因果關係對中國學生處理英文資訊的影響

The Effects of Causal Relations onChinese EFL Learners’Inferential Process

因果關係是記敘文中最重要的組成關係。相關事件的因果關係決定於四個條件：時間順序、運行作用、充分性、以及必要性。如果四項條件都達到，因果關係顯著。如有任何一項條件未達到，因果關係則減弱。讀者在閱讀記敘文時會進行因果推論，研究顯示如果事件未能以因果關係連結，讀者將無法掌握文章中的連貫性。實驗亦證實因果相關聯的事件比無因果關聯的事件容易被記憶。本研究的目的在於探討英文中的因果關係如何影響中國學生理解英文記敘性的文本。結果顯示中國學生閱讀英文時會受到因果關係強弱、事件是否位於因果鏈上、以及因果連接詞的存在等因素的影響。本研究中，六十四位中國文化大學大一生重組一連串隨意組合的事件。結果顯示大部分的學生能夠以因果關係串連相關事件，顯示中國學生處理英文資訊時會進行因果推論。而也如先前研究的預測，不在因果鏈上的事件造成學生在處理記敘性英文資訊時較多的困難。

Causal relations are the most important properties of a narrative text. The causality between pairs or sequences of events is determined according to four criteria: temporal priority, operativity, necessity, and sufficiency. If all the criteria are met, the events are in strong causal relations. And the degree of causality declines if one of the criteria is not satisfied. Readers are believed to be making causal inferences when processing a narrative text. And evidence shows that when events are not causally connected, coherence breaks occur. It has also been empirically validated that the event that is on the causal chain is recalled better than the one that is out of such a chain. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how the causal relations in an English narrative text influenced EFL learners' inferential process in reading. The results indicated that EFL learners were affected by the factors such as the strength of causality, causal-chain status, and the presence of causal signals when processing a narrative text in English. In the study, sixty-four college freshmen were requested to reconstruct the events that were not temporallysequenced to form a coherent text. The results showed that the majority of the subjects were able to connect the events into causally related sequences, which suggested that EFL learners were drawing causal inferences when processing an English narrativetext. Further investigation of the implausible sequences constructed by the subjects showed that the event that had no clear causal-chain status posed more problems for EFL learners than the causal-chain events in the text, corroborating the conclusion reached in previous related studies.