9 - Comparison between Chinese and English Regarding Participants’ Feedback

Summary

This chapter identifies various similarities and differences between the Taiwanese and Australian data. An approximate correlation was found between the severity of a disease and the difficulty of understanding EL. The intensity of items of EL in the excerpt also affects the perception of difficulty with EL. The more different elastic expressions there are in the excerpt, the higher the rate of difficulty the excerpt is likely to have. Our interview data further explain what makes it hard to understand EL. Some of the interview responses in Chinese correspond to those in English. Nevertheless, a striking difference was also identified as one response in the Taiwanese interview data was more oriented towards a perspective that considers society as a collective group or community, a phenomenon not found in the Australian data. Culture may also play a role, but culture cannot be simplified and reduced to one determinant held accountable for any given cultural differences. We suggest three broad factors that affect discourse comprehension difficulty caused by EL/VL: the reader, the health topic and the text.