(316)ENHANCING STYLISTIC DEVELOPMENT IN NON-NATIVE ENGLISHSPEAKINGUNDERGRADUATES THROUGH QUANTITATIVEANALYSIS

摘要

For non-native writers of English, simple sentences are the key to clear, orderly prose.These kinds of ‘beginner’ patterns serve the student well for college prep and TOEFLprograms and even to some extent for first-year university composition;however, whenstudents move on to higher levels of composition, in courses such as argumentation andresearch, the simple sentence cannot be the only stylistic tool in the writer’s box.Developing a variety of stylistic patterns is critical not only to sound better but also todemonstrate fluency and control over the language. This paper will explain how studentscan use computer technology to analyze and quantify their own prose style against theprose style of lower and higher levels of writing. Bar charts and graphs were en vogue incomposition courses when computers were new and thriving in the late 80s and early90s, but these days it is rare for students to think of quantitative analysis when it comesto writing and rarer still for composition courses to incorporate the teaching of style, thatindispensable yet neglected topic in most writing courses.