| Expressive language skills are crucial for English language learners.Writing is one of the most critical indicators of English language learners’ graphic language skills,concerned with the meaning that language conveys at the written level.As an output language skill,English writing is not only tricky for learners to learn but also the focus of language teaching for teachers,which occupies an important position in English language teaching.Appraisal theory results from system-functional linguistics research on interpersonal meaning,focusing on the various attitudes that can be negotiated in discourse.Appraisal theory complements and extends the interpersonal meta-function in systemic functional grammar proposed by Halliday and is mainly used to analyze the attitudes,opinions,and positions displayed by the various systems in discourse.The argumentative essay,on the other hand,is a style in which the author expresses his opinion and presents his point of view by offering facts and reasoning,and is an essay that convinces people by reasoning.Therefore,the various attitudes,opinions,and positions that can be negotiated in the discourse become essential elements for the argumentative essay style.This study takes the three appraisal resource systems in appraisal theory as the perspective,appraisal resource systems are main content of appraisal theory.Based on the self-built corpus of English college students’ argumentative essays,firstly extracts the appraisal word chunks in English college students’ argumentative essays,then incorporates the word chunks into different appraisal resource systems respectively according to the previous framework,and later conducts word frequency statistics,aiming to explore the distribution characteristics of appraisal resources in English college students’ argumentative essay writing,and the evaluative meanings embodied in several example sentences were analyzed,the discourse was analyzed qualitatively from the perspective of each resource,and finally,the interpersonal meanings behind them were analyzed in three different dimensions: mood,modality and person.The study aims to solve following three questions:1)What is the overall distribution of appraisal resources for argumentative essay writing among English majors in China?2)What meaning is conveyed from different appraisal resources of argumentative essay writing among Chinese English majors?3)What interpersonal meaning is realized by Chinese English majors’ use of appraisal resources in argumentative essay writing?The data analysis shows that the attitude resource occupies the highest frequency,the engagement resource comes second,and the graduation resource is used the least.The results reflect a solid subjective tendency in English majors’ argumentative essays,and objectivity and rationality need to be improved.The authors use different types of appraisal resources to convey the authors’ positive attitude toward their future lives and persuade readers to accept and support their views.The interpersonal meaning analysis from different dimensions reflects the authors’ intention to clarify their positions,convince their readers,and try to narrow the distance between them.The above findings provide some pedagogical implications for the use of appraisal resources and the teaching of argumentative essays in the writing of English majors,which will help improve the level of writing of English majors.In addition,although this study has some theoretical significance and pedagogical value,it inevitably has some limitations.On the basis,some suggestions for future related research are put forward. |
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