Genre Analysis On English Application Letters Of Chinese Undergraduates: Move Patterns And Linguistic Features

Since the middle of1960s, discourse analysis which studies applied languages acrosssentences has drawn the interests from many branches of learning. In the past three to fourdecades, discourse analysis has transformed from pure superficial description of language todeep description, and the description of discourse or subject has developed into furtherunderstanding. People gradually realize the importance of discourse analysis which focuses oncommunication purposes and language strategies, so they pay more and more attention todiscourse analysis which centers on communication purposes and language strategies. Theanalysis of subject interprets profoundly the macro structure and communication purposes of adiscourse, and emphasizes the communication purposes and the language strategies and skills.This paper studies the writing of English cover letter, a branch of business writing aiming tomake employers know the job hunters’ experience, academic degree, ability, achievements andenvision, etc. A cover letter can impress the employers so that the job hunters can win theopportunity of an interview and gain the job. To write an idiomatic cover letter requires a certainkind of cognitive code. Understanding and mastering the macro structure as well as the cognitivecode of an English cover letter, without doubt, can help us write an idiomatic English cover letter.In reality, however, when applying for jobs in foreign companies, Chinese university studentsoften come across inadequate expression or undesirable communication in their cover letters.The reason behind this problem is obvious: currently Chinese university students haven’tmastered enough knowledge about the discourse analysis of cover letter, which is the culprit forfailing to achieve the due communication purposes in their English cover letter.This paper collects60English job application letters written by Chinese university students,among which30letters help them win the jobs they applied for and the other30failed. Bycontrasting the two groups of cover letters from the perspectives of move patterns and languagefeatures, this paper tries to study the factors related to discourse analysis that hinder the successof Chinese students in finding jobs. This research is mainly qualitative and subsidiaryquantitative.From the angle of move patterns, based on Bhatia’s and Henry&Roseberry’s theory onmove patterns of job application letters, the two categories of sample letters are used to contrastwith the basic moves provided by the above theory, and the difference on move patterns betweenthe successful and the unsuccessful letters can be found. After discussing the reason which maycontribute to the diversity, improving direction and matters need attention are, therefore, putforward when designing the job application letters. From the angle of linguistic features, the study is carried out from three aspects, which are word level, sentence level and text level.Through the description of the difference of linguistic features existing between the twocategories, the suggestion how to perform the English language in actual use is given to theapplicants.In the end, this paper offers some suggestions to improve university students’ ability ofwriting cover letters from the aspects of both students and teachers. It is expected that this paperwill bring some light on the writing of English cover letters and help students find jobssuccessfully.