Ideological and linguistic values in EFL examination scripts: The selection and execution of story genres

This article investigates secondary school students' use of narratives and other story genres in an English language public examination in Hong Kong. Understandings of genre from systemic functional linguistics (SFL) were used to analyse one prompt and the texts it elicited. High graded texts were found to differ from low graded texts in terms of the relative use of story versus argument genres, and also of narrative versus other story genres. Sample texts are used to highlight the role of expanded nominal groups in creating these genres. The texts suggest a need to raise students', teachers' and test developers' awareness of the various purposes of story-telling, and of the generic structures and language resources that can be used to carry out those purposes.