the ability to set the agenda in the international arena. In practical international relations, countries with strong international agenda-setting and narrative ability are usually more able to shape and guide public opinion and seize the initiative of international discourse.

Successful narrative needs to be based on facts

Third are the facts and practices from which the narrative is built. Successful discourse needs to be based on abundant facts and effective practices. Hollow concepts and declarations are not enough to persuade and convince people and it is difficult for a country to truly enhance its narrative if it lacks substance.

Fourth is reception and feedback. Only by winning the recognition of foreign audiences and learn from their feedback can the influence of the narrative be improved and strengthened.

As China moves closer to the center of the world stage, more and more countries and people worldwide want to understand China, look at China objectively and explore the reasons underlying its great achievements. China's voice has grown with the expansion of its influence.

However, generally speaking, Western dominance in international narrative over countries in the East has not fundamentally changed, and China's voice and influence in international discourse still need to be improved. At the same time, we have not fully taken advantage of the narrative capabilities we have already acquired. It should be noted that international public opinions are diverse and multi-faceted, and audiences from different backgrounds usually receive information from different channels.

The official and diplomatic communication channel alone is not enough for all occasions, which means more players need to participate in the promotion of a country's international narrative.

Compared with the past, the international community is paying more attention to China's policy propositions and proposals on various issues, and hopes to have firsthand information and in-depth elucidation from China. However, such first-hand information is still quite limited and insufficient to reflect the rich social practices and culture of contemporary China, and cannot satisfy the desire of the international community to learn more about China of today.

Enhancing influence of nation's narrative

Under the new circumstances, we need to be more sensitive to and fully grasp the opportunities brought about by the changing times and take the initiative to make our voices heard. This will not only enhance the influence of our own narrative, but will also help shape international public opinion to better reflect today's world in a more balanced way.

China is willing to conduct friendly exchanges and engage in dialogue with other countries on an equal footing. A country that can successfully wield its international narrative power is one which is good at projecting its voice using both its own microphone and the microphones of others. In other words, in order to gain the initiative in international communication, we need to actively participate in discussions and share our ideas.

We need to win the understanding, respect and recognition of international audiences through penetrating analysis, appealing ideas and persuasive arguments. Based on the profound and enduring values of the Chinese culture, we should adhere to the spirit of humility, inclusiveness and learning from others, and employ a plain, down-to-earth narrative style to convey what is happening in China, and make objective judgments on what is happening outside China. We should form a narrative style with Chinese characteristics that gives China a distinctive voice that can be heard and understood in international discourse.

Focus on communication with people outside China

The world is going through changes not seen in a century. Although we have entered the 21st century, some people's minds are still defined by the past. They are used to observing new things with an old perspective. There is always a struggle between the voices advocating multilateralism and unilateralism in the international arena.

We need a strong and positive narrative that lets the world know that China's development not only benefits the Chinese people in their pursuit for a better life, but also benefits the world by helping it build a more just and affluent environment. To get our voice better heard in the international arena, we need to focus on communicating with people in other countries and gaining more understanding and trust from them, which require us to use innovative ideas and methods so we can better tell the Chinese story.

The international community is now paying close attention to China, not only its development achievements, but also how a developing China will influence the world. As China moves closer to the center of the world stage, there are some people in the world who, out of ideological prejudice or arrogance, seek to distort and discredit China. They seek to apply the development logic of some Western countries to China. But human civilization has a long history and it is not an iron law of history that a country will inevitably seek hegemony after becoming powerful.

Those who look at the world with an outdated, narrow, one-sided view of history cannot see the trend of the times and the need for the world to move toward a community with a shared future for mankind. To change the view of others and convince them there can be a shared future, we cannot rely simply on explanation and argument, we need to show the world a more real, multi-dimensional, comprehensive picture of China, more convincingly explain China's intentions and goals, and focus attention on China's interactions with other countries and how through those interactions countries are jointly working for common purposes.

There is need to interpret global issues and trends

We should actively try to interpret international issues and world trends with Chinese theories and perspectives, elucidate the Chinese spirit and showcase the Chinese way of doing things to gain more understanding and support from the world.

To tell China's story well, we need to not only speak about the Chinese system, but also relate the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. In doing so, we should use innovative methods of communication and narrative concepts, so that we can ensure that what we want to tell can be heard by foreign audiences and enhance the affinity of our communication. We can start from the everyday lives of Chinese people, so foreigners can better understand the true myriad of "Chinese life", and in this way gain a better appreciation of the Chinese path, Chinese theory, Chinese system and Chinese culture.

In the new era, we need to earnestly study and develop a deep understanding of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy and introduce a real, multi-dimensional and comprehensive China to the world. What we need to do is to craft our own narrative, better promote international communication and work hard to achieve the goal of enhancing our voice and national soft power so as to present a genuine image of China to the world.

We need not worry about the international reputation of a China that continues to reform and innovate and open wider to the outside world, and a China that is committed to ensuring a happy life for all Chinese people and has made great contributions to world peace and development.

The author is former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of the Center for International Security and Strategy of Tsinghua University.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Narrative Medicine in China

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 10 August 2021
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Rong Huang 3  

179 Accesses

1 Altmetric

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Charon, R. (2006). Narrative medicine: Honoring the stories of illness . Oxford University Press.

Google Scholar  

Denborough, D. (2020). Narrative therapy, Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese medicine: An interview with Ming Li. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 1 , 61–65.

Guo, L. (2020). Xushiyixue zai zhongguo: Xianzhuang yu weilai [Narrative medicine in China: Past and future]. Yixue yu zhexue [Medicine and Philosophy], 41 (10), 4–8.

Holloway, M. (2005). Yixue yu wenxue de jiaoji [When medicine meets literature]. Liu Heng trans. Kexue [Science], 7 , 22–23.

Huang, R. (2020). Narrative medicine in China: How doctors write to understand the profession. Life Writing, 17 (1), 89–102.

Article   Google Scholar  

White, M. (1990). Introduction. In M. White & D. Epston (Eds.), Narrative means to therapeutic ends . W.W. Norton.

Wu, Y., Jiang, F., Ma, J., Tang, Y. L., Wang, M., & Liu, Y. (2020). Experience of medical disputes, medical disturbances, verbal and physical violence, and burnout among physicians in China. Frontiers in Psychology, 11 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Health Humanities, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rong Huang .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

School of Health Sciences, The University of Nottingham, Derby, UK

Paul Crawford

Drew University, Madison, NJ, USA

Paul Kadetz

Section Editor information

Peking University, Beijing, China

Daniel Vuillermin

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Huang, R. (2021). Narrative Medicine in China. In: Crawford, P., Kadetz, P. (eds) Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_133-1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_133-1

Received : 14 October 2020

Accepted : 11 April 2021

Published : 10 August 2021

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-26825-1

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-26825-1

eBook Packages : Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media Studies Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Humanities

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research