Sign and indexicality: a case study of enhancing alignment of situation models in SCWT

Abstract

Abstract The story continuation writing task (SCWT) is a newly emerging proficiency test of National Matriculation English Test (NMET) in three provinces in China. Nevertheless, little is known with respect to how test-takers enhance their alignment of situation models in SCWT. This paper reports on a case study of the development of situational alignment of one L2 (second language) learner in a senior high school in Jiangsu Province, China, drawing on qualitative data collected via individual face-to-face interviews, and supplemented by face-to-face conversations and email exchanges, over a period of one year. This study investigates how the test-taker enhances her alignment of situation models, and what factors contribute to her development of situational alignment under the framework of a new semiotic research finding, a pan-indexicality model. This paper concludes that test-takers possess the capacity of developing their alignment of situation models, and that a pan-indexicality model, affording opportunities for test-takers to accurately decode the meaning of a linguistic sign at the overall sense level, plays a decisive role in identifying and integrating key dimensions of situation models and eventually enhancing test-takers’ situational alignment. This study suggests that a pan-indexicality model can be employed by test-takers to understand the meaning of a linguistic sign at the overall sense level, and test-takers’ encyclopedic knowledge, contextual information, and personal emotions regarding a linguistic sign should be highlighted in classroom instruction to help test-takers construct aligned situation models in SCWT.