Ａｎ Ａｐｐｌｉｃａｔｉｏｎ ｏｆ“Ｓｔｏｒｙ Ｇｒａｍｍａｒ” ｉｎ “Ｐｉｃｔｕｒｅ－Ｗｒｉｔｉｎｇ”ｏｆ ＮＭＥＴ Ｃｏｍｐｏｓｉｔｉｏｎ

莫　颖

In National Matriculation English Test(NMET), compo-sition is an important part in “Paper Two”, which comprises “picture-writing”, a commonly seen genre. The purpose of this paper, baesd on the analysis of NMET samples, is to ex-plore an application of “story grammar” concerning psy-cholinguistic in “picture-writing” of NMET composition.

1.“Story grammar” approach in Narrative Dis-course Processing

(1)story grammar

A story grammar is a schema memory that identifies the typical planning of an event in a story. “Story grammar” re-gards an integrated narration as comprising setting, event, re-sponse, goal, attempt, outcome, ending like chunks in an episode, which offer somewhat ideal components in organiz-ing a narrative framework:

setting(S)—event(E)—response(R)—goal(G)—attempt(A)—outcome(O)—ending(N).

(2)simple story and embedded story

Carroll found that the story grammar approach places emphasis on the concept of an episode. The simple episode has separate chunks for readers to recall and summarize. But an embedded story presents readers with more complicated states embedded in other states, thus story writers leave lower levels for recalling.

Both of the story genres can be analyzed by a story grammar, so can “picture-writing” in NMET composition.

2.Method

Below is an example of “picture-writing” .

(2005 Guangdong paper) Michael是一名美国中学生,在学校里选修汉语。他利用暑假到中国进修,希望进一步了解中国文化。有一天,他看到下面有关成语的漫画,不大明白其中的意思。请你用英语把漫画所表达的故事和寓意写成一段短文,向他解释。

注意:1.词数:在80—120词之间;

2.参考词汇:bump into(撞上), hoe(锄头)

3.Results

The analysis indicates that the four pictures tell a fa-mous Chinese idiom story “Trust to chance and windfalls” consistent with “story grammar” mode. How the simple story is analyzed by a story grammar is shown below:

1.Once upon a time, there was a farmer.(S)

2.He worked hard in the field every day.(E)

3.One day, he was ploughing in the field and he heard a sound.(E)

4.He saw a rabbit lying by the trump.(R)

5.He picked it up.(O)

6.He decided not to work that hard.(G)

7.He threw away the hoe.(A)

8.He lay by the tree for more rabbits to come.(A)

9.He realized the foolishness and returned to his field.(O)

10.All the crops were dead.(N)

It shows that the length of the discourse and the sen-tence structures do not influence the application of a story grammar. Grammatically, a complete sentence serves as“chunk” in an episode,the processes such as setting,goal,attempt can appear irregularly one or more times in a story. A “chunk” may include more than one plot. It seems easier to imply the storys setting, event, outcome and ending than its attempts,goals and response.

“Story grammar” is an effective approach in framing ei-ther a“simple story”or an“embedded story” of“picture writ-ing”in NMET composition. The analysis of some NMET papers and their possible versions could suggest that with the guidance of“S-E-R-G-A-O-N”mode and other story grammar rules plus the method of“fluency to accuracy”,it is probable to write a standard NMET task-based composition,which may benefit the NMET researchers and many NMET participants.However,we need to discover how other forms of picture-writing is organized and the solution to teach stu-dents the“story grammar” approach in success of promoting NMET writing techniques.

(责编 周侯辰 黄 晓)