A Comparison Of Engagement Resources In English And Chinese MOOC Discourses

As an important and effective supplementary option to traditional classroom learning, Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs) have captured the interest and attention of academics and the public since Stanford MOOC was first launched in the fall of 2011. What make MOOC different from the traditional class are the number of the learners is relatively large; the learners that the lecturers face are of different levels and of different background; the interaction between the lecturer and the learner is quite different and the choices of courses are based on the learners’ interests. Therefore, it is important for the lecturers to attract the learners’ attention. Having an appropriate interpersonal relationship is a vital factor.Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White is employed to explain how we use language to establish interpersonal relations. The Engagement system is concerned with the dialogic space between the writer and the putative readers. The thesis aims to explore distribution patterns of engagement resources in English and Chinese MOOC discourses so that it can probe further into how the interpersonal relation and dialogic space are constructed by employing engagement resources and how to use these resources to set a proper lecturer-learner relationship.The present study adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods. Firstly, it selected two series of open online courses about the same topic, namely social psychology, as corpora. One of them was lectured by Dr. Matthew Lieberman from UCLA(54,495 words in total) while the other by Professor Cui Lijuan from East China Normal University(46,198 words in total). With the assistance of UAM Corpus Tool, it analyzed the distribution of engagement resources in the selected Chinese and English MOOC discourse. Moreover, questionnaires about the effect of building interpersonal meaning with the engagement resources in the two courses were handed out to a class of freshmen(29 people) majoring in English from College of International Studies in Southwest University. With the help of the questionnaire, it finds out what kinds of resources are beneficial to the interpersonal relationship between the lecturer and the leaner.Having discussed the distribution patterns and the results of the questionnaires within the framework of the Engagement system in Appraisal Theory, the conclusions are as follows:Dialogic contraction resources far outnumber dialogic expansion resources in both English and Chinese MOOC discourses; disclaim resources account for the most percentage among other types of engagement resources. And there is no distance resources in both English and Chinese MOOC discourses; when it comes to dialogic expansion, entertain resources hold the most percentage in both Chinese and English MOOC discourses; when we are concerned about dialogic contraction, pronounce resources rank the first in both Chinese and English MOOC discourses. Concurring resources are the least adopted option in the two discourses.Dialogic contractive resources in Chinese MOOC discourses exceed those in English MOOC, but dialogic expansive resources in English MOOC discourse are more than twice as those in Chinese MOOC discourse. In dialogic expansion, entertain resources occur more often in English MOOC discourses than in Chinese MOOC discourse; the situation about acknowledge resources is the opposed. From the learners’ perspective, it lacks no authority when a lecturer adopts the entertain resources “I think”. On the contrary, it is capable of inspiring the learners to think more about what the lecturer says. Most of the learners can be inspired by the words which carry the possible positions like perhaps, probably, possibly. And they also expect more from that kind of words. Learners agree that there will be more reliability if the sources come from the figure that has authority and high social status. But most of them do not care if the lecturers use this kind of way in their course or not. As for dialogic contraction, in Chinese MOOC discourse, negation is adopted more than countering. But in English MOOC discourse, the situation is the opposed. Using concession to deny the learners’ answers is more friendly and easier to accept than the way of denying their answers directly.This thesis is expected to offer a new perspective for MOOC researches and meanwhile enrich the Appraisal Theory.