An Analysis Of Tem-8and Ielts Essays From Perspectives Of Genre And Functional Grammar

Functional grammar has made considerable progress in recent decades, withwide application in the analysis of various kinds of writing. English essay writing, asan important way to test students’ English proficiency, is highly emphasized inEnglish learning and teaching. Thus, the studies on English compositions from theperspective of functional grammar have become the focus of much research toanalyze the linguistic features concerning vocabulary, syntax, cohesion and so on.However, less attention has been paid to the contrastive analysis of English essays indomestic and overseas exams, and also the analysis is seldom made from theperspective of genre.Therefore, based on genre analysis and functional grammar, this thesis analyzesthe similarities and differences between TEM-8and IELTS Task2essays. Theresults show:1) In terms of rhetorical moves, the order of moves is comparablyfixed in TEM-8essays, which is “Introduction”“Putting forward the writer’s view”“Supporting the view”“Conclusion”. Those four moves are also obligatory ones inTEM-8essays. In addition, the move of “Analyzing an issue/a problem” onlyappears in IELTS essays;2) In terms of linguistic features, passive voice is usedmore frequently in IELTS essays, but verbs of cognition and “be” structure occurmore frequently in IELTS essays.From the comparative analysis, the thesis explores the reasons behind thedifferences by taking the writing directions into account. It is hoped that suchinvestigation can make some contributions to the teaching of English writing inChina and the improvement of Chinese higher education.