Relation Between Reading Proficiency And Ideational Grammatical Metaphor Productive Skill Of English Majors

Reading proficiency as one of the receptive skill is the prerequisite of language acquisition while productive skill, like writing, is the final goal of language learning (Li Yamin,2009). Halliday (2000) points out that metaphorical expressions are characteristics of various adults’discourses. Due to the complexity of syntax and the use of abstract nouns, ideational grammatical metaphor is a manifestation of high language proficiency during the process of language acquisition"(Xiong Xueliang&Liu Donghong,2005:102). What’s more, ideational grammatical metaphor can add conciseness, coherence, objectivity, precision and vividness to English discourses. So it is necessary for us to investigate the relation between reading proficiency and ideational grammatical metaphor productive skill, which may contribute to the research relating writing instruction at college level.This thesis investigates the relation between reading proficiency and ideational grammatical metaphor productive skill of English Majors from the aspects of verbal nominalization, adjective nominalization and verbalization, a classification raised by Zhu Yongsheng (2006). The research questions are:1) What is the overall use of Ideational Grammatical Metaphor by English major students?2) To what extent do there exist significant differences relating IGM productive skill between high-low reading proficiency groups?3) How do College students’reading proficiency and Ideational Grammatical Metaphor Productive skill correlate with each other?The data of reading proficiency comes from70reading test samples of the English majors of Year Two in Southwest Jiaotong University (a part of students’final exam) and the data of writings comes from the same group of students’time-limited argumentative writings (conducted in class). Independent-samples T-test and Pearson correlation coefficient are applied. The analysis of each variable in samples conducted by SPSS13.0has the following findings:Firstly, verbal nominalization is most frequently used by Chinese English majors while adjective nominalization and verbalization are less frequently used.Secondly, there exist gaps relating the use of verbal nominalization between high reading proficiency group and low reading proficiency group with more such expressions applied by high-proficiency learners. However, the gap is not significant between the two groups relating the use of adjective nominalization and two kinds of verbalization.Thirdly, the correlation between reading proficiency and verbal nominalization productive skill and the correlation between reading proficiency and non-finite adjectival phrases productive skill are positive and significant, but the correlation between reading proficiency and the productive skill of other two IGMs (adjective nominalization and adverbial phrases) is not significant.The above findings have brought forth the following pedagogical implications:Firstly, English teachers should recognize the reason why students avoid using ideational grammatical metaphors, namely, the negative transfer of native language and syntactic complexity of IGM. Secondly, English reading teachers should put more emphasis on the syntactic structure analysis of the native English sentences relating nominalization and verbalization appeared in reading materials and help students to enhance cognitive thinking ability of learning second language. Thirdly, English writing teachers should also aim at developing learners’awareness of syntactic complexity and diversity by comparing sentences produced by students themselves and sentences which involve nominalization and verbalization expressions produced by English natives when teaching English writings.