A Study Of Attitudinal Resources In Reading Texts Of Junior High School English Teaching Materials

Teaching materials are not only the carriers of English Curriculum Standards,but also the main sources of English language input for students.The interpersonal meaning of reading texts in English teaching materials is not only the embodiment of the humanistic characteristic of the English subject,but also an important part of the core literacy,which is mainly expressed by the attitudinal resources.The reading texts in junior high school English teaching materials contain different attitudinal resources to help students build a correct and positive outlook on world,on life,and on values to achieve the purpose of communication.At present,many achievements have been made in the study of English teaching materials;but there is a lack of exploration on the junior high school English teaching materials,especially the attitudinal meaning therein.The analysis of the attitudinal resources of reading texts in junior high school English teaching materials can not only provide a new perspective for the interpretation of reading texts,but also deepen the understanding of the interpersonal meaning of teaching materials.This study uses the attitude system of Sydney School’s Appraisal Theory to analyze the attitudinal resources contained in reading texts in junior high school English teaching materials,including their types,distribution,and expressions.The corpus of the study is compiled of texts from the Go for it!(2012)published by People’s Education Press.Based on the manual annotation in the UAM Corpus Tool3.0,the corpus is analyzed in order to answer the following four questions.1.What types of attitudinal resources are deployed in the reading texts of junior high school English teaching materials?2.How are these types of attitudinal resources expressed in the reading texts of junior high school English teaching materials?3.How are the attitudinal resources distributed in the junior high school English teaching materials?4.Are there any typical patterns of logogenesis in the junior high school English teaching materials? If so,what are the patterns like?The results show that: First of all,the reading texts in Go for it!(2012)provide a variety of attitudinal resources,including affect,judgement,and appreciation.There are all together 14 sub-types of affect,judgement,and appreciation.The most frequent attitudinal sub-system is appreciation.The numbers of these three types of attitudinal resources are rather balanced.The numbers of positive and negative attitudinal resources are skewed,with positive attitudinal resources much higher than negative.Second,the total amount of the three types of attitudinal resources of the reading texts in Go for it!(2012)increases with the growth of the grade.In Grade Seven and Grade Eight,the most frequent type is appreciation;while in Grade Nine,the most frequent type is judgement.Third,attitudinal resources in Go for it!(2012)are mostly expressed by verbs,adjectives,and nouns.Different types of attitudinal resources have their own high-frequency words.Besides,there are different patterns of logogenesis in the reading texts of junior high school English teaching materials,including domination,saturation,and intensification.Among all the patterns,the most frequent pattern is saturation in Grade Seven,Grade Eight,and Grade Nine.These findings provide useful implications for junior high school English teaching and teaching material compilation at the present stage.English teachers can provide additional reading texts with different attitudinal resources to enrich the teaching materials,and try to combine Appraisal Theory with reading teaching in practical teaching.At the same time,teaching material editors may provide more social-sanction resources in teaching materials,and provide more judgement resources for seventh-grade students.Due to the constraints of time and energy,this study has some limitations.The corpus is limited to the junior high school English teaching materials published by People’s Education Press,which is not enough to generalize the characteristics of attitudinal resources in all junior high school English teaching materials.At the same time,as the analysis of attitudinal resources depends on the understanding of specific context,the study is subjective to a certain extent.