A Study Of Compositions Written By Non-English Majors In Xinjiang Autonomous Area From A Register Perspective

With the constant deepening of China's communication with foreign countries, the importance of foreign language is getting more and more outstanding in politics, economy and our cultural life. More and more people begin to give much attention to foreign language learning, especially in English learning.EFL writing has attracted much attention of many researchers in these years. Analysis has also been done at different linguistic levels, in different approaches, and from various perspectives.Some foreign language teaching theorists, such as Halliday, Hasan, etc., have proposed register theory and also recognized its importance in foreign language teaching since the 1960s. In China, Professor Zhu Yongsheng, as a linguist, first introduced the theory of register and its application to foreign language teaching and pointed out its guiding role of register theory in foreign language teaching in the 1980s. From then on, many scholars become aware of the importance and necessity of the theory of register in that area. However, most of the books, researches or articles which related to register theory were theoretical explorations of the theory of register and its relationship to foreign language teaching. The application of register theory to classroom teaching is rare.With the theory of register proposed by Halliday in 1964, more and more linguists and educators gave much attention to the effect of register theory on EFL teaching. The author thinks that it could been widely used in many aspects in Foreign Language Teaching, and it has close relationship with English writing, because the appropriate use of the three variables of register, to much extent, can be one of the important factors in producing a composition.Based on register theory, the author made this research using the combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis from the three variables of the theory, aiming at analyzing the non-English major students' English writings, in terms of the three variables of the register theory, in order to get some implications for EFL teaching.The research shows that the deficiency of the students in English writing in Xinjiang Autonomous Area results from the lacking of awareness of register or ignoring the factors of context in teaching and learning, and the combination of several other factors—such as, the interference of native language, the lack of teachers' instruction in teaching, students' ignorance of register knowledge and lack of practice in reading, writing and speaking. This study also shows that the three variables of register play very important and determinant role in constructing meaningful and coherent texts, besides, we find in this study that there is not any significant difference in written discourses between minority students and Han majority students in this area.Therefore, teachers should nurture and enhance consciously learners' awareness of register, make them grasp the basic characteristics for different types of writing, trying to establish the foundation for students' transformation from linguistic knowledge to linguistic proficiency.