利用圖片引導英文寫作在台灣十分普遍。於看圖寫作評量中，考試者必須藉由觀看圖片、了解圖意、詮釋圖意，把視覺的訊息轉化為文字的表達。這個研究的目的在於將三格連環圖片分類，並檢視不同類型對於英文寫作表現之影響。本研究中，三格連環圖片以文本結構，故事文法和驚奇結局三大原則為分類基礎，分為以下五種：時間組、步驟過程組、主題發展組、因果組(結果可預測)、因果組(結果不可預測)。本分類經過三位台中一中英文教師之認證，也排除字頻因素的可能影響後且為求量的研究，本研究以文章總字數、相異詞比例、T-單位的平均長度方式分別測試字彙量、字彙量豐富度、句子複雜度，並利用one-way ANOVA及ANCOVA做資料分析，以此找出何種三格連環圖片最能引導出寫作者的寫作能力。以文章總字數而論，因果組(結果可預測)、因果組(結果不可預測)分別引導出顯著性最高及次高的文章長度。而這兩種圖片類型，儘管並非照片，但完全符合Hooper et al. (1994, p. 388) 所提議的有效引導寫作圖片的準則。至於相異詞比例，主題發展組及時間組引出的作文有著顯著性較高的字彙豐富度。在這兩種較靜態及缺乏連結點的圖片類型中，受試者較不受限於圖片內容，反而會想像故事情節因而運用較多元化的字彙。最後，在T-單位的平均長度方面，則沒有任何顯著性的差異。也就是說，不同的圖片類型對於句子複雜度並無任何影響。

The use of picture prompts to elicit English writing samples is a common practice in Taiwan. In this type of writing assessment, examinees are required to compose paragraphs by looking at and understanding a picture sequence, interpreting the picture sequence, and then transferring the visual information into the verbal mode of expression.
The purpose of this study is to classify three-frame picture prompts and to examine the effect of different types of three-frame picture prompts on writing performance. Based on Sinatra’s text organization pattern (2000), story grammar (Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Rumelhart, 1975; Stein & Glenn, 1979) and studies on readers’ expectancy of the consequence as classification criteria, three-frame picture prompts fall into five different types: the time-based type, the steps-in-a-process type, the topic-development type, the cause-and-effect type with an expected consequence, and the cause-and-effect type with an unexpected consequence. With the validation of the classification and the exclusion of the potential interference of the factor of word frequency, each writing sample for different picture prompts is scored using three different measures: the length of writing products, lexical density (the type-token ratio), and the mean length of T-units. These measures respectively assess fluency, vocabulary diversity, and linguistic complexity of sentences. The collected data are analyzed with one-way ANOVA and ANCOVA.
In terms of the length of writing products, the cause-and-effect type with an expected consequence elicits the longest writing products and the cause-and-effect type with an unexpected consequence elicits the second longest. These two cause-effect picture prompts meet nearly all the criteria proposed by Hooper et al. (1994, p. 388) except that they are line drawings rather than photographs. As for the type-token ratio, the topic-development type and the time-based type elicit samples with higher type-token ratios. In these two types of picture prompts which lack coherence and dynamics, subjects are less confined to the static content of the pictures, thus employing a more diversified vocabulary. As to the mean length of T-units, there is no significant difference among the five types of three-frame picture prompts. There is no significant difference in the effect on syntactic complexity.

References

Alejandro, A. (1994). Like happy dreams－Integrating visual arts, writing, and reading. Language Arts, 71, 12-21.

Applebee, A. N. (1978). The child’s concept of story: Ages two to seventeen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Baker, M. (2000). Towards a methodology for investigating the style of a literary Translator. Target, 12 (2), 241-66.

Bates, L. (1991). The effects on the structure of young children’s written narrative of using a sequence of pictures or a single picture as a stimulus. Reading, 25 (3), 2-10.

Chen, K. T., Huang, T. S., Lin, S. E., Lin, C. I., & Li, C. L. (1993). The pamphlet of item writing skills and scoring guides for the writing ability test on the JCEE. Taipei: College Entrance Examination Center.

Chiang, Y. C. (2003). A study of picture-elicited narratives for developing junior high school students’ English writing competence. Master’s Thesis of the Graduate Institute of English, National Chengchi University.

Chipere, N., Malvern, D., Richards, B., & Duran, P. (2001). Using a corpus of school children’s writing to investigate the development of vocabulary diversity. Technical Papers, 13. Special Issue. Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2001 Conference. Ed. P. Rayson, A. Wilson, T. McEnery, A. Hardie and S. Khoja: 126-33.

Cole, J. C., & McLeod, J. S. (1999). Children’s written expression: The impact of the pictorial stimulus. Psychology in the Schools, 36, 101-12.

Cole, J. C., Muenz, T. A., Ouchi, B.Y., Kaufman, N. L., & Kaufman, A. S. (1997). The impact of the pictorial stimulus on the written expression output. Psychology in the Schools, 34 (1), 1-9.

Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238.

Crookes, G. (1989). Planning and interlanguage variation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11, 183-99.

Cycowicz, Y. M., Friedman, D., Snodgrass, J. G., & Rothstein, M. (1994). Picture naming by young children: Norms for name agreement, familiarity and visual complexity. National Institute of Child health and Human Development (NIH), Bethesda, MD.

Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1996). The influence of planning time and task type on second language performance. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 158-84.

Gaies, S. J. (1980). T-unit analysis in second language research: Applications, problems and limitations. TESOL Quarterly, 14 (1), 53-60.

Gordon, C. J., & C. Braun. (1983). Using story schema as an aid to reading and writing. Reading Teacher 37 (2), 116-21.

Grimes-Maguire, R., & Keane, M.T. (2005). Expecting a surprise? The effect of expectations on perceived surprise in stories. Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Stresa, Italy). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Heaton, J. B. (2005). Beginning composition through pictures. Essex, England: Longman.

Heaton, J. B. (2006). Composition through pictures. London: Longman.

Hess, C. W., Sefton, K. M., & Landry, R. G. (1986). Sample size and type-token ratios for oral language of preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 29 (1), 129-34.

Hooper, S. R., Montgomery, J., Swartz, C., Reed, M. S., Sandler, A. D., Levine, M. D., Watson, T. E., & Wasileski, T. (1994). Measurement of written language expression. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Hough, R. A., Nurss, J. R., & Wood, D. (1987). Tell me a story: Making opportunities for elaborated language in early childhood. Young Children, 43 (1), 6-12.

Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Iran-Nejad, A. (1987). Cognitive and affective causes of interest and liking. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 120-30.

Joshua, M. B. (2007). The effects of pictures and prompts on the writing of students in primary grades: Action research by graduate students at California State University, Northridge. Action in Teacher Education, 29 (2), 80-93.

Keenan, J. M., Baillet, S. D., & Brown, P. (1984). The effects of causal cohesion on comprehension and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 115-26.

Kim, S-I. (1999). Causal bridging inference: A cause of story interestingness. British Journal of Psychology, 90, 57-71.

Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written productions. Applied Linguistics 16 (3), 307-22.

Liles, B. Z. (1989 August). Narrative analysis: Clinical applications of story generation and story retelling. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 54, 438-47.

Lodge, D. (1992). The art of fiction. New York: Viking.

Mandler, J. M., & Johnson, N. S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology 9, 111-51.

Meara, P. (1993). Tintin and the world service: A look at lexical environments. IATEFL: Annual Conference Report, 32-37.

Meyer, W.-U., Reisenzein, R., & Schützwohl, A. (1997). Towards a process analysis of emotions: The case of surprise. Motivation and Emotion, 21, 251-74.

Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. New York: Newbury House.

Nation, P., & Waring, R. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary description, acquisition and pedagogy, 6-19. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Newaskar, M. (2005). Creative Writing Book 1. Singapore: Asian Publications.

Newaskar, M. (2005). Creative Writing Book 2. Singapore: Asian Publications.

Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2000). Effectiveness of L2 instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis. Language Learning 50 (3), 417-528.

Pettersson, R. (1986). Image－word－image. Journal of Visual Verbal Languaging, 6 (Fall), 7-21.

Retherford, K. (2000). Guide to analysis of language transcripts (3rd ed.). Eau Claire, WI: Thinking Publications.

Richards, B. (1987). Type/token ratios: what do they really tell us? Journal of Child Language, 14, 201-9.

Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Bobrow & A. M. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science, 211-36. New York: Academic Press.

Schweizer, M. L. (1999). The effect of content, style, and color of picture prompts on narrative writing: An analysis of fifth and eighth grade students’ writing. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Seaman, A. (1993). Visual literacy and second language fluency: The process of composing in a second language from a visual prompt. Dissertation Abstracts International, 54 (8), 2929A.

Siew, T. (2004). Creative & Guided Composition. Singapore: Asian Publications.

Sinatra, R. C. (1981). Visual compositions and the writing process. Paper presented at the annul meeting of the Canadian Council of Teachers of English, Vancouver, Canada.

Sinatra, R. C. (1986). Picture preferences of elementary school children and teachers. University Microfilm, Ann Arbor, MI.

Sinatra, R. C. (2000, May). Teaching learners to think, read, and write more effectively in content subjects. Clearing House, 73 (5), 266-73.

Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In R. O. Freedie (Ed.), New Directions in Discourse Processing: Vol. II, 53-120. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Stevick, E. W. (1986). Images and options in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S. (2002). How to teach vocabulary. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman.

Ur, P. (1988). Grammar practice activities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van den Broek, P. (1989). The effects of causal structure on the comprehension of narratives: Implications for education. Reading Psychology 10 (1), 19-44.

Way, D. P., Joiner, E. G., & Seaman, M. A. (2000). Writing in the secondary foreign language classroom: the effects of prompts and tasks on novice learners of French. The Modern Language Journal, 84 (2), 171-84.

White, R. V. (1978). Communication in writing: The problem of cueing (ED 168302). England. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 168 302)

Wolfe-Quintero, K., S. Inagaki, & H.-Y. Kim. (1998). Second Language Development in Writing: Measures of Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity. Technical Report No. 17. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.

Wong, B. Y. L. (1997, Spring). Research on genre-specific strategies for enhancing writing in adolescents with learning disabilities. Learning Disability Quarterly, 20, 140-59.

Wright, A. (1989). Pictures for language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Xue, G., & Nation, I. S. P. (1984). A university word list. Language Learning and Communication, 3, 215-29.

林秀慧　(民94).　九十四學年度學科能力測驗試題分析－英文考科。　台北：大考中心。